Dear Talent Search & EOC Project Directors:

It is time to prepare your annual performance report (APR) for program year 2007–08. You must submit your report no later than December 1, 2008 via a Web site maintained by our data processing contractor; the site will be available on November 3, 2008 via the following TRIO Web addresses:

• http://www.ed.gov/programs/triotalent/report.html (for Talent Search)

• http://www.ed.gov/programs/trioeoc/report.html (for EOC).

Once at the contractor's Web site, you will need to register; you may do so well in advance of actually submitting the report. So as to allow time to resolve any problems that may occur with registration, we ask you to register as early as possible.

The APR follows last year's format in most respects, but contains two changes that I would like to bring to your attention.

--Data on race and ethnicity: In late 2007, the U.S. Department of Education issued new, Department-wide guidance on collecting and reporting data on race and ethnicity; this year's APR reflects this guidance. While grantees will use reporting categories that are largely consistent with those of previous years, the guidance specifies data collection, reporting, and maintenance procedures that you may or may not have followed in the past. These procedures, designed to ensure data quality, are now required for full implementation. You will find the changes in Section II.C of the APR; please read pages 7–9 of the instructions carefully to learn how to respond to the guidance.

--Reporting on certain groups of participants: At the suggestion of grantees, we have indicated in Section III and the relevant portion of the instructions how projects should report data on participants under the age of 19 who were high school graduates, postsecondary dropouts, or potential postsecondary transfers, and on participants of any age who were high school seniors.

How the report is organized: As you may recall from last year, for both programs, Section I requests basic identifying information about the project, while Section II covers demographics and requests data on target schools. Sections III and IV reflect the standard objectives found on the Program Profile page of the 2006 application packages for Talent Search (page 74) and EOC (page 75); these sections appear in separate versions for the two programs so as to reflect their differing sets of standard objectives. Section III requests the educational status of differing groups of participants at the time of first service in the budget period ; these groups allow grantees to report on sets of participants specified in the objectives. Section IV asks grantees to report on the educational status of participants at the end of the budget period (or during the next fall term for the postsecondary enrollment objective) and to show the extent to which the project succeeded in meeting its objectives.

Target schools: At the end of Section II, all Talent Search grantees and EOC grantees serving target schools must enter the schools they served during the budget period. This section of the APR is pre-populated with the target school data you provided last year. Please update or correct the information as needed. Projects are asked to use the online link to the National Center for Education Statistics to locate the identifying number for their target schools in the NCES's Common Core of Data. Before submitting the APR, grantees should discuss any changes in target schools (including changes in schools' names) with their program specialist. New schools should be added only if you have received prior written approval from your program specialist.

EOC objectives B, C, and D: EOC projects should note that, for the three standard objectives referring to participants not already enrolled in a postsecondary school, the instructions for the APR specify that this means those not enrolled in postsecondary education at the time of first service in the budget period . Thus, those not enrolled in postsecondary education at the outset of the budget period would include, for example:

• a high school senior
• a high school graduate or GED recipient who never previously enrolled in a postsecondary program
• an adult who began college several years ago but dropped out and now wants to try again.

These are examples only and do not cover all possibilities.

Thank you for the time and effort you dedicate to performance reporting each year and for your commitment to providing complete and accurate data. Please retain source documents in a readily accessible form so that they can be verified during an on-site visit. If you encounter technical problems accessing the Web site or using the Web application, please contact the Help Desk using instructions provided at the site. Also remember that after you submit the completed APR electronically you must also submit, via fax, a signed copy of Section I of the report form that certifies that the information submitted electronically is readily verifiable and that the information reported is accurate and complete. The fax number is (703) 995-4812. Should you have questions regarding the performance report requirements, please contact your program specialist directly. To ascertain your program specialist's name, telephone number, and e-mail address, please visit http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/trio/staffdirectory-cupt.html.

Sincerely,

Geraldine G. Smith
Team Leader
College and University Preparation Team
Federal TRIO Programs

| Online APR | Talent Search Report page | EOC Report page |
| Talent Search Home | EOC Home | TRIO Home |