Teachers’ diagnostic competence is pivotal to accurately support children’s learning process. Research on the subject of accuracy has revealed contradicting results (correlations higher than .60:  Hoge and Coladarci, 1989; Karing, Matthäi, & Artelt, 2011; Lorenz & Artelt, 2009; correlations lower than .60: Begeny, Krouse, Brown, & Mann, 2011; Südkamp, Kaiser, & Möller, 2012).

Accuracy is influenced by students’ as well as by teachers’ characteristics (Randall & Engelhard, 2010). Various researchers have tried to identify the children’s first language (L1) as a possible influence of judgment accuracy. Paleczek, Seifert, Schwab, and Gasteiger-Klicpera (2015) could not show differences in accuracy of teachers’ judgment of L1 and second language (L2) learners. Limbos and Geva (2001), however, identified differences in teachers’ ability to detect students at risk for reading disability especially in L2 learners. Krolak-Schwerdt and Rummer (2005) found the students’ lower socioeconomic background lead to less accuracy in mathematics and German language arts.

In interaction with students’ gender, Ready and Wright (2011) found that teachers tend to overestimate girls’ literacy skills. Other researchers, however, could not find such an influence of gender on accuracy (Bennett, Gottesman, Rock, Cerullo, & Levin, 1993; Hecht & Greenfield, 2002, Helwig, Anderson, & Tindal, 2001, 2001; Karing et al., 2011; Schabmann & Schmidt, 2009).

In low achieving students, teachers seem to judge achievement less accurately (Demaray & Elliott, 1998; Feinberg & Shapiro, 2009; Feinberg, Shapiro, & D'amato, 2003). Randall and Engelhard (2010) could reveal that especially in borderline cases, teachers also relied on students’ characteristics, such as behavior and motivation when deciding on students’ grades. Also Kaiser, Retelsdorf, Südkamp, and Möller (2013) found teachers’ judgments of students’ performance to be influenced by the students’ motivation.

Hurwitz, Elliott, and Braden (2007) could show that teachers underestimated students with special educational needs (SEN).

Since research about teacher and student characteristics influencing the accuracy of teachers’ judgments is rather rare in comparison to research about accuracy in general, the present paper aimed at adding information concerning the class and individual (student) level to the body of research on accuracy.

Current Study

The purpose of the present study was to take a closer look at the accuracy of teacher judgments of 2^nd and 3^rd graders’ reading abilities and, thus, to investigate variables that influence the accuracy of teachers’ judgments.

We posed two main research questions:

(i)                 How accurately do teachers judge their students’ reading abilities (decoding and reading comprehension)?

Due to previous studies we hypothesized that the teachers’ judgment and the students’ actual achievement correlate about .60 (Hoge & Coladarci, 1989; Südkamp et al., 2012).

(ii)               Which variables at individual level (student’s first language, gender, level of the student’s respective reading ability, SEN status) and at class level (class size, percentage of L2 students in class, Grade 2 vs. 3, beginning vs. end of the academic year) predict the accuracy of teacher judgments on the reading abilities (decoding and reading comprehension)?

We hypothesized that at individual level, the SEN status (Hurwitz et al., 2007) and the ability of the students (Feinberg & Shapiro, 2009) but not L1 (Paleczek et al., 2015) and gender (Hecht & Greenfield, 2002) predicted judgment accuracy. At class level, we assumed that Grade and time of measurement predict the accuracy of teachers’ judgments – assuming accuracy to grow along the time (Schmidt & Schabmann, 2010). Class size was also assumed to have an impact on accuracy. The percentage of L2 learners in class, however, was not assumed to predict the accuracy of teachers’ judgments.

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