The General Accounting Office (GAO) examined the procedures used by various federal agencies to monitor the performance and effectiveness of their programs of employment training assistance to economically disadvantaged persons. The study revealed that, although most of the employment training programs had some form of oversight or monitoring effort, only about one-third of the programs used such activities to assess participant outcomes. Consequently, although program administrators had sufficient data to be assured that their programs were in compliance, they did not know whether their programs were actually helping disadvantaged persons enter or reenter the work force. In the past 10 years, only 7 of the 62 programs analyzed had conducted studies to measure program effectiveness or impact. (Appendixes constituting approximately three-fourths of this report contain the following: proposed FY94 funding levels for federal agencies implementing employment and training programs, outcome data collected by federal programs providing employment assistance to disadvantaged persons, monitoring activities by federal programs providing disadvantaged persons, GAO-identified studies published between January 1990 and December 1993 on employment training programs for ED persons, the methodology and findings of studies evaluating program effectiveness, comments from the various agencies, and a list of major contributors to the report.) (MN)