The perceptions teachers have of students were studied using data from a large study of children, parents, and teachers. Teachers completed individual assessment questionnaires on each of 540 participating children from kindergarten and grades 1 and 3 who lived in middle-income districts of the suburbs of a large midwestern city and who participated in this study in the spring of 1987 and again in the spring of 1988. Teachers rated students on a variety of personality characteristics and gave their perceptions of the children in the following domains: (1) math; (2) reading; (3) social; (4) sports; (5) music; and (6) art. For each domain, they were asked about constructs of talent, effort, ability, and their expectations for the child. Teachers' ratings were highly correlated across domains for each construct except for their ratings of the children's abilities. Teachers' ratings were more highly correlated across years for the academic areas than the other areas. Teachers' ratings were also closely related to the children's performance on a battery of cognitive measures, a test of physical ability, and an intelligence test. Teachers were most confident and accurate in areas in which they had the most experience, but it is not known whether the confidence they had in their ability ratings affected their tendencies to act on the ratings. Six graphs and one table illustrate study findings. (SLD)