476 



Indiana University Studies 



PART II 



COURTIS TESTS AS AN INSTRUMENT OF RESEARCH: 

 TIME OF BEGINNING ARITHMETIC AND TIME 

 DEVOTED TO ARITHMETIC 



GeneRxVL Considerations 



It would by no means be fair to condemn or unduly praise a 

 school system on the basis of the results of these tests alone. Many 

 conditions conspire to place any particular city high or low in the 

 group of twenty cities. It is quite possible that some cities have 

 a higher rank in the fundamentals of arithmetic than they would 

 obtain in a similar measurement of their work in reading, spelling, 

 writing, geography, or history. No final judgment can be placed 

 on any school system until such similar measurements in these other 

 fields have been made. In fact until we have the measurements in 

 the whole circle of school tasks we will not know just how much 

 we should expect children of a particular grade to do in arithmetic 

 and at the same time do what they should do in all their other 

 school tasks. It is perfectly certain that the various school sub- 

 jects must exercise a limiting influence upon each other and de- 

 termine to a degree the level of efficiency to be set for anyone. 

 Thus what a fifth grade child should do in arithmetic will be in 

 part determined by what he must do in reading and geography. 

 Until we can thus set standards all around we can never be sure 

 that our standards in arithmetic are fair to the child or that in 

 obtaining a very high score in the latter we are not slighting even 

 more important things. 



In the absence of such an all-round determination of standard 

 scores there is one other means of determining how efficient a 

 child should become. This is to discover the maximum ability 

 demanded in practical life. 



If we could know what is the maximum ability required to 

 "get on" it would set a standard toward which to work. I have 

 tried one such measurement in the case of college students. I gave 

 the Series B tests to sixty-eight students, most of whom were jun- 

 iors, seniors and graduates. The median scores are shown in 

 Table XL, 



