PURPOSE: to evaluate and characterize the performance of children with hearing impairment using cochlear implants, between 9 and 12 year old, as well as to check the time that the child takes to access phonological information and confront such results according to gender and number of participants. METHOD: the study included 32 children of both genders, attending the first to the fifth grade of elementary school, regularly enrolled in the Audiological Research Center of Rehabilitation Hospital of Craniofacial Anomalies, University of São Paulo, in Bauru / SP. The instruments used were the School Performance Test (TDE) and the Rapid Auto Naming Test (RAN). RESULTS: the results showed that 74% of children showed school performance being generally below expected, with greater difficulty in writing and within the average as for the time it takes to process the information. CONCLUSIONS: we conclude that 74% of children had lower academic performance assessments and that there was no relationship among such results with the rapid naming, as this is within the mean value and is a prerequisite for reading, and the participants in this study provide satisfactory reading skill.