A study of how participation in English elective programs affected student achievement was conducted in four Florida high schools, two with traditional and two with elective English programs. Subjects were 495 high school seniors who had attended their schools for at least three years. Subject variables included academic aptitude, sex, grade point average (both for English and for all subjects), and attitude toward English as a subject. School environmental variables included size of school, teacher experience and tenure, teaching load, and population demographics. Nine of the 15 independent variables correlated significantly with one dependent variable--English academic achievement. Twelve of the independent variables correlated significantly with seven or more of the other independent variables, making interpretations by multiple regression analyses more difficult. The most important inference drawn from the findings was that the structure of an English program in high school seems to have relatively little impact on achievement in English. That is, a student's cognitive growth in English would appear not to be predictable from participation in either an elective or a traditional program. Student's sex, academic ability, attitude toward the subject, and scholarship ("grade-making") were collectively the greatest predictors of cognitive growth in English. (RL)