Sciences Research Institute at Iowa State University and by the Administration for Children, Youth, and Families. The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Christina Emery,

Children from lower income families were followed from kindergarten through third grade in a study of the factors predicting motivational beliefs. Measures of children’s reading and mathematics performance, as well as questions related to the quality and effort expended in their schoolwork, were administered to 145 children. Assessments of children’s beliefs regarding strategies of effort, ability, unknown causes, luck, and powerful others were used to produce measures of control beliefs. Nearly all children agreed that effort was the best way for them to get good grades in school and that they worked very hard in school. Children’s language skills upon entering kindergarten, parenting responsiveness measured during the primary grades, and mathematical problem solving in second grade accounted for a significant proportion of variance in undermining control beliefs after controlling for family background and teacher ratings. Th