This manual is intended to assist assessment and teaching personnel in assessing and developing instructional plans for special needs students from early school to independent living and employment. It contains 10 chapters. The following topics are discussed in the first nine chapters: the purpose of career assessment; ethical issues (qualifications, confidentiality, certification); organization of the assessment process (functions, levels, and settings of assessment; procedures for planning the assessment process; personnel responsibilities); selection of assessment instruments (selection guidelines, information collection methods, instruments to assess the whole person); assessment of special populations (mentally retarded, learning disabled, speech- and language-impaired, behaviorally disordered, visually or hearing impaired, physically or health impaired, multiply handicapped, and disadvantaged students); report writing; interpretation of assessment results (interpretation for students, teachers, counselors, resource personnel, parents, community members); use of comprehensive assessment results (program planning, counseling and instructional strategies); and vocational assessment (levels, processes, types of instruments used). The 10th chapter reviews 212 different assessment instruments in the following categories: achievement, adaptive behavior, aptitude, career development, intelligence, interest, learning styles, and work assessment. Each assessment review contains the following: target population, norm groups, purpose, title of subcomponents, types of scores, scoring information, validity, reliability, copyright, publisher, comments, and source of information. A bibliography and list of publishers' addresses are included. (MN)