[en] One of the fundamental measurements to be made at the e⁺e^- colliders, SLC and LEP, is the determination of the number of neutrino families produced in Z⁰ boson decays. In the event that a fourth generation of light Dirac neutrinos exists, the experimental consequences at the Z⁰ resonances are easily seen; the total width will be increased by 171 MeV over its three generation value, to be compared to the approx 30 MeV precision that should be achievable once the systematic limit has been reached. A reasonable figure of merit for the precision of a neutrino counting measurement of 0.2 standard model generations corresponds to a Z⁰ width measurement error of 35 MeV; close to the limit of anticipated experimental capability. In fact, it is highly desirable to achieve an even higher precision if possible, in order to distinguish potentially small effects due to exotic phenomena from beyond the Standard Model. This paper will address the issue of how to obtain the best measurement of the number of neutrino generations as a function of the size of the available sample of Z⁰ decays. The results presented here were obtained by our study group in an attempt to understand the limitations of a realistic neutrino counting measurement with the SLD at the Stanford Linear Collider. However, many of our findings are general enough to be applicable to any e⁺e^- detector designed to take data at the Z⁰ resonance. 19 refs., 5 figs., 6 tabs