The Eight-Year Study has demonstrated beyond question that colleges can secure all the information they need for selection of candidates for admission without restricting the. secondary school by prescribing the curriculum. For this purpose, evidence from such sources as the following would provide ample data:

1. Descriptions of students, indicating qualities of character, habits of work, personality, and social adjustment. Many of the record-forms prepared by the Commission's Committee on Records and Reports are helpful and suggestive in this connection.
2. The results of the use of instruments of evaluation
   1. Such standardized tests as are applicable to the school's work
   2. Other types of tests appropriate to the objectives of the school, such as those prepared by the Evaluation Staff of this Study
   3. Scholastic aptitude tests that measure characteristics essential to college work and are independent of particular patterns of school preparation
3. For colleges that require tests given by an outside agency, records of achievement in examinations that do not presuppose a particular pattern of content. An example is the Comprehensive English examination of the College Examination Board.

An admission plan such as this would not fix the content or organization of the high school curriculum.

If such a plan were adopted generally by colleges, the secondary schools of the United States could go about their business of serving all youth more effectively. Uniformity would be neither necessary nor desirable in the work of the school. One student would develop the essential skills, habits of mind, and qualities of character through studies appropriate to his abilities, interests, and needs; another student would develop the essentials of mind and character through quite different studies. The secondary school would then be encouraged to know each student well and to provide experiences most suitable to his development. This, in turn, would lead to dynamic school curricula. The static, frozen pattern of subjects and credits would disappear and secondary education would move ahead with other dynamic forces toward the achievement of a greater democracy.

The second major implication of the results of the Eight-Year Study is that secondary schools can be trusted with a greater measure of freedom than college requirements now permit. The Thirty Schools, representing secondary schools of various kinds in many sections, have not abused their greater freedom. On the contrary, many college authorities wonder that these schools did not use their freedom more extensively. It may be thought that the participating schools were restrained from wild experimentation by the college members of the Directing Committee, but such was not the case. In fact, they have constantly urged the schools to greater adventure. However, custom is deeply embedded in secondary education. It is not easy to break down traditional patterns of thinking and acting, nor do teachers create new ones readily.

Perhaps the chief reason for confidence in the schools' use of freedom is to be found in the genuine sense of responsibility which most teachers feel. They are conscious of the far-reaching consequences of their work. Because of this sense of duty they do not turn lightly from practices of proved worth to engage in irresponsible experimentation. If some in the colleges feared that the Thirty Schools would use their freedom recklessly, they now know that their fears were without foundation.

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