The main purpose of this study is to measure the attitudes of teachers toward speech varieties used by speakers of Black English and to determine whether there is any evidence that those attitudes are linked to pupils' classroom performance in reading. Also investigating is whether exposure to information about and experience with varieties of Black English will bring about a change in the attitudes of teachers, and whether teachers tend to transmit their own attitudes to pupils. The research was conducted in grades 4-6 in three sites with a total of 456 pupils and 37 teachers. Among the main conclusions of the study are the following: (1) that teachers and pupils tend to agree in their attitudes toward black speech varieties on certain crucial attitude dimensions, such as the greater likelihood of the Standard Black English (SBE) speaker's success in school; (2) that exposure to new information appears to have no significant effect on apparently well-established attitudinal characteristics; (3) that teacher attitudes have little documentable effect on actual reading gains made by the pupil, but appear to have some relation to the grades assigned by the teachers. It is concluded that teacher attitudes do have an impact on pupils--on their achievement and perhaps most directly on their attitudes -- but the nature of the impact is influenced by many factors. (Author/AM)