The Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) is conducted by the Census Bureau for the National Center for Education Statistics. It is a relatively new set of integrated surveys first launched in the 1987-88 and 1990-91 school years and scheduled to be conducted every three years hence. Currently, eight self­administered questionnaires designed to obtain nationwide information on teacher and student counts, administrator and teacher backgrounds, as well as other administrator, school, and teacher-level characteristics comprise the core portion of SASS. Historically, public school districts, public and private school administrators, the schools themselves, and teachers within the schools were the units about which data were collected. In 1991, however, a new survey was piloted for eventual inclusion in the core SASS – the Student Records Questionnaire. This survey was designed to obtain nationwide information on student characteristics from administrative records with students being the units about which data were collected. It is this survey which was the subject of our research.