16 



Indiana University Studies 



A Superintendent's Use of These Tables. The superin- 

 tendent of a city which is inchided in this report may use 

 these tables as a means of comparing the achievements of the 

 pupils in his system with the achievements of the pupils in 

 other cities of the same population group. Better still, he 

 may compare his median scores with the standards proposed 

 by Mr. Courtis, the author of the tests, and with the state 

 medians and the median scores for other states. In making 

 these comparisons two cautions must be kept in mind. First, 

 the medians scores of other cities and even state medians 

 are not necessarily satisfactory standards. This is probably 

 true even of the standards set by Courtis". However, they do 

 shov\^ vdiat results are being obtained in the other states and 

 what results Courtis thinks should be obtained. As such, 

 these median scores are valuable for comparative purposes 

 and if a superintendent finds that the median scores of his 

 city differ greatlj^ from them he has a situation which needs 

 investigating. Secondly, small differences in median scores 

 should not be treated seriously. The performance of pupils 

 is variable, i.e. if a pupil repeats his performance, for ex- 

 ample, takes the addition test a second time, his results are 

 frequently not identical. Also there may have been slight 

 differences in the method or manner of giving the tests in the 

 different cities which affected the scores. Thus small differ- 

 ences in median scores, particularly in the case of small 

 groups of pupils, are not significant. 



Large Differences in Achievement of Cities are Shown. An 



examination of the scores in Tables 11 to VI reveals the same 

 wide variation in achievement in the different systems as has 

 been found in former studies. City 18 ranks first in eighth 

 grade addition with 11 examples attempted, whereas City 7 

 ranks last with 6.5 examples attempted. Cities 20 and 7, the 

 best and poorest in subtraction, differ in attempts by 6.3 ex- 

 amples. The same thing is seeii in the case of rights and ac- 

 curacy. A difference of 50 per cent in accuracy is not uncom- 

 mon, and an extreme case is found in the fifth grade division 

 where the best and poorest cities, 23 and 14, differ by 71 per 

 cent. In the same grade we find the striking example of City 

 9 getting a median score of only .7 of an example right on a 

 meager effort of 3,2 attempts, whereas City 23 realizes 4.1 



" See his "Third, Fourth, and Fifth Annual Accounting," 



