Relationship between classroom behavior and achievement of mildly mentally retarded children.

Although the relationship between classroom behavior and academic achievement is well established for nonretarded children, the nature of this relationship is not clear for retarded children. Behavioral observations of 177 students in classrooms for educable mentally retarded children and for educationally handicapped children were compared to their achievement scores. Although significant correlations were found between some categories of behavior and achievement in arithmetic, the general absence of strong correlations was noteworthy when compared to previous findings on nonretarded subjects. Implications for academic instruction were suggested by the particular patterns of significant correlations.