To assess the condition of American education in the next decade, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) should focus on collecting data in the following major areas: (1) the quality and quantity of time that is allocated to various activities in the classroom; (2) the concerns of teachers, including their working conditions and time spent on various activities; and (3) micro-computer usage in the schools and student engaged time in activities broken down by content of activity and by sex, race, and socioeconomic status of the user. The relevance, technical quality and utility of the data could be improved by collaborating with other large organizations, such as several of the Educational Research and Development Centers that will soon be funded by the National Institute of Education (NIE). NCES might collaborate with the following Centers: (1) NIE Center on Teacher Quality and Effectiveness to gather data from the teachers' perspective on working conditions and factors that affect teachers' decisions; (2) NIE Center on Student Testing, Evaluation, and Standards to develop and refine tests that measure higher level cognitive skills; and (3) NIE Centers on Effective Elementary Schools and Effective Secondary Schools to collect time and observational data on what students are actually doing and learning in classrooms. (JAZ)