A wealth of material about education in the United States is collected and released by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The NCES gathers data on all aspects of education from across the country, organizes the data in useful forms, and releases the resulting surveys and studies as survey reports, information compendia, and special reports on specific topics. The NCES also participates in joint research activities with other organizations. It serves a wide variety of data users and presents its information in a variety of formats, including printed publications, postings on the Internet, and CD-ROM data sets. NCES studies cover the entire educational spectrum, providing facts and figures to help policymakers understand the condition of education in the country today, to give researchers a foundation of data on which to build, and to help teachers and administrators decide the best practices for their schools. Brief descriptions are given for the following NCES components and surveys: (1) Common Core of Data; (2) Private School Survey; (3) Schools and Staffing Survey; (4) National Assessment of Educational Progress; (5) Longitudinal Studies; (6) Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System; (7) National Study of Postsecondary Faculty; (8) Postsecondary Longitudinal Studies; (9) National Postsecondary Student Aid Study; (10) National Household Education Survey; (11) Library Surveys; (12) National Adult Literacy Survey; (13) Data on Vocational Education; and (14) International Education Statistics. Resource information and a list of NCES publications are attached. (SLD)