This study attempts to determine the extent to which performance on educational tests is dependent upon language proficiency. Three questions are involved: (1) Will the dictation and the cloze tests prove to be as successful in distinguishing degrees of proficiency among native speakers as among second language learners? (2) How well will scores on these pragmatic tests correlate with scores on the ITBS (Iowa Tests of Basic Skills), designed to measure supposedly separable language skills? (3) What is the degree of intercorrelation between scores on the two pragmatic language tests, the ITBS subtests, and both the verbal and nonverbal subtests of the Lorge-Thorndike Intelligence Test, which purports to be a series of tests of abstract intelligence? Tests were administered to a sample representative of the St. Louis school population (4th and 7th graders). The results seems to suggest that the measures designed to assess intelligence are so greatly dependent upon proficiency in standard English that they consequently offer a much more accurate assessment of the level of that proficiency than of abstract intelligence. All tests are essentially measuring the same thing, global language proficiency. (Author/CFM)