The High School Failures | Page 7

ALL ENTRANTS IN REFERENCE TO FAILURE
With no purpose of making this a comparative study of schools, the separate units or schools indicated in Chapter I will from this point be combined into a composite and treated as a single group. It becomes possible, with the complete and tabulated facts pertaining to a group of pupils, after their high school period has ended, to get a comprehensive survey of their school records and to answer such questions as: (1) What part of the total number of boys or of girls have school failures? (2) To what extent are the non-failing pupils the ones who succeed in graduating? (3) To what extent do the failing pupils withdraw early? The following tabulation will show how two of these questions are answered for the 6,141 pupils here reported on.
ALL ALL ENTRANTS FAILING GRADUATES FAILING
Totals 6,141 3,573 (58.2%) 1,936 1,125 (58.1%) Boys 2,646 1,645 (62.1%) 796 489 (61.4%) Girls 3,495 1,928 (55.1%) 1,140 639 (55.8%)
From this distribution we readily compute that the percentage of pupils who fail is 58.2 per cent (boys--62.1, girls--55.1). But this statement is itself inadequate. It does not take into account the 808 pupils who received no grades and had no chance to be classed as failing, but who were in most cases in school long enough to receive marks, and a portion of whom were either eliminated earlier or deterred from examinations by the expectation of failing. It seems entirely safe to estimate that no less than 60 per cent of this non-credited number should[5] be treated as of the failing group[6] of pupils. Then the percentage of pupils to be classed as failing in school subjects becomes 66 per cent (boys--69.6, girls--63.4).
In considering the second inquiry above, we find from the preceding distribution of pupils that 58.1 per cent (boys--61.4, girls--55.8) of all pupils that graduate have failed in one or more subjects one or more times. This percentage varies from 34 per cent to 73 per cent by schools, but in only two instances does the percentage fall below 50 per cent, and in one of these two it is almost 50 per cent.
We may now ask, when do the failing and the non-failing non-graduates drop out of school? Of the total number of non-graduates (4,205), there are 2,448 who drop out after failing one or more times, and 1,757 who drop out without failing. The cumulative percentages of the non-graduates in reference to dropping out are here given.
CUMULATIVE PERCENTAGES OF THE FAILING NON-GRADUATES AS THEY ARE LOST BY SEMESTERS
LOST BY END OF SEMESTER 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Per Cent 14.1 33.9 46.4 64.9 72.9 85.2 91.9 97.6 99.1
CUMULATIVE PERCENTAGES OF NON-FAILING NON-GRADUATES AS THEY ARE LOST BY SEMESTERS
LOST BY END OF SEMESTER 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Per Cent 61.1 78.0 85.9 92.1 94.5 98.4 99.5 .. ..
Briefly stated, the above percentages assert that more than three fourths of those who neither fail nor graduate have left school by the end of the first year, while only 33.9 per cent of those non-graduates who fail have left so early. More than 50 per cent of the failing non-graduates continue in school to near the end of the second year. By that time about 90 per cent of the non-failing non-graduates have been lost from school. By a combination of the above groups we get the percentages of all non-graduates lost by successive semesters.
CUMULATIVE PERCENTAGES OF ALL NON-GRADUATES LOST BY SUCCESSIVE SEMESTERS
LOST BY END OF SEMESTER 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Per Cent 33.7 53.4 62.6 76.2 81.9 90.7 94.0 98.6
These percentages of non-graduates indicate that more than 50 per cent of those who do not graduate are gone by the end of the first year, but that there are a few who continue beyond four years without graduating.
2. THE LATER DISTRIBUTION OF PUPILS BY SEMESTERS
Consideration is here given to the number of the total entrants remaining in school for each successive semester, and then to the accompanying percentages of failure for each group. The following figures show the rapid decline in numbers.
THE PERSISTENCE OF PUPILS IN SCHOOL, BY SEMESTERS
END OF SEMESTER 1 2 3 4 5 6 Graduate
6,141 (Total) 4,723 3,893 3,508 2,935 2,697 2,234 1,936
Percentages 76.9 63.4 57.1 47.8 43.9 36.4 31.5
As was pointed out in Section 3 of Chapter I, the above group does not include any increment to its own numbers by means of transfer from other classes or schools. We find, accompanying this reduction in the number of pupils, which shows more than 50 per cent gone by the end of the second year in school, that there is no corresponding reduction in the percentage of pupils failing each semester on the basis of the number of those in school for that semester.
PERCENTAGE OF