In 1991 the Department of Health and Human Services funded 32 sites throughout the United States to develop and implement Head Start-Public School Early Childhood Transition Demonstration Projects. The purpose of 31 projects, which are in their fourth year of operation, is to stimulate partnerships among Head Start agencies, public schools, and community agencies and organizations in order to provide greater continuity for children and their parents as they make the transition from Head Start to the public schools. Each project identified a local comparison group. Projects and their comparisons were evaluated by local evaluating teams in collaboration with a National Research Coordinating Team using a developed list of operational questions and a set of instruments, the National Core Data Set. Five projects had developed evaluations with a strong partnership component featuring an iterative process in which information is gathered through multiple methodologies and perceptions are validated or corrected by the participating partners. As a work-in-progress, this paper explores the evaluations being conducted by five transition projects in Alaska, Arizona, Illinois, Nevada, and Oregon. These projects have made great strides in moving toward truly collaborative partnerships. One figure illustrates the evaluation approach. (Contains 10 references.) (SLD)