The High School Failures | Page 7

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._
2. Josslyn, H.W. Chapter IV, in Johnson's Modern High School.
3. _The Money Value of Education._ Bulletin No. 22, 1917, United
States Bureau of Education.
4. New York and New Jersey _State School Reports for 1917_.
CHAPTER II
HOW EXTENSIVE ARE THE FAILURES OF THE HIGH SCHOOL
PUPILS?
1. A DISTRIBUTION OF ALL ENTRANTS IN REFERENCE TO

FAILURE
With no purpose of making this a comparative study of schools, the
separate units or schools indicated in Chapter I will from this point be
combined into a composite and treated as a single group. It becomes
possible, with the complete and tabulated facts pertaining to a group of
pupils, after their high school period has ended, to get a comprehensive
survey of their school records and to answer such questions as: (1)
What part of the total number of boys or of girls have school failures?
(2) To what extent are the non-failing pupils the ones who succeed in
graduating? (3) To what extent do the failing pupils withdraw early?
The following tabulation will show how two of these questions are
answered for the 6,141 pupils here reported on.
ALL ALL ENTRANTS FAILING GRADUATES FAILING
Totals 6,141 3,573 (58.2%) 1,936 1,125 (58.1%) Boys 2,646 1,645
(62.1%) 796 489 (61.4%) Girls 3,495 1,928 (55.1%) 1,140 639 (55.8%)
From this distribution we readily compute that the percentage of pupils
who fail is 58.2 per cent (boys--62.1, girls--55.1). But this statement is
itself inadequate. It does not take into account the 808 pupils who
received no grades and had no chance to be classed as failing, but who
were in most cases in school long enough to receive marks, and a
portion of whom were either eliminated earlier or deterred from
examinations by the expectation of failing. It seems entirely safe to
estimate that no less than 60 per cent of this non-credited number
should[5] be treated as of the failing group[6] of pupils. Then the
percentage of pupils to be classed as failing in school subjects becomes
66 per cent (boys--69.6, girls--63.4).
In considering the second inquiry above, we find from the preceding
distribution of pupils that 58.1 per cent (boys--61.4, girls--55.8) of all
pupils that graduate have failed in one or more subjects one or more
times. This percentage varies from 34 per cent to 73 per cent by schools,
but in only two instances does the percentage fall below 50 per cent,
and in one of these two it is almost 50 per cent.

We may now ask, when do the failing and the non-failing
non-graduates drop out of school? Of the total number of non-graduates
(4,205), there are 2,448 who drop out after failing one or more times,
and 1,757 who drop out without failing. The cumulative percentages of
the non-graduates in reference to dropping out are here given.
CUMULATIVE PERCENTAGES OF THE FAILING
NON-GRADUATES AS THEY ARE LOST BY SEMESTERS
LOST BY END OF SEMESTER 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Per Cent 14.1 33.9 46.4 64.9 72.9 85.2 91.9 97.6 99.1
CUMULATIVE PERCENTAGES OF NON-FAILING
NON-GRADUATES AS THEY ARE LOST BY SEMESTERS
LOST BY END OF SEMESTER 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Per Cent 61.1 78.0 85.9 92.1 94.5 98.4 99.5 .. ..
Briefly stated, the above percentages assert that more than three fourths
of those who neither fail nor graduate have left school by the end of the
first year, while only 33.9 per cent of those non-graduates who fail
have left so early. More than 50 per cent of the failing non-graduates
continue in school to near the end of the second year. By that time
about 90 per cent of the non-failing non-graduates have been lost from
school. By a combination of the above groups we get the percentages of
all non-graduates lost by successive semesters.
CUMULATIVE PERCENTAGES OF ALL NON-GRADUATES
LOST BY SUCCESSIVE SEMESTERS
LOST BY END OF SEMESTER 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Per Cent 33.7 53.4 62.6 76.2 81.9 90.7 94.0 98.6
These percentages of non-graduates indicate that more than 50 per cent
of those who do not graduate are gone by the end of the first year, but
that there are a few who continue beyond four years without

graduating.
2. THE LATER DISTRIBUTION OF PUPILS BY SEMESTERS
Consideration is here given to the number of the total entrants
remaining in school for each successive semester, and then to the
accompanying percentages of failure for each group. The following
figures show the