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Indiana University Studies 



11. PROGRESS 



Evidence of Progress other than Normal. Evidence that 

 some pupils have not made normal progress, i.e. have not 

 been promoted each year or have skipped grades, is con- 

 tained in Tables I to VI. Consider, for example. Table III 

 which is typical. In view of the fact that the provision of 

 the compulsory attendance law requires that children attend 

 school between the ages of seven and fourteen, the age dis- 

 tribution of the first grade children is evidence that some 

 must be retarded. It is safe to assume that with very few 

 exceptions all children in this grade who are eight years of 

 age or over have failed of promotion at least once. Probably 

 a number of the seven-year-old children are retarded. 



In the first grade the largest age group (601) is the six- 

 year-old which is what is to be expected, since most children 

 start to school at this age. In the second grade the largest 

 age group is the seven-year-old but has decreased to 486. If 

 this "normal" group is traced thru the successive grades we 

 find that in the eighth grade the largest age group is the 

 thirteen-year-old which has 351 children. The population 

 factors would tend to reduce this ''normal" group slightly, 

 but not to this extent. Thus we have here additional evidence 

 that some pupils do not make normal progress. 



Methods of Computing the Amount of Retardation and 

 Acceleration. For computing the amount of retardation 

 (overage) and of acceleration (underage) from age-grade 

 tables such as Tables I to VI, two methods have been used. 

 The first method is to consider that six years is the normal 

 age for the first grade, seven years is the normal age for 

 the second grade, etc. According to this method, the nor- 

 mal age for IB is from six to six and a half, lA from six 

 and a half to seven, IIB from seven to seven and a half, etc. 

 Children who are older than the ''normal" age for the grade 

 are counted as overage or retarded. Those who are younger 

 than the "normal" age are counted as underage or accelerated. 

 According to the second method, six or seven years is the 

 "normal" age for the second grade, etc. When the progress 

 of pupils is expressed in half-grades, a modification of allow- 

 ing a year for each half-grade is sometimes used. 



