p between certain cultural aspects of the home and achievement in arithmetic. In particular, he found positive relationships between the parent's occupation and children's achievement, and the intellectual sophistication of the newspapers read in the home and the child's achievement. However, this study is specific to the United States and focused on white children from the middle-class, so it is not clear how applicable it would be to other settings.
Nonetheless, it is clear that within classrooms and grade levels, there is considerable difference in achievement in arithmetic. For example, in an earlier study of 713 sixth grade pupils that examined achievement in arithmetic, Jarvis (1964) found that there was a range of 6.9 years in achievement in arithmetic reasoning and 6.5 years in achievement in arithmetic fundamentals. This was determined by use of the California Achievement Test Battery, Form W. He learned that 69 percent of students achieved above grade level, 11 percent at grade level, and 20 percent below
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