A Measure of Relative Progression of the School Population of the United States; April 1950

Abstract

THE SCHOOL experience of children and youth in the United States is basically one in which the pupil enters a school system at a certain mini mum age level and from then on is expected to proceed within the system from grade to grade at a regular pace of achievement. It is gene rally that the pupil is to spend one year in each grade and that he should be promoted along from year to year and from grade to grade, so that in eight years he should have progressed through eight grade levels and by the end of a twelve-year period he should have completed his elementary and high-school training. Although the general pattern of achievement and experience may be one of promotion from year to year and from grade to grade, there are pupils who move faster and skip grades, and there are pupils who are held back and have to repeat grades before being allowed to progress through the system. ^** The at hand is to define the pattern of progres si on and to single out those portions of the school population which are de vi ant?i. e., retarded or accelerated in their school performance. In es sence, retardation is defined as a slowness of progress through school as a result of nonpromotion?a lagging behind from the expected pattern of progress through the school system. Correspondingly, acceleration is defined as rapid progression?beyond the expected pattern of school experience. Both retardation and acceleration are deviations from an expected pattern?a norm that we would expect each child to have achieved or experienced at each specified age level. In most earlier studies retardation was measured in terms of pupils too old to be in the grade in which they were enrolled. That is, retarda tion was a deviation below an expected age spread for each grade or school level. Retarded pupils were determined from a table of normal for each grade. These ages were arbitrarily assigned. General ly, they were accepted by common consent as the ages for these grades by nearly all the schoolmen who have interested them selves in the problem 2