A 2-year project investigated the ability of secondary school teachers to identify the top 10 percent of students in each of four subjects, English, French, physics, and mathematics. The students were tested on a wide range of aptitudes and attitudes at the beginning of their third form (ninth grade). Teachers were asked to list students they…

In the second year of a project investigating the ability of secondary school teachers to identify high-ability students, two questions were addressed: what student characteristics influenced teachers' judgments, and why checklists appeared to have little impact on teachers' judgments. A structured approach was developed to study student…