Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) experience difficulty in the educational environment at two levels: behaviorally and academically. Behavioral and academic problems in students with EBD are reciprocal in nature. Behavioral problems may cause a disruption in academic engagement, including a student's attending to instruction, participating in classroom activities, and completing assignments. As a result, students with EBD may fail to master skills, not because of lack of intellectual ability, but because of lack of engagement. To further exacerbate the problem, students achieving below grade level or with splintered skills may receive ineffective instruction from teachers who are unaware of the students' academic skill deficits or unable to address the deficits. In such a scenario, instruction is provided at an inappropriate level and the student with EBD becomes frustrated, leading to a rise in misbehavior. The purpose of this article is to describe curriculum-based assessment (CBA) within the context of instructing students with EBD, both socially and academically, by examining the research base as it relates to students with EBD and the method of CBA. First, the authors present characteristics of students with EBD, and then describe CBA, including how CBA relates to direct instruction (DI) and functional behavioral assessment (FBA). The expected result of this article is that teachers of students with EBD will gain empirical and pragmatic information concerning the use of CBA to enhance both the academic and the prosocial behavior of students with EBD. (Contains 2 tables.)