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Assessment data should serve as the cornerstone of the rehabilitation process, guiding the provision of sevice offerings. Numerous studies, however, document that the results of psychometric instruments (e.g., IQ and personality tests) and traditional vocational evaluation procedures (e.g., work samples) have little relationship to actual rehabilitation performance of persons with special needs (Frey, 1984). As an alternative, functional assessment methods (Halpern & Fuhrer, 1984) that focus on the actual skills and capacities of the individual have been recommended. In the first section of this article, we discuss the rationale for functional assessment procedures to rehabilitation and present a conceptual model of these procedures. In the second section, we describe a model demonstration project that was funded in the fall of 1993 by the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) to develop and provide functional assessment services for adolescents and adults with cognitive disabilities at an existing assessment facility: Project FASTER (Functional Assessment Services for Transition, Education, and Rehabilitation) (Bullis, 1993). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]