Can teachers' global ratings identify children with academic problems?

Physicians often elicit ratings from teachers when making diagnostic, treat ment, or referral decisions. The purpose of this study was to view the rela tionship between teachers' ratings and children's academic skills, assess t he utility of teacher ratings in detecting academic problems, and thus dete rmine whether physicians can depend on teacher ratings when making decision s about patients' needs. Subjects were a national sample of 80 teachers and 934 children between 6 and 13 years of age participating in a test standar dization study. Families were representative of United States demographics in terms of parental level of education, income, and ethnicity, and sites w ere geographically diverse elementary schools. Children were administered t he Comprehensive Inventory of Basic Skills-Revised (CIBS-R), a diagnostic a cademic achievement test. Teachers rated children's academic performance on a five-point scale ranging from far above average to far below average and were blinded to the results of the CIBS-R. Teacher ratings varied signific antly with children's performance for all academic domains, Logistic regres sion revealed that teacher ratings were best predicted by children's perfor mance in basic reading skills, followed by math skills, and were not influe nced by race, parents' level of education, history of retention, or gender. Participation in Title I services, testing in winter or spring, and parent s who spoke a language other than English produced significantly lower rati ngs. Nevertheless, teachers rated as average many students with mild to mod erate academic difficulties. School system personnel and health care provid ers should avoid sole dependence on global teacher ratings when deciding wh ich students need special education referrals or other services. Supplement ing teacher ratings with standardized screening test results is needed to e nsure accurate decision-making.