The 2-year study reports on student progress, quality of instructional programs and costs for five groups of 7,000 exceptional students in Pennsylvania; educable mentally retarded, trainable mentally retarded, physically handicapped, socially and emotionally disturbed, and brain injured. Instruments are said to have included the Wide Range Achievement Test, the Vineland Social Maturity Scale, the Indicators of Quality test for program evaluation, and budget line-item figures for program cost. Among conclusions discussed are that children in the sample did make significant progress in the areas assessed; the average daily membership (ADM) costs ranged from about two to three and one-half times as much as the ADM costs for equivalent regular education students. Nearly half the report is comprised of five appendixes, such as correlation matrices for individual categories of exceptionality. (CL)