Since the dropping out is heaviest in the
early semesters, and since the school undertakes the expense of
providing for all who enter, it does not seem to be a correct
presentation of the facts to compute the percentage of failure on only
the pupils who finish the whole semester. Such a practice tends to
assign an undue percentage of failures to the earlier semesters, one
that is considerably too high in comparison with that of the later
semesters where the dropping out becomes relatively light. It is not
sufficient to report merely what part of our final product is
imperfect, instead of reporting, as do most institutions outside of the
educational field, what part of all that is taken in becomes waste
product. This situation is sufficiently grievous to demand further
comment.
In his study of the New Jersey high schools, Bliss states [28] that one
of the striking facts found is the "steady decrease of failure from the
freshman to the senior year." If we bear in mind that Bliss used only
the promotion sheets for his data, and took no account of the drop-outs
preceding promotion, and if we then estimate that an average of 10 per
cent may drop out before the end of the first semester (the percentage
is 13.2 for our eight schools), then the percentages of failure
recorded for the first year will be reduced by one-eleventh of their
own respective amounts for each school reported by Bliss, as we
translate the percentages to the total enrollment basis.
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