The Spanish-speaking school pupulation in the Northeast has grown significantly in size, but not in success in recent years. The Coleman Report revealed widespread and sustained inequality of educational opportunity for Puerto Ricans. However, the limited amount of other research on Puerto Rican students indicates that the problem lies in the schools rather than in the students. That is, the deficiencies that Puerto Rican children show in verbal ability and academic achievement might not exist if initial instruction and testing were in Spanish, the children's native language. This study sought to demonstrate this using a population of 217 first-grade Spanish-speaking children in Connecticut. The Interamerican Test of General Ability, Level I, was administered by the same male bilingual examiner first in Spanish and then in English. The Puerto Rican first graders scored significantly lower on the English forms than all ethnic groups, including Puerto Rican, in Coleman's study on the subtest of verbal ability; however, on the nonverbal ability subtest, the Puerto Rican first graders in this study scored significantly higher than all ethnic groups in the Coleman study. The subjects of the study scored significantly higher on the Spanish form than on the English form. (Author/JM)