This paper presents excerpts from the introductory and summary chapters of an interim report published in January 1986, the first of three reports to be produced as part of the National Assessment of the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act of 1981 (ECIA) Chapter 1. The interim report, which is intended to provide an analytic and demographic framework from which to view the actual operations of local Chapter 1 programs, describes the background and purpose of ECIA and summarizes a wide range of information about those members of the population whom Chapter 1 is intended to benefit. The three goals of this report are the following: (1) examine all students who could be or have been called "educationally deprived"; (2) discuss impact of trends in childhood poverty on Federal aid programs; and (3) analyze program beneficiaries. A range of possible changes in Chapter 1 provisions are suggested that would alter local school and student selection practices and focus the program more specifically either on achievement or on poverty, or on both. Notes to the two excerpted chapters are included. (PS)