The philosophy of the District of Columbia Public School System is that evaluation should help to determine what was intended, what was done, and what was the result. It should contribute to improvement and should involve students, staff, and parents. Two essential components of the District's evaluation system are the data bank and field studies. The data bank includes files on fall pretest results; the reading curriculum; classroom and student characteristics; and spring post testing. The field studies provide data which can be used to identify programs of interest, compare groups, or locate students for followup study--data about attitudes, teaching methods, parent participation, etc. The development of the evaluation system began in 1969; by 1975, 44 elementary schools were involved in the data collection. The schools were provided with feedback in the following areas: characteristics of students in reading programs, comparison of schools within a region; teacher turnover; student attendance; and characteristics of entire classes. Additional data analyses are planned for the future. (GDC)