Presented in the paper are procedures for diagnosing academic and social behaviors of retarded and emotionally disturbed children 5 to 8 years of age. Assessment before instruction is said to involve medical reports, interviews, psychometric tests, direct observation, and behavior inventories. Assessment during instruction is discussed in terms of direct observation, pretest and posttests from the classroom instructional programs, systematic evaluation of the child's work, and analysis of reinforcement and recorded behaviors. Suggested for terminal assessment is analysis of performances on the last posttests, scores from the readministration of psychometric tests, and descriptions of academic and social behavior from objective measures and accounts. (MC)