Factors in school achievement and social class

Examined perceptions of social environment by 489 elementary school children and their attitudes for their relationship to school performance. Factors derived from the data accounted for more than twice the variance attributable to social class. 1 factor, suggestive of dominance in parents and submissiveness in the child, accounted for 24% of the criterion variance, compared with social class which accounted for only 12%. Other factors exceeding the influence of social class were suggestive of general deprivation, desire for education, intellectual enterprise, confidence, and parental support. When social class was partialed out, the original product-moment correlations were diminished by .05. Relatively low correlations of the factors with social class suggest that the environmental characteristics the factors represent are widely distributed across social class boundaries.