This paper focuses on the scholastic achievement of five cohorts of white, middle-class children as they progressed through their first grade year of an elementary school. Multiwave data on several hundred children were gathered, from just before they entered first grade to the end of that grade in an attempt to clarify the process of early schooling. Specifically, researchers wanted to investigate how expectations of significant others and feedback provided to children may affect children's achievement and academic self-image in the first grade. It was found that parents' expectations for their children's performance responded to IQ of the child, to the child's sex, and to the kindergarten teacher's forecast. Parental expectations influenced only conduct marks (not reading or arithmetic marks) and had little impact on children's expectations except for year-end reading expectations. Other parental estimates did not influence children's marks or expectations directly. Over the first grade year children's expectations were largely indeterminate although expectations did respond to arithmetic mark feedback and to parental reading expectations by the end of the year. This finding is contradictory to assumptions that children's expectations for themselves crystallize soon after they start school. Children's performance levels from the first report card to the end of the first grade were highly continuous. This suggests that even the earliest marks children receive are major determinants of future evaluations and that teachers' earliest formal evaluations may play a leading role in determining achievement levels in young children. (Author/RH)