Part 4 (2/2)

III, p 51

10 _Annual Report of the Board of Education, Paterson, New Jersey_, 1915

11 Bobbitt, JF _Report of the School Survey of Denver_, 1916

12 Strayer, GD _A Survey of the Public Schools of butte_, 1914

13 Rounds, CR, Kingsbury, HB ”Do Too Many Students Fail?” _School Review_, 21:585

CHAPTER III

WHAT BASIS IS DISCOVERABLE FOR PROGNOSTICATING THE OCCURRENCE OF OR THE NUMBER OF FAILURES?

1 ATTENDANCE, MENTAL OR PHYSICAL DEFECTS, AND SIZE OF CLassES ARE POSSIBLE FACTORS

Any definite factors available for the school that have a prognostic value in reference to school failures will help to perform a function quite comparable to the science of preventive medicine in its field, and in contrast with the older art of doctoring the nostication of failure, however, need not ie of the causes of the failures It nify that in certain situations the causes are less active or are partly overcome by other factors

Perhaps one of the sinostic value on failure may be found in the facts of attendance Persistent or repeated absence from school may reach a point where it tends to affect the number of failures It happened, unfortunately, that the reports for attendance were inco in a considerable portion of the records employed in this study Consequently the influence of attendance is given no especial consideration in these pages, except as explained in Chapter I, that the pupil h of any serades, else no failure is counted and no tied to his period in school In this connection, Dr CH Keyes[14]

found in a study of ele four weeks or ed to the accelerate pupils, 647 to those arrested, and 543 to pupils nore loss of tiious disease He also says, ”Prolonged absence fro arrest especially when it amounts to more than 25 days in one school year” But the diseases of childhood, with the resultant absence, are less prevalent in the high school years than earlier Furthere of residence will not be met with here, for, as explained in Chapter I, no transferred pupils are included subsequent to the time of the transference either to or from the school

The influence of physical or nition here as a possible factor relative to school failures, although this study has no data to offer of any statistical value in that regard A few pupils in high school ence quotient'[15] or general ly points out, be handicapped by some special mental disability If such be true, they will doubtless be found in the nu in 50 per cent or ence recorded for thenostication In the matter of physical defects alone, the report of Dr LP Ayres[17] on a study of 3,304 pupils, ten to fourteen years old, in New York City, states that ”In every case except in that of vision the children rated as 'dull' are found to be suffering froht'

children” The defects of vision, which is the exception noted, may be even partly the result of the studious habits of the pupils

Bronner[16] remarks on the ”relationshi+ps between s on tests were altogether different after the child had been built up physically” But Gulick and Ayres[18] conclude that it is evident froe of defects would dwindle and becorades This would probably be still h school; but this whole field has not yet been coated

It would be very desirable to have ascertained the size of the classes in which the failures were most frequent, as well as the relative success of the pupils repeating subjects in larger or in smaller classes But, as such facts were unobtainable, it is pernize the possible influence of this factor It see in itself of careful and special study From the standpoint of the pupil, the kind of subject, the kind of teacher, and the sort of discipline employed will tend to influence the size of class to be called norarded by the North Central association as the h school[19] Surely the size of class will react on the pupil by affecting the teacher's spirit and energy Reference is made by Hall-Quest[20] to an experiment, whose author is not named, in which 829 pupils stated that their ”most helpful teachers were pleasant, cheerful, opti” If such be true then the very large size of classes will tend to reduce the teacher's helpfulness

2 THE EMPLOYMENT OF THE SCHOOL ENTERING AGE FOR PROGNOSIS

A pro the school success or failure of the pupils is found in the ees for this purpose The distribution of all the pupils (except 30 undistributed ones, for whoe, is here presented, independently for the boys and for the girls

DISTRIBUTION OF PUPILS BY THEIR ENTRANCE AGES TO HIGH SCHOOL

AGES Undis- Total 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 tributed

2646 B 16 211 820 900 497 148 23 10 7 14 3495 G 8259 1124 1217 614 194 51 10 8 16

The entering ages of these 6,141 pupils are distributed froe records were not given The e for all the entrants is 153 But in order to coe (149) of the 1,033 pupils reported by King[21] for the Iowa City high school, or with the h school pupils in New York City, as reported by Van Denburg,[22] it is necessary to reduce these e 15 for this study starts at 14, then 153 would be only 148 (153-5) as by their classification The percentages of the total nuiven below