The High School Failures Part 1

The High School Failures.

by Francis P. Obrien.

PREFACE

Grateful acknowledgment is due the princ.i.p.als of each of the high schools whose records are included in this study, for the courteous and helpful att.i.tude which they and their a.s.sistants manifested in the work of securing the data. Thanks are due Dr. John S. Tildsley for his generous permission to consult the records in each or any of the New York City high schools. But the fullest appreciation is felt and acknowledged for the ready criticism and encouragement received from Professor Thomas H. Briggs and Professor George D. Strayer at each stage from the inception to the completion of this study.

F.P.O.

CHAPTER I

GENERAL INTRODUCTION OF THE SUBJECT

1. THE RELEVANCE OF THIS STUDY

As the measuring of the achievements of the public schools has become a distinctive feature of the more recent activities in the educational field, the failure in expected accomplishment by the school, and its proficiency in turning out a negative product, have been forced upon our attention rather emphatically. The striking growth in the number of school surveys, measuring scales, questionnaires, and standardized tests, together with many significant school experiments and readjustments, bears testimony of our evident demand for a closer diagnosis of the practices and conditions which are no longer accepted with complacency.

The American people have expressed their faith in a scheme of universal democratic education, and have committed themselves to the support of the free public high school. They have been liberal in their financing and strong in their faith regarding this enterprise, so typically American, to a degree that a secondary education may no longer be regarded as a luxury or a heritage of the rich. No longer may the field be treated as either optional or exclusive. The statutes of several of our states now expressly or impliedly extend their compulsory attendance requirements beyond the elementary years of school. Many, too, are the lines of more desirable employment for young people which demand or give preference to graduates of a high school. At the same time there has been no decline in the importance of high school graduation for entering the learned or professional pursuits.

Accordingly, it seems highly probable that, with such an extended and authoritative sphere of influence, a stricter business accounting will be exacted of the public high school, as the great after-war burdens make the public less willing to depend on faith in financing so great an experiment. They will ask, ever more insistently, for facts as to the expenditures, the finished product, the internal adjustments, and the waste product of our secondary schools. Such inquiries will indeed seem justifiable.

It is estimated that the public high schools had 84 per cent of all the pupils (above 1,500,000) enrolled in the secondary schools of the United States in 1916.[1] The majority of these pupils are lost from school--whatever the cause--before the completion of their courses; and, again, the majority of those who do graduate have on graduation ended their school days. Consequently, it becomes more and more evident how momentous is the influence of the public high school in conditioning the life activities and opportunities of our youthful citizens who have entered its doors. Before being ent.i.tled to be considered a "big business enterprise,"[2] it seems imperative that our "American High School" must rapidly come to utilize more of business methods of accounting and of efficiency, so as to recognize the tremendous waste product of our educational machinery.

The aim of this study is to trace as carefully and completely as may be the facts relative to that major portion of our high school population, the pupils who fail in their school subjects, and to note something of the significance of these findings. If we are to proceed wisely in reference to the failing pupils in the high school, it is admittedly of importance that such procedure should be based on a definite knowledge of the facts. The value of such a study will in turn be conditioned by the scrupulous care and scientific accuracy in the securing and handling of the facts. It is believed that the causes of and the remedies for failure are necessarily closely linked with factors found in the school and with the school experiences of failing pupils, so that the problem cannot be solved by merely labeling such pupils as the unfit. There is no attempt in this study to treat all failures as in any single category. The causes of the failures are not a.s.sumed at the start nor given the place of chief emphasis, but are regarded as incidental to and dependent upon what the evidence itself discloses.

The success of the failing pupils after they leave the high school is not included in this undertaking, but is itself a field worthy of extended study. Even our knowledge of what later happens to the more successful and the graduating high school pupils is limited mainly to those who go on to college or to other higher inst.i.tutions. One of the more familiar attempts to evaluate the later influence of the high school ill.u.s.trates the fallacy of overlooking the process of selection involved, and of treating its influence in conjunction with the training as though it were the result of school training alone.[3]

2. THE MEANING OF 'FAILURE' IN THIS STUDY

The term 'failure' is employed in this study to signify the non-pa.s.sing of a pupil in any semester-subject of his school work. The school decision is not questioned in the matter of a recorded failure. And although it is usually understood to negate "ability plus accomplishment," it may, and undoubtedly does, at times imply other meanings, such as a punitive mark, a teacher's prejudice, or a deferred judgment. The mark may at times tell more about the teacher who gave it than about the pupil who received it. These peculiarities of the individual teacher or pupil are pretty well compensated for by the large number of teachers and of pupils involved. The decisive factor in this matter is that the school refuses to grant credit for the work pursued. The failure for a semester seems to be a more adaptable unit in this connection than the subject-failure for a year. However, it necessitates the treatment of the subject-failure for a year as equivalent to a failure for each of the two semesters. Two of the schools involved in this study (comprising about 11 per cent of the pupils) recorded grades only at the end of the year. It is quite probable that the marking by semesters would actually have increased the number of failures in these schools, as there are many teachers who confess that they are less willing to make a pupil repeat a year than a semester.

By employing this unit of failure, the failures in the different subjects are regarded as comparable. Since only the academic and commercial subjects are considered, and since they are almost uniformly scheduled for four or five hours a week, the failures will seem to be of something near equal gravity and to represent a similar amount of non-performance or of unsatisfactory results. There were also a few failures included here for those subjects which had only three hours a week credit, mainly in the commercial subjects. But failures were unnoted when the subject was listed for less than three hours a week.

There are certain other elements of a.s.sumption in the treatment of the failures, which seemed to be unavoidable. They are, first, that failure in any subject is the same fact for boys and for girls; second, that failures in different years of work or with different teachers are equivalent; third, that failures in elective and in required subjects are of the same gravity. It was found practically impossible to differentiate required and elective subjects, however desirable it would have been, for the subjects that are theoretically elective often are in fact virtually required, the electives of one course are required in another, and on many of the records consulted neither the courses nor the electives are clearly designated.

3. THE SCOPE AND CONTENT OF THE FIELD COVERED

As any intensive study must almost necessarily be limited in its scope, so this one comprises for its purposes the high school records for 6,141 pupils belonging to eight different high schools located in New York and New Jersey. For two of these schools the records for all the pupils that entered are included here for five successive years, and for their full period in high school. In two other schools the records of all pupils that entered for four successive years were secured. In four of the schools the records of all pupils who entered in February and September of one year const.i.tuted the number studied. There is apparently no reason to believe that a longer period of years would be more representative of the facts for at least three of these four schools, in view of the situation that they had for years enjoyed a continuity of administration and that they possess a well-established organization. The fourth one of these schools had less complete records than were desired, but even in that the one year was representative of the other years' records. The distribution of the 6,141 pupils by schools and by years of entering high school is given below.

HIGH SCHOOL PUPILS IN: ENTERING HIGH SCHOOL NUMBER IN THE YEARS STUDIED

White Plains, N.Y. 1908, '09, '10, '11, '12 659 Dunkirk, N.Y. 1909, '10, '11, '12 370 Mount Vernon, N.Y. 1912 224 Montclair, N.J. 1908, '09, '10, '11, '12 946 Hackensack, N.J. 1909, '10, '11, '12 736 Elizabeth, N.J. 1912 333 Morris H.S.--Bronx 1912 1712 Erasmus Hall H.S.--Brooklyn 1912 1161 ---- TOTAL 6141

As it is essential for the purposes of this study to have the complete record of the pupils for their full time in the high school, the 6,141 pupils include none who entered later than 1912. Thus all were allowed at least five and one-half or six years in which to terminate their individual high school history, of successes or of failures, before the time of making this inquiry into their records. No pupils who were transferred from another high school or who did not start with the cla.s.s as beginning high school students were included among those studied. Post-graduate records were not considered, neither was any attempt made to trace the record of drop-outs who entered other schools. Manifestly the percentage of graduation would be higher in any school if the recruits from other schools and the drop-backs from other cla.s.ses in the school were included.

No attempt has been made to trace the elementary school or college records of the failing pupils, for our purpose does not reach beyond the sphere of the high school records. In reference to the differentiation by school courses, some facts were at first collected, but these were later discarded, as the courses represent no standardization in terminology or content, and they promised to give nothing of definite value. As might be expected, the schools lacked agreement or uniformity in the number of courses offered. One school had no commercial cla.s.ses, as that work was a.s.signed to a separate school; another school offered only typewriting and stenography of the commercial subjects; a third had placed rather slight emphasis on the commercial subjects until recently. Only four of the schools had pupils in Greek. The Spanish cla.s.ses outnumbered the Greek both by schools and by enrollment. In the cla.s.sification by subjects, English is made to include (in addition to the usual subjects of that name) grammar, literature, and business English. Mathematics includes all subjects of that cla.s.s except commercial arithmetic, which is treated as a commercial subject, and shop-mathematics, which is cla.s.sed as non-academic. Industrial history, and 'political and social science'

are regarded along with academic subjects; likewise household chemistry is included with the science cla.s.sification. Economics is treated as a commercial subject. At least a dozen other subjects, not cla.s.sified as academic or commercial, including also spelling and penmans.h.i.+p, were taken by a portion of these pupils, but the records for these subjects do not enter this study in determining the successful and failing grades or the sizes of schedule. Yet it is true that such subjects do demand time and work from those pupils.

4. SOURCES OF THE DATA EMPLOYED

The only records employed in this whole problem of research were the official school records. No questionnaires were used, and no statements of pupils or opinions of teachers as such were sought. The facts are the most authoritative and dependable available, and are the very same upon which the administrative procedure of the school relative to the pupil is mainly dependent. The individual, c.u.mulative records for the pupils provided the chief source of the facts secured. These school records, as might be expected, varied considerably as to the form, the size, the simplicity in stating facts, and the method of filing; but they were quite similar in the facts recorded, as well as in the completeness and care with which the records were compiled. It may be added that only schools having such records were included in the investigation.

After the meanings of symbols and devices and the methods of recording the facts had been fully explained and carefully studied for the records of any school, the selection of the pupil records was then made, on the basis of the year of the pupils' entrance to the school, including all the pupils who had actually entered and undertaken work.

(Pupils who registered but failed to take up school work were entirely disregarded.) These individual records were cla.s.sified into the failing and the non-failing divisions, then into graduating and non-graduating groups, with the boys and girls differentiated throughout. As fast as the records were read and interpreted into the terms required they were transcribed, with the pupils' names, by the author himself, to large sheets (16x20) from which the tabulations were later made. There was always an opportunity to ask questions and to make appeals for information either to the princ.i.p.al himself or to the secretary in charge of the records. This tended to reduce greatly the danger of mistakes other than those of chance error. The task of transcribing the data was both tedious and prolonged. This process alone required as much as four weeks for each of the larger schools, and without the continued and courteous cooperation of the princ.i.p.als and their a.s.sistants it would have been altogether impossible in that time.

Some arbitrary decisions and cla.s.sifications proved necessary in reference to certain facts involved in the data employed in this study.

All statements of age will be understood as applying to within the nearest half year; that is, fifteen years of age will mean within the period from fourteen years and a half to fifteen years and a half. The cla.s.sification in the following pages by school years or semesters (half-years) is dependent upon the time of entrance into school. In this sense, a pupil who entered either in September or in February is regarded as a first semester pupil, however the school cla.s.ses are named. As promotions are on a subject basis in each of the schools there is no attempt to cla.s.sify later by promotions, but the time-in-school basis is retained. In reference to school marks or grades, letters are here employed, although four of the eight schools employ percentage grading. Whether the pa.s.sing mark is 60, as in some of the schools, or 70, as in others, the letter C is used to represent one-third of the distance from the failing mark to 100 per cent; B is used to represent the next third of the distance; and A is used to express the upper third of the distance. The plus and minus signs, attached to the gradings in three of the schools, are disregarded for the purposes of this study, except that when D+ occurred as a conditional pa.s.sing mark it was treated as a C. Otherwise D has been used to signify a failing grade in a subject, which means that the grade is somewhere below the pa.s.sing mark. The term 'graduates' is meant to include all who graduate, either by diploma or by certificate.

Any statement made in the following pages of 'time in school' or of time spent for 'securing graduation' will not include as a part of such period a semester in which the pupil is absent all or nearly all of the time, as in the case of absence due to illness.

5. THE SELECTION AND RELIABILITY OF THESE SOURCES OF DATA

By employing data secured only from official school records and in the manner stated, this study has been limited to those schools that provide the c.u.mulative pupil records, with continuity and completeness, for a sufficient period of years. Some schools had to be eliminated from consideration for our purposes because the c.u.mulative records covered too brief a period of years. In other schools administrative changes had broken the continuity of the records, making them difficult to interpret or undependable for this study. The shortage of clerical help was the reason given in one school for completing only the records of the graduates. In addition to the requirements pertaining to records, only publicly administered and co-educational schools have been included among those whose records are used. It was also considered important to have schools representing the large as well as the small city on the list of those studied. Since many schools do not possess these important records, or do not recognize their value, it is quite probable that the conditions prescribed here tended to a selection of schools superior in reference to systematic procedure, definite standards, and stable organization, as compared to those in general which lack adequate records.

The reliability and correctness of these records for the schools named are vouched for and verbally certified by the princ.i.p.als as the most dependable and in large part the only information of its kind in the possession of the schools. In each of these schools the princ.i.p.als have capable a.s.sistants who are charged with the keeping of the records, although they are aided at times by teachers or pupils who work under direction. In three of the larger schools a special secretary has full charge of the records, and is even expected to make suggestions for revisions and improvements of the forms and methods. In view of such facts it seems doubtful that one could anywhere find more dependable school records of this sort. It was true of one of the schools that the records previous to 1909 proved to be unreliable. There is no inclination here to deny the existence of defects and limitations to these records, but the intimate acquaintance resulting from close inquiry, involving nearly every factor which the records contain, is convincing that for these schools at least the records are highly dependable.

However, there is some tendency for even the best school records to understate the full situation regarding failure, while there is no corresponding tendency to overstate or to record failures not made. Not infrequently the pupils who drop out after previously failing may receive no mark or an incomplete one for the last semester in school.

Although a portion or all of such work may obviously merit failure, yet it is not usually so recorded. In a similar manner pupils who remain in school one or two semesters or less, but take no examinations and receive no semester grades, might reasonably be considered to have failed if they shunned examinations merely to escape the recording of failures, as sometimes appears to be the case when judged from the incomplete grades recorded for only a part of the semester. A few pupils will elect to 'skip' the regular term examination, and then repeat the work of that semester, but no failures are recorded in such instances. Some teachers, when recording for their own subjects, prefer to indicate a failure by a dash mark or by a blank s.p.a.ce until after the subject is satisfied later, and the pa.s.sing mark is then filled in.

One school indicates failure entirely by a short dash in the s.p.a.ce provided, and then at times there occurs the 'cond' (conditioned) in pencil, apparently to avoid the cla.s.sification as a failure by the usual sign. One finds some instances of a '?' or an 'inc' (incomplete) as a subst.i.tute for a mark of failure. Again, where there is no indication of failure recorded, the dates accompanying the grades for the subjects may tell the tale that two semesters were required to complete one semester's work in a subject. Some of these situations were easily discernible, and the indisputable failures treated as such in the succeeding tabulations; but in many instances this was not possible, and partial statement of these cases is all that is attempted.

How far these selected schools, their pupils, and the facts relating to them are representative or typical of the schools, the pupils, and the same facts for the states of New Jersey and New York, cannot be definitely known from the information that is now available. It seems indisputable, however, that the schools concerned in this study are at least among the better schools of these two states. If we may feel a.s.sured that the 6,141 pupils here included are fairly and generally representative of the facts for the eight schools to which they belong and which had an enrollment of 14,620 pupils in 1916; and if we are justified in cla.s.sing these schools as averaging above the median rank of the schools for these states, then the statistical facts presented in the following pages may seem to be a rather moderate statement regarding the failures of high school pupils for the states referred to. It must be noted in this connection, however, that it is not unlikely that such schools, with their adequate records, will have the facts concerning failure more certainly recorded than will those whose records are incomplete, neglected, or poorly systematized.

A partial comparison of the teachers is possible between the schools represented here and those of New York and New Jersey. More than four hundred teachers comprised the teaching staff for the 6,141 pupils of the eight schools reported here. Of these about 40 per cent were men, while the percentage of men of all high school teachers in New Jersey and New York[4] was about 38 for the year 1916. The men in these schools comprised 50 per cent of the teachers in the subjects which prove most difficult by producing the most failures, and they were more frequently found teaching in the advanced years of these subjects. It is not a.s.sumed here that men are superior as high school teachers, but the endeavor is rather to show that the teaching force was by its const.i.tution not unrepresentative. It may be added here that few high schools anywhere have a more highly selected and better paid staff of teachers than are found in this group of schools. It is indeed not easy to believe that the situation in these eight selected schools regarding failure and its contributing factors could not be readily duplicated elsewhere within the same states.

A SUMMARY OF CHAPTER I

The American people have a large faith in the public high school. It enrolls approximately 84 per cent of the secondary school pupils of the United States. High school attendance is becoming legally and vocationally compulsory. The size of the waste product demands a diagnosis of the facts. This study aims to discover the significant facts relative to the failing pupils.

Failure is used in the unit sense of non-pa.s.sing in a semester subject.

Failures are then counted in terms of these units.

This study includes 6,141 pupils belonging to eight different high schools and distributed throughout two states. The c.u.mulative, official, school records for these pupils formed the basis of the data used.

The schools were selected primarily for their possession of adequate records. More dependable school records than those employed are not likely to be found, yet they tend to understate the facts of failure.

It is quite possible that a superior school, and one with a high grade teaching staff, is actually selected by the requirements of the study.

REFERENCES:

1. _Annual Report of United States Commissioner of Education for 1917._