oughout the United States. Such a list could be taken from the scale
for the second grade, which includes words which have proved to be of a
difficulty represented by a seventy-three percent correct spelling for
the class. Such a list might be composed of the following words: north,
white, spent, block, river, winter, Sunday, letter, thank, and best. A
similar list could be taken from the scale for a third, fourth, fifth,
sixth, seventh, or eighth grade. For example, the words which have
approximately the same difficulty,--seventy-three percent to be spelled
correctly by the class for the sixth grade,--read as follows: often,
stopped, motion, theater, improvement, century, total, mansion, arrive,
supply. The great value of such a measuring scale, including as it does
the thousand words most commonly used, is to be found not only in the
opportunity for comparing the achievements of children in one class or
school with another, but also in the focusing of the attention of
teachers and pupils upon the words most commonly used.[25]

One of the fields in which there is greatest need for measurement is
English composition. Teachers have too often thought of English
composition as consisting of spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and
the like, and have ignored the quality of the composition itself in
their attention to these formal elements. A scale for measuring English
composition derived by Dr. M.B. Hillegas,[26] consisting of sample
compositions of values ranging from 0 to 9.37, will enable the teacher
to tell just how many pupils in the class are writing each different
quality of composition. The use of such a scale will tend to make both
teacher and pupil critical of the work which is being done not only with
respect to the formal elements, but also with respect to the style or
adequacy of the expression of the ideas which the writer seeks to
convey. Probably in no other field has the teacher been so apt to derive
his standard from the performance of the class as in work in
composition. Even though some teachers find it difficult to evaluate the
work of their pupils in terms of the sample compositions given on the
scale, much good must come, it seems to the writer, from the attempt to
grade compositions by such an objective scale. If such measurements are
made two or three times during the year, the performance of individual
pupils and of the class will be indicated much more certainly than is
the case when teachers fe