Relationships Between Teachers' Marks, Achievement Test Scores and Aptitude as a Function of Grade, Ethnicity and Sex.

Logical predictions about relationships between school aptitude and standardized achievement, aptitude and teachers' grades, and teachers' grades and standardized achievement can be made from the literature. These predictions are that (1) conventional school aptitude measures should predict standardized achievement test scores equally well for boys and girls but better for advantaged than disadvantaged children; (2) teachers' marks are more accurate for girls than for boys when judged against the sexes' standardized achievement test scores; are more accurate for middle-class than for disadvantaged children; and are least accurate for disadvantaged black males; and (3) teachers consistently give girls higher grades than boys but there are no important differences between boys' and girls' achievement when measured by standard achievement tests. The present study was conducted to test the strength of the relationships between pupil aptitude, standardized achievement and teachers' grades and to determine the percent of variance in grade point average accounted for by aptitude and standardized achievement in a representative sample of fifth- and ninth-grade Mexican-American, Black and Anglo students. (Author/RC)