This is the final report of an annual Mississippi study, conducted for the first time in February of 1984, which provides baseline data for measuring improvement of school practices in key arenas. Its primary goals were to identify the extent to which children master one level of course work before being advanced to the next level, to determine what may be done to assure that progression from one level to another is properly sequenced, and to examine what steps are now being taken to assure that students are progressing satisfactorily toward mastery of the material under study. For the first part of the study, a mail questionnaire was carefully constructed to obtain specific data, and it was mailed to all public school principals. Topics in the questionnaire, which also constitute sections of the report, were as follows: (1) student learning objectives; (2) monitoring of teaching and learning; and (3) decisions about student promotion. In the second part of the study, a sample of mail questionnaire responses was verified by on-site visits to selected schools. Final sections of the report include a review of state corrective actions and a summarization of expectations of principals' behavior. (LMO)