RESPONSE TO "COMMENT ON 'TOWARD A TEMPORAL SEQUENCE OF ADOLESCENT ACHIEVEMENT VARIABLES'".

The article is in response to comments on the research paper "Toward a Temporal Sequence of Adolescent Achievement Variables." With respect to the stability of intelligence during adolescence, authors argue with no one. Although critics Duane F. Alwin and Charles W. Mueller employ several times throughout their critique the term "test" in quotes, the objective is not as being that of "testing" each of the two models. There has been frequent reference by Alwin and Mueller to the continued persistence of a residual or direct effect between achievement expectation and socioeconomic level, a persistence which itself persists in the writings of other author. To label that residual as a "direct effect" of status on achievement without further amplification is uninformative. Such a direct effect, authors suggest, is most appropriately understood as a quantitative coefficient of the collective ignorance, an ignorance of those variables in addition to the several already identified. When such intervening or component variables have been identified and operationalized, then one may anticipate that their inclusion in a model will virtually eliminate any residual or direct relationship between achievement and status.