A two-year project involved two elementary school faculties in planning curricular change. Both schools selected two major goals: to improve reading achievement scores and student self-concept. University personnel served in a consultant/trainer role. The school staffs expressed doubt about the feasibility or the necessity of the self-concept goal; the teachers seemed perplexed about what self-concept was and how they would implement approaches that would raise the self-concept scores of the children. Data presentations outlining the self-concept profiles for each building were essentially ignored. Coupled with the questions about self-concept, the seeds of a suspicion were sown; teachers did not accept self-concept as a causal or important variable in the improvement of reading. This hypothesis is discussed in terms of how teachers view evaluation; the administrative structure of the school system; the relatively unsophisticated level of data conception held by teachers, and Herzberg's two-factor theory of motivators and hygienic factors which decrease motivation. It is concluded that teachers view self-concept as a hygienic factor in classroom motivation--self-concept is not the key to achievement gains. (Author/GDC)