The Selection of Candidates for Trade School From a Group of Subnormal Italian Girls
- Author:
Edna Willis McElwee
New York City Schools
Each year some of the brighter fifteen year old girls in the ungraded classes of New York City, who show ability in hand work, are given an opportunity to enter the Manhattan Trade School. In previous years the selection of the girls, in a great measure, was based on their Stanford Binet I.Q. and their educational achievement scores. More recently the Girls Mechanical Assembling Test has been added to the battery of tests given to the candidates for entrance into trade school. The Girls Mechanical Assemblying Test was devised by the Institute of Educational Research for the vocational guidance of girls in their early teens. It discovers the ability of the girl to deal with things and mechanisms. It tests her manipulative or manual skill. There are five groups of tests: simple assemblying, hard assemblying, pasting, sewing and cutting. There are eleven parts with a possible score of 110 points.
The purpose of this study was to determine whether the same selection of candidates was made with and without the assemblying test among the battery of tests given to ungraded girls desiring to enter trade school.
As the majority of the girls in the ungraded classes are Italian, it was decided to limit this study to an unselected group of Italian girls. Sixty-five Italian girls who were fourteen years of age were given tests of educational achievement and the Girls Mechanical Assemblying Test. All of them had previously been given the Stanford Binet Intelligence Examination. The tests of educational achievement used were the Thorndike-McCall Reading Scale, the Haggerty Reading Examination Sigma I and the Woody McCall Mixed Fundamentals. The range of Binet I.Q.s was from 50 to 75 with a median I.Q. of 65. The range of scores on the reading test was from zero to 5A with a median grade achievement of 3A. The range on the aritli133 metic test was from zero to 7 A with a median grade achievement of 4A. The range on the assemblying test was from zero to 73 with an average score of 36. Twenty-five per cent of the girls had a score above 44 points, the norm for fourteen year old girls. On account of the possibility of a language handicap affecting the reading scores of the Italian girls, the expected reading score of each girl was estimated on the basis of her mental age on the Binet test. It was found that 22 girls were reading below expectation, 8 were reading at expectation and 35 were reading above expectation. A further analysis was made of the assemblying scores of the 22 girls who were reading below expectation. The range of their scores was from zero to 63. Exactly half of them made a higher assemblying score than the average of the entire group and seven of them made a higher score than the norm for fourteen year old girls.
Emily T. Burr1 has found in her vocational work with girls in New York City that 50 points on the Girls Mechanical Assemblying Test is a minimum score upon which placement in an industrial job can be safely recommended. Twenty per cent of the Italian girls in the ungraded classes made a higher score than 50 points. Using the Product Moment formula, the correlation between the scores on the assembling test and the Binet I.Q. was .27 ? .07; between the assemblying test and reading .33 ? .08; and between the assemblying test and arithmetic .42 ?.07.
An interesting comparison is made between these correlations and those found by Toops 21 for normal fourteen year old girls. His correlation between the assemblying test and intelligence was .34; between the assemblying test and reading .31; and between the assemblying test and arithmetic .27.
For tests of educational achievement he used the ThorndikeMcCall Reading Test and the Thorndike-McCall Arithmetical Problem Solving Test. His test of intelligence was a combination of the scores on the reading and arithmetic tests. 1 Burr, Emily T. The Vocational Adjustment of Mental Defectives. Psychol. Clinic, 1931, 20, 55-64.
2 Toops, Herbert A. Tests for Vocational Guidance of Children Thirteen to Sixteen. Teachers College Contribution to Education. No. 136.
Conclusion
The findings of this study show that: (1) Measures of intelligence and educational achievement can not be substituted for the Girls Mechanical Assemblying Test as a basis upon which to select candidates for trade school. (2) In the event a decision must be made without administering the assemblying test, more weight should be attached to the arithmetic score of the Italian girls than to either their reading score or their intelligence quotient.
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