Monroe: Progress and Promotion 



41 



ably the decrease in the per cent of faihires is primarily due 

 to those pupils leaving school, who would fail. It is signifi- 

 cant that the per cent of promotion on trial increases with 

 considerable regularity from grade to grade. This suggests 

 that in the upper grades there is a tendency on the part of 

 the teacher to give pupils a chance to make good in the Avork 

 of the next grade. The fact that a negligible per cent are 

 dropped to enter a lower grade shows that pupils promoted 

 on trial make good. The increase in the per cent dropped to 

 quit school is, of course, what we should expect. In the sixth, 

 seventh, and eighth grades there are a number of pupils who 

 have passed beyond the age of compulsory attendance and 

 many of these leaA'e school. The decrease in the per cent 

 dropped to leave the city in the upper grades may be due to 

 to two or three causes. It may be that accurate information 

 was not obtained in every case and that a number were classi- 

 fied as ''dropped to quit school", who were leaving the city. 

 Another factor may be that as children become older, families 

 move less frequently. In general the parents of the children 

 in the upper grades are older than the parents of the children 

 in the lower grades. 



South Bend is the only city Vy^hich furnished data for 

 both studies and thus we have no basis for comparing this 

 per cent of retardation calculated from the age-grade tables. 

 Considerable elimination is known to exist and in general 

 retarded children leave school to greater extent than others. 



Sex Differences in Promotion Rate. In Table XVII the 

 per cent of failures of those remaining are given for the 

 boys and the girls separately. This table is significant in 

 that it shows that in almost every grade more boys than 

 girls fail. In some grades the difference is relatively large. 

 The determination of the cause of this condition would be 

 an interesting problem. There are a number of possible ex- 

 planations which occur to one at once. Some of these are 

 rather improbable. Perhaps the most reasonable one is that 

 'our courses of study are better suited to girls than to boys. 

 This same condition is revealed in the high school in Table 

 XVIIL 



Four Indiana Cities Compared with Eleven Kansas Cities. 



In the last column of Table XVI there is the per cent of 



