Teachers' judgments of the academic achievement of children with and without characteristics of inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity.

Some evidence suggests that teachers may have a negative bias against and be less accurate in academic judgments of students with behavioral characteristics of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Thus, examining the accuracy of their judgments is an important area of investigation. The current study examined the accuracy of teachers’ judgments on curriculum-based measures (CBM) of reading, math, and writing for students with and without characteristics of inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity. Participants included 72 elementary students, 30 with characteristics of inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity (IIH group) and 42 without these characteristics (comparison group). Overall, there were no major differences between groups in teachers’ accuracy. Regarding indirect judgments (i.e., ratings of academic skills on a rating scale), teachers’ ratings were positively related to reading- and math-CBM for both groups. There were few significant differences in teacher judgments between the groups of students with and without symptoms of IIH on indirect ratings of achievement, but when examining overestimation and accuracy of direct ratings, a different picture emerged. Teachers overestimated performance on reading for both groups (75 and 43 words, comparison and IIH, respectively); however, this difference was not statistically significant. For math, teachers overestimated for both groups (7.5 and 11.5 points, comparison and IIH, respectively) and they overestimated significantly more for the comparison group.