Forms Clearance standards and regulations are used by the Office of Management and Budget and by the Education Division of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in order to upgrade the quality of federal data collection, to minimize cost, minimize reporting burden, maximize utility, and to protect the privacy rights of respondents. Review criteria are classified into eight categories: need, burden, cost, redundancy, utility, survey design, instrumentation, and administrative criteria; and are applied to eleven components of an educational research plan: research problem, respondent sample, sampling design, study design, instrumentation, data collection, data processing, data analysis, reporting results, data retention, and data utilization. However, these regulations cover only a small part of federal reporting requirements; they describe no penalties for non-compliance, and do not deal with the major causes of paperwork burden. Only a small percent of clearance requests have been disapproved. It is concluded that the review process will result in little or no progress toward the objectives of the Federal Reports Act. (Author/CTM)