The High School Failures Part 4

PERCENTAGES OF FAILING DROP-OUTS IN EACH AGE GROUP, FOR BOYS AND GIRLS SEPARATELY

AGES 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Boys 0 4.6 12.5 22.8 25.1 17.4 10.3 4.3 1.9 Girls .2 3.8 15.1 23.9 24.1 19.0 9.5 2.6 2.2

Here it appears that, of all the boys and girls who fail before dropping out, the school loses at the age of 14, for example, 4.6 per cent for the boys and 3.8 per cent for the girls. As a matter of mere convenience, the percentages for age 21 are made to include also the undistributed pupils in Table V.

PERCENTAGES OF THE NON-FAILING DROP-OUTS IN EACH AGE GROUP, FOR BOYS AND GIRLS SEPARATELY

AGES 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Boys 2.4 18.0 29.4 27.1 15.0 4.4 2.3 0.7 Girls 1.1 16.0 29.6 23.8 16.4 8.6 2.7 1.6

These percentages are computed from the age totals in Table VI, just as the ones preceding are computed from Table V. It seems worthy of note here that close to 50 per cent of the non-failing drop-outs occur under 16 years of age, for both the boys and the girls; but that the number of the failing pupils who drop out does not reach 20 per cent for the boys or the girls in these same years. It is likewise remarkable in these distributions that the percentages for boys and for girls show such slight differences in either of the two groupings.

SUMMARY OF CHAPTER II

If to the recorded failures the virtual but unrecorded ones are added, the percentage of failing pupils is 66 per cent. This percentage is higher for the boys than for the girls by a difference of 6 per cent.

Of the graduating pupils, 58.1 per cent fail one or more times.

Of the non-failing non-graduates 78 per cent are lost from school by the end of their first year. But the failing non-graduates have not lost such a percentage before the end of the third year.

The percentage of pupils failing increases for the first four semesters, and lowers but little for two more semesters. One third to one half of the pupils fail in each semester to seventh.

In the distribution of failures by ages and semesters, 86 per cent are found from ages 15 to 18 inclusive. Thirty-four per cent of the failures occur after the end of the second year, when 52.2 per cent of the pupils have been lost and others are leaving continuously.

Mathematics, Latin, and English head the list in the percentages of total failures, and together provide nearly 60 per cent of the failures; but English has a large subject-enrollment to balance its count in failures.

Mathematics, Latin, and German fail the highest percentages on the number of pupils taking the subjects.

In several subjects the percentages of failure based on the total failures are higher for the graduates than for the non-graduates.

For the pupils dropping out without failure the median age is at 16, with the mode at 15. For the failing drop-outs both the median and the mode are at the age of 17. Nearly 50 per cent of the non-failing drop-outs occur under age 16, but not 20 per cent of the failing non-graduates are gone by that age. The percentage of drop-outs is higher for older pupils.

REFERENCES:

5. Kelley, T.L. "A Study of High School and University Grades, with Reference to Their Intercorrelation and the Causes of Elimination,"

_Journal of Educational Psychology_, 6:365.

6. Johnson, G.R. "Qualitative Elimination in High School," _School Review_, 18:680.

7. Bliss, D.C. "High School Failures," _Educational Administration and Supervision_, Vol. 3.

8. Strayer, G.D., Coffman, L.D., Prosser, C.A. _Report of a Survey of the School System of St. Paul, Minnesota_.

9. Meredith, A.B. _Survey of the St. Louis Public Schools_, 1917, Vol.

III, p. 51.

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

11. Bobbitt, J.F. _Report of the School Survey of Denver_, 1916.

12. Strayer, G.D. _A Survey of the Public Schools of b.u.t.te_, 1914.

13. Rounds, C.R., Kingsbury, H.B. "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 CLa.s.sES 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 malady after it has been permitted to develop. Such prognostication of failure, however, need not imply a complete knowledge of the causes of the failures. It may simply signify that in certain situations the causes are less active or are partly overcome by other factors.

Perhaps one of the simplest factors with a prognostic 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 incomplete or lacking 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 must have been present enough of any semester to secure his subject grades, else no failure is counted and no time is charged to his period in school. In this connection, Dr. C.H. Keyes[14]

found in a study of elementary school pupils that of 1,649 pupils losing four weeks or more in a single year 459 belonged to the accelerate pupils, 647 to those arrested, and 543 to pupils normal in their school work. He accredits such large loss of time as almost invariably the result of illness and of contagious disease. He also says, "Prolonged absence from school is appreciable in producing 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. Furthermore, the losses due to change 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 mental defects also deserves recognition 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 may actually reach the limits prescribed by their 'intelligence quotient'[15] or general mental ability, or perhaps, as Bronner[16] so interestingly points out, be handicapped by some special mental disability. If such be true, they will doubtless be found in the number of school drop-outs later referred to as failing in 50 per cent or more of their work; but we have no measurement of intelligence recorded for them to serve our purposes of prognostication. In the matter of physical defects alone, the report of Dr. L.P. 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 from physical defects to a greater degree than 'normal' or 'bright'

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 "relations.h.i.+ps between mental and physical conditions," and also on how "the findings on tests were altogether different after the child had been built up physically." But Gulick and Ayres[18] conclude that it is evident from the facts at hand that if vision were omitted the percentage of defects would dwindle and become comparatively small among the upper grades. This would probably be still more true for the high school; but this whole field has not yet been completely and thoroughly investigated.

It would be very desirable to have ascertained the size of the cla.s.ses in which the failures were most frequent, as well as the relative success of the pupils repeating subjects in larger or in smaller cla.s.ses. But, as such facts were un.o.btainable, it is permitted here simply to recognize the possible influence of this factor. It seems deserving 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 cla.s.s to be called normal, and to make it a sort of variable. Thirty pupils is regarded by the North Central a.s.sociation as the maximum size of cla.s.s in high school.[19] Surely the size of cla.s.s 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, optimistic, enthusiastic, and young." If such be true then the very large size of cla.s.ses will tend to reduce the teacher's helpfulness.

2. THE EMPLOYMENT OF THE SCHOOL ENTERING AGE FOR PROGNOSIS

A promising but less emphasized basis of prognosticating the school success or failure of the pupils is found in the employment of the school entering ages for this purpose. The distribution of all the pupils (except 30 undistributed ones, for whom the records were incomplete), according to entering age, 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. 8 259 1124 1217 614 194 51 10 8 16

The entering ages of these 6,141 pupils are distributed from 12 to 20, with 30 of them for whom the age records were not given. The median age for all the entrants is 15.3. But in order to compare this with the median entering age (14.9) of the 1,033 pupils reported by King[21] for the Iowa City high school, or with the median entering age (14.5) of 1000 high school pupils in New York City, as reported by Van Denburg,[22] it is necessary to reduce these medians to the same basis of age cla.s.sification. Since age 15 for this study starts at 14, then 15.3 would be only 14.8 (15.3-.5) as by their cla.s.sification. The percentages of the total number of pupils for each age are given below.