2. THE EMPLOYMENT OF THE SCHOOL ENTERING AGE FOR PROGNOSIS
A promising but less emphasized basis of prognosticating the school success or failure of the pupils is found in the employment of the school entering ages for this purpose. The distribution of all the pupils (except 30 undistributed ones, for whom the records were incomplete), according to entering age, is here presented, independently for the boys and for the girls.
DISTRIBUTION OF PUPILS BY THEIR ENTRANCE AGES TO HIGH SCHOOL
AGES Undis- Total 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 tributed
2646 B. 16 211 820 900 497 148 23 10 7 14 3495 G. 8 259 1124 1217 614 194 51 10 8 16
The entering ages of these 6,141 pupils are distributed from 12 to 20, with 30 of them for whom the age records were not given. The median age for all the entrants is 15.3. But in order to compare this with the median entering age (14.9) of the 1,033 pupils reported by King[21] for the Iowa City high school, or with the median entering age (14.5) of 1000 high school pupils in New York City, as reported by Van Denburg,[22] it is necessary to reduce these medians to the same basis of age classification. Since age 15 for this study starts at 14½, then 15.3 would be only 14.8 (15.3-.5) as by their classification. The percentages of the total number of pupils for each age are given below.
PERCENTAGES OF PUPILS FOR EACH ENTERING AGE
AGES 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Undistributed Total 0.4 7.6 31.6 34.4 18.1 5.5 1.2 1.0 Boys 0.6 8.0 31.0 37.8 18.8 5.6 0.8 1.1 Girls 0.2 7.4 32.4 34.8 17.5 5.5 1.4 1.0
We see that 84 per cent of the pupils enter at age 14, 15, and 16, or, what is perhaps more important, that nearly 40 per cent enter under 15 years of age. The similarity of percentages for boys and for girls is pronounced. The slight advantage of the boys for ages 12 and 13 may be due to home influence in restricting the early entrance of the girls, thus causing a corresponding superiority for the girls at age 14. The mode of this percentage distribution is at 15 for both boys and girls.
What portion of each entering-age-group has no failures? This question and the answer presented below direct our attention to the superiority of the pupils of the earlier entering ages. That these groups of earlier ages of entrance are comprised of pupils selected for their capabilities is shown by the successive decrease in the percentages of the non-failing as the ages of their entrance increases, up to age 18.