Part 9 (1/2)
Lowell's investigation, which is discussed in later paragraphs, also bears directly on the question of the relation between college entrance records, college grades, and later work in professional schools. A rather different method of procedure was adopted by Van Denburg, who studied the relation between the first-term marks of high school pupils in New York City and the length of time the pupils continued in school work. The following table gives a general idea of his results:
TABLE 12
SHOWING THE RELATION BETWEEN FIRST-TERM MARKS IN HIGH SCHOOL AND THE LENGTH OF TIME PUPILS REMAIN IN SCHOOL (VAN DENBURG)
------------------------------------------------------------
Percentage Leaving School in Various Years After
Entrance into the High School First-Term
------------------------------------------------ Mark
Left
Left in 2nd, 3rd, or
During First
4th Years, or Failed
Graduated
Year
to Graduate in 4th
-----------+-------------+--------------------+------------- Below 50%
61
39
0 50 to 59%
49
46
5 60 to 69%
39
58
3 70 to 79%
20
62
18 80 to 89%
17
46
37 90 to 100%
6
40
54 ------------------------------------------------------------
Thorndike, in referring to the significance of such results, says: ”Ten times as many of those marked below 50 leave in the first year as of those marked 90 or above. Of 115 pupils marked below 50 not one remained to graduate in four years. As the marks rise the percentage leaving in the early years steadily falls and the percentage graduating rises. Such prophecies... could easily be worked out for any community. They show that in the important matter of the length of stay in school a pupil's career is far from being a matter of unpredictable fortuity.... It will not be long before [we] will remember with amus.e.m.e.nt the time when education waited for the expensive tests of actual trial to tell how well a boy or girl would succeed with a given trade, with the work of college and professional school, or with the general task of leading a decent, law-abiding, humane life.”
Prompted by Dearborn's study of the relation between work in high school and work in the university, Smith made a somewhat more intensive study of a group of students in the University of Iowa. Dearborn had investigated the academic careers of pupils from eight large and four small high schools in Wisconsin, and concluded that three-fourths of the students entering the university from these high schools would maintain throughout the university approximately the same rank as they had held in high school. When the groups were divided into upper and lower halves, about seventy per cent of those in the upper high school section were found in the upper half of the university section; about the same number of those in the lower high school half were found in the lower university half.
Smith's data showed almost precisely the same figures as those of Dearborn.
From the Liberal Arts cla.s.s of 1910 (one hundred and sixty students) those were chosen whose records were complete in both high school and university.
This gave a total of one hundred and twenty students. On the basis of their standing, as based on the grades a.s.signed in all subjects studied, they were ranked in order for each year of high school and university. They were then separated into quintiles on the basis of these rankings, and their standing in these various quintiles observed from year to year.
When the students, on the basis of their general high school average (for the four years), are distributed through their respective quintiles in the university (general average again) the results are as shown in the table on page 183.
TABLE 13
SHOWING THE RELATIONS BETWEEN HIGH SCHOOL RECORDS AND UNIVERSITY RECORDS (SMITH). _See Text for Explanation_
------------------------------------------------
University Average H. S. Average
----------------------------------
1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
Quint.
Quint.
Quint.
Quint.
Quint.
-------------+------+------+------+------+------ 1st Quintile
54%
17%
17%
4%
8% 2nd Quintile
25%
29%
17%
13%
16% 3rd Quintile
17%
25%
20%
21%
17% 4th Quintile
0%
25%
25%
33%
17% 5th Quintile
4%
4%
21%
29%
42% ------------------------------------------------
In considering this table it is apparent that if the high school students were distributed through the various university quintiles on a purely chance basis, and without any reference to their high school records, there would tend to be twenty per cent of each high school quintile in each of the university quintiles. Any percentage higher than this twenty per cent thus indicates some significant relation between the two sets of grades. On the whole there is a close relation indicated. The tendency is clear for those in a given high school quintile to be found in or near the same quintile in their university work. The relation is particularly close in the highest and lowest quintiles. In the intermediate quintiles there is more or less s.h.i.+fting about.
In the same way it is possible to cla.s.sify all students in quintiles during their first high school year, and then to trace their careers through the following three years of high school and four years of college. The following tabulation shows the results when this was done. The figures show the percentage of each quintile in first year high school who were found in the same quintile in the various later years.
TABLE 14
SHOWING THE RELATION BETWEEN RECORDS IN THE FIRST HIGH SCHOOL YEAR, AND RECORDS IN SUBSEQUENT YEARS IN HIGH SCHOOL AND COLLEGE (SMITH)
---------------------------------------------------------
High School
University Quintiles
-----------------------
-----------------------
1
2
3
4
1
2
3
4 ---------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- First
100%
70%
67%
67%
52%
36%
43%
25% Second
100%
54%
33%
29%
35%
33%
22%
8% Third
100%
41%
37%
21%
35%
20%
22%