The high school failures

by F. P. O'Brien

NO. OF	SEMESTER OF DROPPING OUT
FAILURES	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	TOTAL
0 B.	430	134	40	41	15	24	7	3	0	. .	. .	694
G.	643	163	89	78	27	45	12	5	1	. .	. .	1063
													1757
1 B.	35	53	25	33	14	9	1	1	. .	. .	. .	171
G.	46	65	25	34	12	12	4	3	. .	. .	. .	201
													372
2 B.	52	58	18	30	8	17	5	6	. .	. .	. .	194
G.	49	79	31	36	12	17	3	3	. .	. .	. .	230
													424
3 B.	43	41	22	28	9	10	5	1	0	. .	. .	159
G.	54	52	19	34	18	17	0	6	1	. .	. .	201
													360
4 B.	27	31	13	32	7	11	9	2	. .	. .	. .	132
G.	34	43	23	29	11	16	5	8	. .	. .	. .	169
													301
5 B.	3	13	14	30	11	16	11	4	. .	. .	. .	102
G.	2	14	18	24	5	13	3	5	. .	. .	. .	84
													186
6 B.	. .	27	8	24	11	16	11	6	0	0	. .	103
G.	. .	17	14	25	10	11	3	9	2	1	. .	92
													195
7 B.	. .	8	7	7	6	16	5	3	0	1	. .	53
G.	. .	9	3	15	8	7	5	5	0	0	. .	52
													105
8 B.	. .	8	3	14	6	11	6	5	1	0	. .	54
G.	. .	10	5	15	7	10	6	6	1	1	. .	61
													115
9 B.	. .	1	1	7	5	8	2	7	3	1	. .	35
G.	. .	0	2	7	8	9	2	4	1	0	. .	33
													68
10 B.	. .	2	2	10	2	7	6	10	0	. .	. .	39
G.	. .	2	1	6	5	9	4	4	0	. .	. .	31
													70
11-15 B.	. .	. .	1	8	7	27	14	22	5	2	0	86
G.	. .	. .	1	5	12	22	20	23	9	6	2	100
													186
16-20 B.	. .	. .	. .	1	0	8	3	6	3	3	0	24
G.	. .	. .	. .	0	2	3	3	12	6	2	2	30
													54
21-25 B.	. .	. .	. .	. .	. .	. .	. .	2	1	1	. .	4
G.	. .	. .	. .	. .	. .	. .	1	3	3	1	. .	8
													12
TOTAL B.	590	376	154	263	101	180	85	78	13	8	0	1850
G.	828	454	231	308	137	191	71	96	24	11	4	2355
													4205

[Table IX] reads in a manner similar to [Table VIII]: 430 boys and 643 girls, having failures, drop out in the first semester; 35 boys and 46 girls drop out in the first semester with a single failure; 3 boys and 2 girls drop out in the first semester with five failures each.

For a small portion of these drop-outs the number of failures is undoubtedly the prime or immediate factor in securing their elimination. It seems probable that such is the situation for most of those pupils who drop out after 50 per cent or more of their school work has resulted in failures. Yet a few of these pupils manage to continue for an extended time in school, as the following distribution shows.

DROP-OUTS FAILING IN 50 PER CENT OR MORE OF THEIR TOTAL WORK,
AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION BY SEMESTERS OF DROPPING OUT

	SEMESTERS
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
221 B.	81	69	17	24	7	15	4	2	1	1
264 G.	98	68	20	35	14	10	5	8	5	1
% of Total	36.9	28.2	7.6	12.2	4.3	5.2	1.9	2.0	1.2	.4

This grouping includes 485 pupils, or 11.5 per cent of the total number of 4,205 drop-outs. But whatever the part may be that is played by failing it is evident that it does not operate to cause their early loss to the school in nearly all of these instances. It may be noted here that it is difficult to find any justification for allowing or forcing these pupils to endure two, three, or four years of a kind of training for which they have shown themselves obviously unfitted. To be sure, they have satisfied a part of these failures by repetitions or otherwise, but only to go on adding more failures. A device of 'superannuation' is employed in certain schools by which a pupil who has failed in half of his work for two semesters, and is sixteen years of age, is supposed to be dropped automatically from the school. This device seems designed to evade a difficulty in the absence of any real solution for it, and harmonizes with the school aims that are prescribed in terms of subject matter rather than in terms of the pupils' needs. From the standpoint of the individual pupil his peculiar qualities are not likely to be fashioned to the highest degree of usefulness by this procedure. It simply serves notice that the pupil must make the adjustment needed, as the school cannot or will not.

Notwithstanding the testimony furnished by the accumulation of failures shown in [Table IX], there are grounds for believing that for the major portion of all the non-graduates the number of failures is not a prime nor perhaps a highly important cause of their dropping out of school. This conviction seems to be substantiated by the statement of percentages below.

THE PERCENTAGE OF NON-GRADUATES WHO DROP OUT WITH

0 Failures	1 or 0 Failures	2 or fewer Failures	3 or fewer Failures	4 or fewer Failures	5 or fewer Failures
41.8	50.6	60.7	69.2	76.4	80.8

The fact that nearly 81 per cent of the non-graduates have only 5 failures or less, taken in comparison with the fact that approximately one fourth of the failing graduates have 8 or more failures, argues that the number of failures alone can hardly be considered one of the larger factors in causing the dropping out. In a report concerning the working children of Cincinnati, H.T. Wooley remarks[33a] that "two-thirds of our children leaving the public schools are the failures." This seems to suppose failing a large cause of the dropping out. But this investigation of failure indicates that the percentage of failure for those leaving is no higher than for the ones who do not leave. A similar illustration is credited to O.W. Caldwell[34], who makes reference to the large percentage of the failing pupils who leave high school, without taking any recognition of the equally large percentage of the failing pupils who continue in the high school.