The High School Failures | Page 6

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 space until after the
subject is satisfied later, and the passing mark is then filled in. One
school indicates failure entirely by a short dash in the space provided,
and then at times there occurs the 'cond' (conditioned) in pencil,
apparently to avoid the classification as a failure by the usual sign. One
finds some instances of a '?' or an 'inc' (incomplete) as a substitute 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
assured 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 classing 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 assumed here that men are superior as high school teachers, but
the endeavor is rather to show that the teaching force was by its
constitution 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-passing 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 cumulative, 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