Predictive value of teachers' ratings of young children.

Abstract

This study assessed the relation of teachers' ratings of young children's abilities, classroom skills, and personal-social characteristics to achievement in school. Teachers' ratings of 217 children were obtained in the fall and spring of kindergarten and again in second and third grades. By the end of the third grade, 146 children remained in the sample. A total of 63 teachers participated. Predictive validity of the ratings was high for both concurrent and subsequent achievement by the children. The sum of four ratings (Effective Learning, Retaining Information, Vocabulary, and Following Instructions) predicted achievement nearly as well as the entire battery of ratings. Average ratings were consistently higher for girls than for boys. Ratings made by mothers were less predictive of scholastic success than were ratings made by teachers.

Effects of Home Literacy, Parents' Beliefs, and Children's Task-Focused Behavior on Emergent Literacy and Word Reading Skills

“…More 26 STEPHENSON ET AL. specifically, parents' positive beliefs about their children's cognitive (e.g., Crandall, Dewey, Katkovsky, & Preston, 1964;Stevenson, Parker, Wilkinson, Hegion, & Fish, 1976) or academic (e.g., Entwisle & Hayduk, 1988;Galper et al, 1997) ability have been shown to be associated with children's high achievement in reading.…”

“…Entwisle and Hayduk (1978) argued that after Grades 1 and 2, the impact of parents' beliefs decreases relative to the strong impact of the child's previous reading skills. Most of the studies have focused on older school-age children (e.g., Crandall et al, 1964;Entwisle & Hayduk, 1988;Halle et al, 1997;Stevenson et al, 1976), and only a few studies have considered children who are just beginning their formal education (e.g., Aunola et al, 2002).…”

Observed emotional and behavioral indicators of motivation predict school readiness in Head Start graduates

“…Teachers rated two items to indicate student competence in reading (α = .89) and math (α = .84): “Please rate the child's reading/math-related skills” and “How well do you expect the child to do next year in reading/math?” Mean scores were 2.84 ( SD = 0.80) in reading and 2.85 ( SD = 0.69) in math. Teacher ratings of reading and math achievement in kindergarten have been shown to have good concurrent and predictive validity up through 3 rd grade (Stevenson, Parker, Wilkinson, Hegion, & Fish, 1976). …”

Early Reading Performance

“…After a 1-year follow-up interval, this scale missed 70% of the children who subsequently failed to acquire grade-appropriate reading skills at the end of Year 1 (Fletcher & Satz, 1984). Similarly, the predictive value of teachers' ratings using a scale devised by Stevenson, Parker, Wilkinson, Hegion, and Fish (1976) revealed only modest correlations with criterion reading scores obtained 2 and 3 years after kindergarten rating.…”