cities, and, besides, these same rural children are almost a year behind in reading. Combining these facts, it would appear that these 217 seventh grade children in the one-room rural schools are at least three years short in their reading achievements of the children in our city schools."

What is true of the elementary school is equally true of high schools. In the case of a paragraph reading test given to larger groups of city and rural high school pupils the city pupils showed great superiority. The first year city pupils, younger by more than a year than the first year pupils in the rural high schools, read as well as do the second, third and fourth year pupils in the latter schools.

The same story appears in the Virginia data. To quote:

"In the fundamentals of arithmetic, the one-teacher school is always inferior. The highest median score in addition in the one-teacher school, made by seventh grade children, was exceeded by the sixth grade children in the four-teacher school and by the fifth grade children in the city schools. Compared with the Woody standard, the score is no higher than should have been achieved three and one-half years earlier.

"In reading, the field in which most Virginia cities achieve their best record, the pupils of the one-teacher school are one year behind those of the four-teacher school, and about two and one-half years behind the median scores of the Virginia cities. In spelling the results show the one-room schools to be three and one-half years short of achieving the standard set in the Ayres spelling scale, and one and one-half years behind the records of city schools of Virginia.

"In handwriting the story is the same. The pupils of the rural schools average about two years below the Starch standards and about three years below the Freeman standards for the same grades."

It may not be necessary to multiply data such as these. But lest any one should infer that differences such as these are peculiar to rural schools or to the tests here used additional citations may be here given. On page 201 of Part II of the Virginia Public Schools is given a table of scores in composition for 19 schools, systems of schools or groups of schools. These scores, in units of the Hillegas scale, range from 4.8 for Virginia colored boys to 6.9 for the Woodmere school in New York. To quote from the text:

"It will be seen that Virginia's score (white) is lower than eight of the fourteen other records listed, and higher than six.

Virginia's score is nearly a year higher than that of the average of fifty-four high schools over the country, but more than a year below Trabue's tentative standard for the first year of high school."

The difference between the lowest and highest scores given in the table is the equivalent to the progress which normal children made in from three to four years.

Dr. Miller found that the average score in intelligence examination for beginning high school students in Minnesota high schools is 55 and for second year students 63. In the New York survey we found the median score in April for first year students to be 67 and for second year students 78, a difference between the two groups of about a year.

In a state-wide study of the intelligence of Indiana high school seniors, Book found that "in some schools the entire senior class made scores which placed them above the median for the entire state while in other schools the entire senior class ranked below the state median." He notes further that "similar differences appear in schools of the same size and rank located in the same county or city," and, summarizing his study, he finds "that more than twice as many students were kept on their high school course four years as possessed an average grade of intelligence for high school seniors; about seven times a many possessed a superior grade of intelligence as were actually permitted to shorten their course, while less than one-third of the group possessing very inferior grades of intelligence were actually retarded. We may conclude that many students in our schools are working far below the level of their best attainment and so acquiring habits of laziness and inefficiency because their school work is ill adapted to their mental strength and needs. The remedy would seem to lie in a method of evaluating school achievement in terms of mental capacity or ability to learn; to apply in all our educational work the principle set forth by the Great Teacher in His parable of the talents. In no other way can the capacities of our students be fully conserved and the work of the school made truly economical and efficient."

For some time past in the Minneapolis public schools, the Haggerty intelligence examination, Delta 2 has been given to eighth grade pupils as a partial basis for classifying such stu

dents in high school. At one testing period there were 42 schools included. In one of these schools the median score for a group of 39 pupils was 105. This is the equivalent to the norm for 14-year-old children. In another school the median score was 126 which is the norm for 16-year-olds. Thus within the limits of the same school system there is a difference between two eighth grade classes of two years in mental development. The median score for all the elementary schools tributary to one high school was 112. It was 121 for those tributary to another high school. There is a difference of one mental year between the two, which is a definitely measurable error in applying the same grade designation to each group.

May I use one illustration in the field of subject matter: Mr. S. R. Powers has through several years been studying the adaptability of subject matter in chemistry to the abilities of high school and college students. In the course of his work he has tested students of chemistry in many high schools and in the University of Minnesota. Among other interesting outcomes of his work, results pertinent in this connection appear. First is the fact that students not having studied high school chemistry but having studied the subject one year in the University, do almost as well in the tests as those who have had one year of chemistry in the high school and a second year in the University. A second fact is that good high schools achieve practically the same scores as do the college groups; thirdly, the difference between the poorest and best high schools is many times greater than the difference between the better high schools and the University, and fourthly, the results are so poor in some high schools as to raise seriously the question whether the time spent on chemistry is not sheer waste.

Mr. Whitney, in an intelligence study of the graduates in twelve state normal schools found that the median score for the graduates of one school was 116.5 on the army alpha examinations, and for the 165 seniors in two other schools the median equivalent of two full years of mental growth. In law and in score was 145. This difference Proctor has shown to be the equivalent of two full years in mental growth. In law and in educational practice these two groups have the same standing.

Statistics to the same end can be quoted in extenso. The in

escapable inference is that so long as schools are standardized on the basis of the years which children have been in school, there will be a measurable discrepancy in the meaning of standards as these are used to describe schools in different parts of a city, county, and state, to say naught of the country as a whole. While I would disclaim any desire to make all schools alike, or to make more rigid the educational moulds into which children are forced, I have no hesitancy in urging that the implications of such standards as we do use should be made as clear as the methods of science can make them. Nothing is to be gained for school efficiency by vagueness in educational thinking and practice.

The pertinent question then is, can we give a more definite meaning of our standards of accrediting than that which now prevails? The further development of this discussion will proceed upon the assumption that we can do so and that one means for doing it is standardized educational measures. It is possible, for instance, to define a standard eighth grade in terms of the intelligence and achievements of its pupils, stated in the measured terms of standard examinations.

First, in the list of such examinations should be placed an examination of the general ability of pupils to do school work rather than a test of attainment in a specialized school subject. A number of such examinations are now available under the general designation of intelligence tests, or mental ability tests. We may well forego here the psychological question as to what particular mental functions such tests measure. Abundant evidence is at hand to show that the pupils who score high in such tests may and in the main do do well in school work and that pupils who score low in such tests hardly if ever do a high grade of school work. As one among many illustrations of this fact reference may be made to the accompanying figure. This figure represents the facts for 232 twelve-year-old pupils in the rural New York schools. The ordinate shows the score made by each of these pupils in the Haggerty intelligence examination, Delta 2. Along the abscissa are represented the scores in a criterion composed of the grade location of the pupils and the scores in standard tests in reading, spelling and arithmetic plus the teachers' judgments of each pupil's scholarship. The heavy

lines which cross in the middle of the figure show the points of the median scores. The dots representing individuals are placed in the figure at a point indicated by the scores of an individual in each of the two measures. The diagonal lines are so drawn as to include between them all the cases which do not differ in their relative standing in one test from their relative standing in another test by an amount greater than the semi-interquartile range in either test.

The fact that these dots cluster closely within the two diag onals shows that the scores in the mental tests are to a very high degree prognostic of ability to do school work. The co-efficient of correlation calculated by the Pearson Products Moments Method is .86 ± .0118.

10

30 40 30 60

M

T

90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190 200 210 220 FIGURE 1.

Showing relation of criterion and intelligence examination for 232 twelve-year-old pupils in New York rural schools. Scores on ordinate Haggerty intelligence examination, Delta 2. Scores on abscissa criterion composed of grade location + scores in achievement teacher's judgment of pupil's scholarship.

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This point may be reinforced by one further illustration. In