The purpose of this study was to determine: (1) sixth and eighth graders' knowledge of certain graphemic options in American-English orthography; (2) the relationship between this knowledge and the students' oral reading accuracy and spelling ability; and (3) whether these abilities are of the same magnitude in both black and white students. One hundred thirty-nine sixth and 119 eighth graders enrolled in the regular classrooms of two northern Florida middle schools were given the Gilmore Oral Reading Test, Form C; a random sample of 100 words from the New Iowa Spelling Scale; and Graphemic Options Test, Parts I and II. Thirty-six hypotheses were tested and the conclusions were: (a) knowledge of graphemic options, as measured by the Graphemic Options Test, is developmental in nature through the fifth grade with a decline at the sixth grade and an insignificant increase from the fifth to the eighth; (b) a positive and significant relationship exists between sixth and eighth graders' graphemic option knowledge, oral reading accuracy, and spelling achievement; (c) white sixth and eighth graders have a greater graphemic option knowledge than black sixth and eighth graders; and (d) higher correlations between graphemic option knowledge and oral reading accuracy and between graphemic option knowledge and spelling achievement were obtained for black students. (Author/WR)