One of the major problem areas related to correlating edu cational achievement with socioeconomic status or social class is that fact that standard measures of socioeconomic status are not widely accepted (Parelius, & Parelius, 1978, p. 284). Even in the face of this problem, significant correlations between socioeconomic status and educational achievement are found. The difficulty with the variety of measures of socioeconomic status in this regard lies in the development of corrective actions (Parelius, & Parelius, 1978, pp. 284 285), and an agreement by all parties that such ocrrelations are relevant.
Some researchers declare flatly that, as a result of prior research, it is known that parental education and income are good predictors of children's academic achievement. Thefindings of some other researchers, however, cast some doubt on this contention. Nevertheless, the string relationship between the socioeconomic status of student families, and the academic achieve (Parelius, & Parelius, 1978, pp. 285, 290 291). This area of research is highly significant, because the assumed socioeconomic status/academic achievement relationship is relied upon by a significant proportion of educational adminis trators in the development of programs for specific groups of students and, at times, for entire schools, and as a basis for
2the assignment of either individual students or groups of stu dents to specific programs.
Although there exists a wide spread acceptance of a strong relationship between socioeconomic status and academic achieve ment, the correlations between the variables, as reported in the literature, range from as low as r = .10 to r >.80. Thus, it is evident that some type of problem exists with the general assumption concerning to the relationship. One of the problems identified is that, as indicated above, no generally accepted defintion of socioeconomic status exis...