the failing
non-graduates are gone by that age. The percentage of drop-outs is
higher for older pupils.

REFERENCES:

5. Kelley, T.L. "A Study of High School and University Grades, with
Reference to Their Intercorrelation and the Causes of Elimination,"
_Journal of Educational Psychology_, 6:365.

6. Johnson, G.R. "Qualitative Elimination in High School," _School
Review_, 18:680.

7. Bliss, D.C. "High School Failures," _Educational Administration and
Supervision_, Vol. 3.

8. Strayer, G.D., Coffman, L.D., Prosser, C.A. _Report of a Survey of
the School System of St. Paul, Minnesota_.

9. Meredith, A.B. _Survey of the St. Louis Public Schools_, 1917, Vol.
III, p. 51.

10. _Annual Report of the Board of Education, Paterson, New Jersey_,
1915.

11. Bobbitt, J.F. _Report of the School Survey of Denver_, 1916.

12. Strayer, G.D. _A Survey of the Public Schools of Butte_, 1914.

13. Rounds, C.R., Kingsbury, H.B. "Do Too Many Students Fail?" _School
Review_, 21:585.

CHAPTER III

WHAT BASIS IS DISCOVERABLE FOR PROGNOSTICATING THE OCCURRENCE OF OR THE
NUMBER OF FAILURES?

1. ATTENDANCE, MENTAL OR PHYSICAL DEFECTS, AND SIZE OF CLASSES ARE
POSSIBLE FACTORS

Any definite factors available for the school that have a prognostic
value in reference to school failures will help to perform a function
quite comparable to the science of preventive medicine in its field,
and in contrast with the older art of doctoring the malady after it has
been permitted to develop. 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 eleme