The Lexington Development Scale was designed to be used by the teacher as an instrument for assessing developmentally handicapped children, as an aid in helping parents to better understand their child, as a basis for curriculum planning for the total class and especially for the individual child, as a means for evaluating the progress of the individual child, as well as a means for evaluating class program. In addition, the results may be used by administrators for many purposes. The scale is to be administered by teachers in the classroom although some of the information is best obtained from the parents. Results are intended to be a product of cumulative teacher judgment on the overall performance of each child as opposed to a single performance on more specialized testing instruments as administered by an examiner. Unique features of the LDS are the arrangement of the items by ages, the organization by areas, and the readibility of graph data indicating developmental progress. The age norms have been arranged in a sequence denoting four continuous developmental stages. The LDS evaluates five areas in the development of the child: Motor, Language, Personal and Social, Cognitive, and Emotional. (Author/BJG)