The overall pattern of results in the present study provides preliminary guidance for future investigations of how teacher-child relationship quality is related to children's social and academic development in the early school years. Preliminary descriptive findings indicate that different teachers' perceptions of their relationships with a given child are moderately stable from preschool through first grade. In addition, there was a small but statistically significant trend towards teachers reporting decreasing levels of both conflict and close-ness from preschool through first grade. With regard to associations between teacher-child relationships and child outcomes, after adjusting for gender, socioeconomic status, and children's prior skill levels, several indicators of teacher-child relationships made small to moderate contributions to prediction of social and teacher-rated academic skills in first grade. Although the associations between teacher-child relationships and children's outcomes tended to be greatest when the outcomes and relationships were rated by the same person, not all of the findings can be attributed solely to rater effects. In fact, small but significant associations were found between teachers' ratings of relationships and both mothers' and neutral observers' ratings of children.