Teachers' Perceptions of Levels of Performances of Students from an Economically Disadvantaged Urban Area

Summasy.-The hypothesis tested whether teachers' perceived levels of performance by grade (fifth and second) and subject area (language arts and mathematics) would be independent of performances on the Coloured Progressive Matrices by 175 fifth-grade and 216 second-grade students. Significant chi-squares suggested a direct relationship between perceptions and Matrices scores. Two persistent patterns began to appear among sets of data as they were being ordered for preliminary analysis in connection with a larger project. The relationships in these patterns are the subject of this report. The data were organized to study the consistency of the observation that teachers' perceptions of levels of performance in language arts and mathematics by a sample of public elementary school students from an economically disadvantaged urban area were independent of performances of these students on a non-verbal test of general intelligence, Coloured Progressive Matrices (Raven, 1963 ) . The sample included 175 fifth-grade and 216 second-grade students attending a Special Service public elementary school in New York City. A public elementary school was designated Special Service if it was located in an economically disadvantaged area and additional personnel and curriculum materials were allocated to such a school. The instructional staff of the school was made up of teachers regularly licensed by the Board of Education. The ethnic group membership of the total student population in the school, and Grades 5 and 2 (from New York City Board of Education census figures) at the time the data for this report were collected was: Puerto Rican, 396, Negro, 94%; Other, 3%. The Coloured Progressive Matrices (Raven, 1963) is a group test of general intelligence, non-verbal in content. The test includes 36 incomplete matrices or figural patterns each designed to represent a system of relations. The testee is asked to discern the nature of the relationship underlying a matrix and complete the pattern by selecting one of six alternatives given with each. ' In November of the school year, the Coloured Progressive Matrices was administered by the investigator as a small-group test to the total school population. Means and standard deviations on the Matrices for students in Grades 5 and 2 were 21.1 -t- 2.58 and 16.8 + 2.05, respectively; medians were 22.5 and 16.6. No significant differences were found at either grade level between mean performances of boys and girls (ts = 0.559, df = 173; t, = 1.364, df = 214). The teachers in Grades 5 and 2 were asked, independently of the administration of the Matrices, for their perceptions of levels of performance of the students in these grades in language arts and in mathematics. The request was made so that some general descriptive data on level of students' functioning could be obtained for each grade. A decile-type scale was used; "1" was high mark. The teachers were asked to complete the scale in terms of how they perceived the levels of performance of these students as compared to expected