A Study of the Performance Evaluation Scheme of Central Government¡¦s Public Education Project Grants toward the Localities in Taiwan. The main purpose of this study are (a) to explore the principle and scheme of the performance-based project evaluation, (b) to understand the current status and problems of the compulsory educational grant system, (c) to explore the development and general situation of the performance evaluation of the compulsory education project grants, and (d) to construct a performance evaluation scheme of the central government¡¦s compulsory education project grants toward the localities. Based on the research findings, the recommendations are offered as the improvement for relevant institutes. To achieve the purposes above, the research adopts the document analysis, literature analysis, expert interviews, questionnaire, expert workshops and on-the-spot interviews. First, through the analysis of document and literature, the context of every compulsory educational grant project, the grant system of compulsory education, and the theories of performance evaluation are discussed. Secondly, interview methodology helps to explore the compulsory educational grant system and projects. Thirdly, in order to have a wide understanding for the current grant projects, we compile questionnaire A and B. The samples of the former are the administrative managers in Bureau of Education of every Hsien and City Local Governments; the samples of the latter are the principals of the public primary and junior high schools. The applied analysis method is descriptive statistics. Fourthly, through the holding workshops and on-the-spot interviews, we realize the executive situation and related problems of the compulsory education project grants. Finally, we have the following conclusions and suggestions. The main conclusions are as follows: 1. The central government¡¦s compulsory education project grants have improved the learning environment of the compulsory education a great deal, but there are still some problems remained. (1) The rate of self-financial resources of the local governments is too low and the current expenditure for the localities is overloaded. (2) The equity, executive efficiency and independence of the grant system remain to be promoted. (3) The roles of the central and local governments in the grant system are not clearly defined. (4) The policies of the compulsory educational grant projects lack continuity. (5) The local governments¡¦ examination for the grants is not transparent enough and some set their own rules to limit the proposals for the grants. (6) Some grant projects cannot resolve the main difficulties of schools. (7) Some local governments appear to expend the budget as possible due to the pressure of budget-execution. 2. The research finds that under the principles of horizontal equity, vertical equity, independence, priority, accountability and democracy, the compulsory educational grant system will be greatly improved. 3. Some local governments and principals have no idea of accountability, and the performance-based project evaluation cannot be put into effect. In order to strengthen the accountability of all the educational personnel, we should to make explicit principles of evaluation and take account of the results to decide the amount of the next grants. Additionally, the indexes of evaluation should have qualitative and quantitative ones including short-term and long-term evaluation. The execution of evaluation needs self-evaluation and expert-evaluation. To get rid of the personal factors, a special institute for allocating the grants should be established. Besides, evaluation can be executed from several ways and put into a part of the execution for the grants. 4. This research constructs a performance-based project evaluation scheme. We suggest the grant system should be divided into project and general grant ones. According to the scheme, the project grant system has no big difference from the present one and its function is to attain vertical equity; the general grant system is formula-based and it stresses the principles of independence and efficiency. After the formula and the educational funds for each local government are decided, the proposal method is from bottom to top. As for the performance evaluation, ¡§ Educational funds allocation committee ¡¨ of the central government and ¡§ Education investigation committee ¡¨ of the Hsien and City Local Governments should be established first. These committees execute evaluation in the general grant system, and the process of evaluation includes school self-evaluation. According to the result of our research, we propose the following suggestions: 1. Immediate suggestions: (1) To attain the equity of grant allocation and using efficiency, a data base of the fundamental teaching equipment for every schools should be established soon so as to improve the performance evaluation. (2) To assure the fundamental teaching equipment for all the schools, we should make ¡§ indexes of the fundamental teaching equipment¡¨ for the whole country so as to attain the principles of horizontal equity and priority. (3) To fulfill the dependence of the local governments and schools and to improve the using efficiency for the grants, the central government should increase the general grants. (4) To strengthen the functions of the general grant system, the central government should establish ¡§ Educational funds allocation committee ¡¨ as an advisory examining body for Bureau of Education. (5) The local governments should establish ¡§ Education investigation committee ¡¨ as an advisory examining body for every Hsien and City Bureau of Education. (6) To attain the independence of using funds and performance evaluation, we should strengthen the functions of school administrative affairs meeting. (7) We should strengthen the performance evaluation of the compulsory educational grants, and put the evaluation into the grant system so as to enhance the idea of accountability. 2. Long-term suggestions: To effectively improve the performance-based project evaluation, the central government should develop indexes of evaluation for the long-term educational results and strengthen the qualitative performance evaluation.