A Simple System for Discovering some Factors Influencing Non-Promotion
Leonard P. Aykes, Pii.D., Russell Sage Foundation, New York City.
A recent German work 011 what we term retardation is entitled “Warum kommen die Kinder nicht vorvvarts ?”?”Why do the children not progress or, freely translated into the vernacular of the school-room, “What are the causes for non-promotion ?” A notable account of a recent attempt to find out why children do not go forward in the schools of one city has just appeared in the annual report of the Ninth School District of the town of Manchester, Connecticut, for the year 1910. The Ninth District of the town of Manchester is really the manufacturing town of South Manchester. It is the home of Mr. Howell Cheney, one of Connecticut’s foremost manufacturers, and also -one of the most progressive and active members of its State Board of Education. For some years Mr. Cheney has been insistently asking school men why it should not be possible to apply to the business of education some of the same business processes of checking results, comparing the finished product with raw material, and disclosing leaks and wastes, that are applied to modern manufacturing.
One result has been an attempt carried on during the past year, with the cooperation of Superintendent of Schools F. A. Verplanck, to discover the factors which influence the promotion and non-promotion of children in the public schools of South Manchester. The method employed was to record certain significant facts regarding all of the pupils at the close of the last school year, and tabulate them for the promoted and the non-promoted pupils so as to discover in what respects records for the first group differed from those of the second group. This method avoided the common error which results from gathering data concerning solely the pupils who fail, and then having no way of determining in what respects the records of these pupils differ from those of the successful ones.
The blank form used to gather the data for each room was a simple sheet worded and arranged as follows: MANCHESTER PUBLIC SCHOOLS Ninth School District Number Among Number Among Children Promoted Children Not at end of Year Promoted Boys Girls Average Age Average Days Attended From Non-English Speaking Families. Foreign Born Suffering From Malnutrition Mentally Defective Defect of Vision ” ” Hearing Adenoids Other Throat Troubles Enlarged Glands Defective Teeth Other Defects Grade School Teacher Date.
These blanks were used to gather data concerning 1396 pupils who remained in the eight grades of the public schools at the end of the school year 1909-10. Of these pupils, 1093 were promoted to the next higher grades and 303 failed of promotion; in other words, 78 per cent were promoted and 22 per cent failed. A salient fact brought out by the tabulation of the data from all of the rooms was that 94 per cent of the girls had received promotion as contrasted with only, 75 per cent of the boys. Moreover, failures among the boys were especially frequent in the highest grades. This fact at once raises the question whether or not our public school system is giving as fair opportunities to the boys as it is to the girls. Other investigations have disclosed the same condition in other cities. The condition seems to suggest that as our courses of study and methods of school administration have developed, we have unconsciously fitted them to the needs and abilites of the girls, rather than to those of their brothers. The next fact brought to light was that the average age of the promoted pupils was ten years and ten months, whereas that of the unpromoted pupils was eleven years and four months. That is to say, those who failed were on the average older than those who succeeded. This same condition was disclosed by the investigations of Superintendent Morss in Medford, Mass., in 1908. In South Manchester the school year has 185 actual school days. On the average, the pupils who were promoted had been absent from school 19 days during the year. The unpromoted pupils had, on the average, been absent 29 days. In other words, the non-promoted pupils had been absent over 50 per cent more than the promoted pupils.
The rest of the data referred to the social and plysical conditions of the pupils, and the results are shown in the following table, which gives in percentages the proportion of promoted pupils and of non-promoted pupils affected by each one of the conditions: Percentage Percentage Among Among Pupils Pupils Promoted Not Promoted From non-English speaking homes. 9 12 Foreign born 7 13 Suffering from malnutrition 9 25 Poor mentality 8 49 Defective eyesight 4 3 Adenoids 15 20 Other throat troubles 14 13 Defective teeth 25 38 The figures giving the proportion of children from homes where English is not the home language, and the number of pupils actually born abroad, show that foreign birth and ignorance of English are real, although not very important, factors in retarding the child. As was to be expected, much higher percentages of malnutrition and poor mentality are found among the non-promoted than among the promoted. Eye defects are more common among the more successful children, and this result is in accordance with similar observations made during the past two years in New York City. Adenoids and defective teeth show a much higher percentage among the unsuccessful pupils.
Although these figures are for one town only, they cover a sufficient number of cases, distributed over the entire eight grades, to be regarded as significant in themselves, and as of distinct importance in indicating a simple method for making this kind of an investigation in other places. Simply as they are, these figures indicate that among the factors which prevented the children in South Manchester from going forward, we may name the following in the order of their retarding influence:
(1 (2 (3 (4 (5 (6 (? (8 Poor mentality,; Malnutrition; Handicap of foreign birth; Bad teeth; Absence from school; Adenoids; Coming from non-English speaking families; The fact of being a boy. The figures as interpreted in the printed report point to the following surmises as to the distribution of the causes of failure among each one hundred cases: Failures due to Per cent Character of instruction and organization of school. 19 Poor attendance 0 Influence of foreign birth 9 Poor nutrition 1G Deficient mentality 28 Physical deficiencies other than mentality and nutrition 1 Unclassified 15 100 It is of course impossible to give proper weight to any individual cause or set of causes, because of the duplications in the items of the individual records. That is to say, a child who is recorded as suffering from adenoids also probably figures in the group suffering from malnutrition and in that of poor mentality.. Nevertheless, such a weighing of the individual causes is not necessary for the application of the method. Mr. Cheney and Superintendent Verplanck have developed a most useful instrument, whereby significant facts concerning the progress of school children may be disclosed, and in large measure evaluated.
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