Third, Fourth, and Fifth Annual Accountings, 1913-16, also Capacity, Ability and Performance in relation to standard scores, and Summary of Tabulations
By S. A. Courtis. Detroit: Dept. of Cooperative Research, 1916. Bulletin number four.
To those who have followed the steady growth of the Courtis tests in arithmetic, the present bulletin will be a noteworthy document. Filled as it is with statistics and their interpretation, the most striking thing in the pamphlet is Mr. Courtis’s original treatment of capacity, ability, and performance. “Capacity,” he says, “represents the possibilities of development of the human nature of the child, the natural endowment of nerves, muscles and brain cells which the child inherits from its parents.” He uses the term ability “to mean the degree of sVill actually developed by the effect of training upon inherent capacity… . Two individuals of different capacity may attain the same ability because of the difference in their training.” Performance he defines as “the actual achievement in a given test… . The most characteristic thing about performance is its variability. It may or may not afford a reliable idea of ability, just as ability may or may not approximate capacity… . Training acting on capacity develops ability. Ability acting under given conditions results in a specific achievement, or score, or performance. Conversely, ability is inferred from performance, but for correct inferences allowance must always be made for the conditions under which the performance takes place. … No amount of training will develop capacity; it is the great conditioning factor in school training, and education can be made efficient only as it first determines the inherent capacities of the individual child and then adjusts its training accordingly. … A score in a given test represents merely a performance under the given conditions. One should guard against inferring what performance might be under some other conditions… . Measurement of capacity and of teaching effort must await, therefore, the careful evaluation of the changes Produced in a given time and under given conditions.”
“Everyone using results from standard tests as a means of supervision, Mr. Courtis warns, “should realize that results reflect conditions, but do not diagnose them. A low score may be due to faulty timing on the part of the examiner, or to poor teaching, or to an epidemic of measles. A low score is a symptom; the interpretation of the symptom is quite another matter. Poor teaching “should be suspected only when every other possibility has been exhausted or where there is confirming evidence from other sources.”
Mr. Courtis explains his new graph sheet, which shows the standard relations between speed and accuracy for the median scores of the different grades. He concludes by suggesting, “that for arithmetic the determination of the degree of efficiency that can reasonably be expected under ordinary school conditions, is a practical problem of sufficient value to warrant the concentrated effort of every teacher of arithmetic interested in measurement. Finally he appeals to all “users of the Courtis tests to send in the duplicate records of their results promptly … give the tests strictly under standard conditions, make tabulations carefully, accurately. Measure the changes produced by your teaching by giving the tests at the beginning as well as at the end of the term, and finally send in copies of your results. If this were done promptly, conscientiously, by the 2000 superintendents using the Courtis tests, the question of standards of speed and accuracy could be settled in a very few years. A. T.
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