This document reports preliminary conclusions from the General Accounting Office's (GAO) assessment of the effects of existing federally produced information on education in the United States which focused on the quality, availability, and dissemination of information on selected education topics. Issues guiding the GAO's work included: (1) how the federal investment in the collection, analysis, and dissemination of education information has changed over time; (2) the consequences of these changes; and (3) the implications of these changes for congressional oversight. Changes in the availability of funding for producing information on the condition of education are also reported, and implications of these changes both for generating information and for making it available, now and in the near future, are discussed. (THC)