Based on the experience of the past, current viewpoints, and opinions about the future as conceived by the Committee on Vocational Education Research and Development (COVERD), this paper explains a framework for considering alternative policy options and discusses the relationships among the social environment, status and trends in vocational education, and federal policy options for conducting Vocational Education Research and Development (VERD). Policy options for federally supported VERD are profiled on the dimensions of control, funding, performers, continuity, standards, functions, program areas, occupational focus, and populations, institutions, and demographic settings served. Included also are illustrative generalizations and a tabled schematic display of a number of general propositions about the relation between federal policy options and their outcomes for the quality of VERD findings and products, their effect on building capacity, the utility of findings and products, and the consequent political support for VERD. Appended is a schematic model for Project Baseline that provides for an analysis of both VERD processes and impacts. The model is described in a cumulative series of five figures using a combination of actual and hypothetical data. (NJ)