Monroe: Progress and Promotion 



17 



The effect of the first two is probably constant for all 

 ages and consequently negligible for this purpose. Attend- 

 ance at private and parochial schools is variable between 

 cities and in some cases affects certain ages more than others. 

 Violations of the compulsory attendance law probably affects 

 the older group more than the younger. On the other hand, 

 the attendance of children from outside of the school district 

 tends to increase the number of older children. 



The population factors of death and normal increase in 

 population affect the relative size of the successive age groups. 

 The normal increase in population makes each age group 

 slightly larger than the preceding. Thus in general there 

 are more eight-year-old children than are children nine 

 years old, more seven-year-old children than are children 

 eight years old, etc. The factor of death adds to this con- 

 dition. Hence, we should expect to find a slight decrease in 

 the number of children from the younger to the older grade 

 groups. 



In order to have a basis of comparison we have used in 

 this study the average of the six age groups, seven to twelve, 

 as the most probable number of children of each age. While 

 this may be considered the most probable number, it is neces- 

 sary to bear in mind that it is only approximate and that 

 many factors affect the age distributions. 



Table VII gives the number of children in each age group 

 on the basis of 1,000 in this average age group. It should 

 be read as follows : Out of 1,000 five-year-old boys, 195 were 

 in school in the systems having semiannual promotion. On 

 the same basis there were 199 five-year-old girls and counting 

 both boys and girls, the number was 197. In certain of the 

 groups there are more than 1,000. Theoretically this is not 

 possible, but it results from the slight lack of uniformity of 

 the age groups of which the average was taken. Most of 

 these variations are probably due to chance. The eleven-year- 

 old group presents an interesting variation, which appears to 

 be due to a cause which this investigation does not reveal. 



The facts of Table VII are represented graphically in 

 Figures 1, 2, and 3. Figure 1 shows the distribution of the 

 boys and girls according to age in the systems having annual 

 promotion. For each age group there are two vertical lines. 

 The left one represents the number of boys and the right 



