A. Purpose of the Study This study aims to find out socio-cultural factors determining the academic achievement of students with special reference to the equality of educational opportunity. In the past studies of the school achievement of students at various levels, it has been consistently found that urban, male, upper or middle-class students get better marks than rural, female, lower-class students, respectively the gap between them in academic achievement could be partially attributed to sociocultural factors. Functionalists hoped to reduce social inequalities by equalizing educationa 1 achievement. Hence considerable efforts have been made to explain why social background factors are so strongly related to school performance. They tend to explain that the poor achievement of the rural, female, lower-class students is largely due to the deficiencies in their cultural, familial, linguistic, cognitive backgrounds. However they didn’t pay much attention to the educational processes in school. Their macro-sociological approach has proved inadequate to explain the differential academic achievement of students. Their strategies for educational equality put more emphasis on the structual reform of educational system than the curriculum, the content of what is taught at school. Such strategies which are not much concerned with the improvement of teaching methods and curricula will be fatal to the realization of egalitarian aspirations. So the main concerns of this research is the congruence or incongruence between the educational contents taught to studenst and their cultural experiences, and its relationship to their academic achievement. It is hypothesized that if a certain group of students learns the contents which are congruent with their cultural experiences, they could have better marks than other groups could. Thus this study was conducted to test the following specific hypotheses. B. Hypotheses to be tested 1. There would be a significant relationship between the academic achievement of students and educational contents relating to their cultural experiences in the residential area. (Academic achievement tests consist of mem-ory, classification, knowledge, and higher thinking ability tests.) 2. There would be a significant relationship between the academic achievement of student and educational contents relating to their 1) The academic achievement in this hypothesis and others means the achievement in relation to the experiences in It. special experiences according to sex. (Academic achievement tests consist of memory and classifying tests.) 3. There would be a significant relationship between academic achievement of students and educational contents relating to their special experiences according to background variables. (This study uses students’ fathers’ occupations, family style and numbers of electric devices which the students hold in their houses as the background variables in hypothesis 3.) 4. There would be a significant relationship between academic achievement of students and educational contents relating to their actual experiences, i.e. reading the newspaper, playing in mountains or fields, watching farmers’ dance and raising domestic animals. C. Method ⑴ Subjects The students consisted of 291 students. They are the fifth grade students in elementary schools. Subjects' residential areas and sexes were considered in the following table. <표 참고> ⑵ Instruments 1. A test of actual experience and sociocultural background was constructed to find the differences of students' experiences. 2. A test of memory was constructed to measure the style of academic achievement according to residential areas and sexes. 3. A test of knowledge was constructed to measure the style of academic achievement according to residential areas. 4. A test of higher thinking style was constructed to measure the style of academic achievement according to residential areas. D. Result The major findings were as follows. 1. There were significant relationships between academic achievement of students in four kinds of tests and educational contents relating to their cultural experiences in the residential area. 2. There were significant relationships between academic achievement of students in memory and classification and educational contents relating to their special experiences according to sex. 3. There were significant relationships between academic achievement of students and educational contents relating to their special experiences according to two background variables except family style variable. 4. There were significant relationships bet ween academic achievement of students and educational contents relating to their actual experiences of reading the newspaper, playing in mountains or fields, watching farmers’ dance and raising domestic animals. But there were no significant relationships between academic achievement and educational contents relating to their experiences of visiting TV broadcasting station. In short. there would be a significant relationship between the academic achievement of students and educational contents relating to their special experiences. So there-must be a careful interest in educational contents in relation to the differences of experiences according to socio-cultural background variable. If not, many educational efforts for the equality of educational opportunity would be fatal to the realization of such aspirations.