Twenty-two National Skill Standards Projects were conducted to develop National Skill Standards over a 3-year period beginning in 1992. These projects were funded by the U.S. Departments of Education and Labor to develop materials useful for improving the quality of the work force through identification of skill standards and related materials tied to measurable, performance-based outcomes that can be readily assessed, be comparable across industries, similar occupations, and states. After 3 years, however, the parameters of a skill standard have not been defined and the format and presentation process have not been standardized. As a result, there will be 22 conceptually different sets of skill standards to which the technical education community will be expected to respond. Most of the standards projects did not follow accepted occupational analysis processes, nor use definitions commonly understood by occupational curriculum developers and professional training developers (such as the military and the Vocational-Technical Consortium of States standards). New work force legislation, however, is likely to "encourage" use of the skill standards, so technical educators will need to review the standards and consider implementation whenever possible. Even though a particular standards set may be of limited value, consideration of the standards material as developmental tools should be worth the effort. A suggested process would be to use the program advisory committee in a comparison of the products to known good materials and determine the usefulness on a product-by-product basis. More than likely, however, the flawed development of the skill standards projects will doom most of the products to obscurity. (A list of the skill standards projects with contact names, addresses, and telephone numbers is included in the paper.) (KC)