A Grading and Promotion Plan Based on the Use of Intelligence and Educational Tests

Abstract

In these postwar days we are hearing a great deal about the democratization of our educational systems, and the attacks on the existing organization seem to be centering around the idea of equalizing educational opportunity. I therefore submit the following account of a grading and promotion program, based on the use of intelligence and educational tests, with the hope that it will contribute a little to advance along this line. Equality of opportunity translated into terms of school organization requires that each child be given the opportunity to progress at his own pace through the courses of study which provide the common integrating education which should be the possession of all without regard to sex, social status, or future vocation and which are also adapted in method and material to the varying needs of different types of children. Such a program of grading obviously requires the dividing of the children into groups based on ability to progress at approximately the same rate. In securing such groups the use of intelligence tests has been helpful to us. Such a grouping is fraught with many difficulties in a small community, unless it can be shown to teachers, parents, board of education, and the general public that the grouping is being done on a sound basis. Even then, the divisions are seldom clear cut, leaving a number of children concerning whose position we cannot be too positive. We use, for the purpose of grouping our pupils, the intelligence test plus teachers' judgments. We further check the teachers' judgments of ability to achieve by the use of the so-called standard or educational test. At the outset I wish to say that such a program of proper grouping can be achieved satisfactorily, in my opinion, only when provision is made for a teacher with sufficient time free from regular teaching duties to attend to this work in the way its