Such prognostication of failure, however,
need not imply a complete knowledge of the causes of the failures. It
may simply signify that in certain situations the causes are less
active or are partly overcome by other factors.
Perhaps one of the simplest factors with a prognostic value on failure
may be found in the facts of attendance. Persistent or repeated absence
from school may reach a point where it tends to affect the number of
failures. It happened, unfortunately, that the reports for attendance
were incomplete or lacking in a considerable portion of the records
employed in this study. Consequently the influence of attendance is
given no especial consideration in these pages, except as explained in
Chapter I, that the pupil must have been present enough of any semester
to secure his subject grades, else no failure is counted and no time is
charged to his period in school. In this connection, Dr. C.H. Keyes[14]
found in a study of elementary school pupils that of 1,649 pupils
losing four weeks or more in a single year 459 belonged to the
accelerate pupils, 647 to those arrested, and 543 to pupils normal in
their school work. He accredits such large loss of time as almost
invariably the result of illness and of contagious disease. He also
says, "Prolonged absence from school is appreciable in producing
arrest especially when it amounts to more than 25 days in one school
year." But the diseases of childhood, with the resultant absence, are
less prevalent in the high school years than earlier.
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