The Accomplishment Quotient Technic

Abstract

The accomplishment quotient has been used for many years as a device for estimating pu pil effort and teaching effectiveness. Its value for these purposes has often been greatly ex aggerated, and occasionally unduly depre cated. The argument that if we divide a child's educational age by his mental age, we obtain a measure of the environmental aspect of his school achievement, has often and er roneously been advanced in support of the technic. This argument rests on the unten able assumption that a school achievement test measures a set of developed abilities, while an intelligence test measures the heredi tary aspect of these abilities. An examination of the structure and con tent of each of these types of test will reveal the error in the assumption. It is obvious that every test of intelligence, as well as every test of school achievement, is a measure of a set of developed abilities. The difference lies in the choice of abilities to be measured and in the method of devising items to meas ure them. The general intelligence test, as its name implies, tries to measure general abil ity. To do this it must include a wide vari ety of mental tasks, including samples of all the more important types of mental operation and of symbolic content. The achievement test, on the contrary, limits its range of sam pling to a relatively narrow and specific set of abilities. The symbolic content covered is fairly definite, and the range of mental opera tions called for is well defined and not ex tremely extensive. The author of an intelligence test devises items that he believes everybody, or nearly everybody, has had equal opportunities and incentives to learn. Insofar as he is success ful, his test permits inferences to be made regarding the hereditary capacities which un derlie the measured abilities. His success is