Since no attempt had been made to determine classroom teachers' knowledge and understanding of the rules of Black English as identified by linguists, this study was designed to construct an appropriate instrument which could be administered to classroom teachers who want to work successfully with lower-class black children. Criterion-referencing was chosen over norm-referencing because the test was to yield specific information about overall knowledge proficiency of the individual teachers and the specific language problems which an individual teacher did and did not recognize and/or comprehend in the areas of grammar and pronunciation and their relation to the meaning communicated. After the instrument had been presented to a jury of linguists and administered to a pilot group of teachers, plans for instrument revision were made. (Author/HOD)