Appendix

Underlying Ideas

8 Year Home
8 Year Web Project
Introduction
I Study Launched
II Schools Choose
III Curriculum-Needs
IV-Schools-Study-Pupils
V In College?
VI We Learned
Appendix
Co-operation-Plan
Student-Selection
Underlying-Ideas
Report-by-Hawkes
Index
(NOTE: This Committee's analysis was made before the Study was complete, but final results confirm the conclusions drawn by these well-known college officials.)

REPORT BY HERBERT E. HAWKES
DEAN, COLUMBIA COLLEGE
MEETING OF THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN COLLEGES

PHILADELPHIA-JANUARY 10, 1940

Some seven years ago the Commission of the Progressive Education Association on School and College Relations was organized under subventions from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the General Education Board. One of the most important questions on which this Commission, which is usually referred to as the Eight-Year Study, wished to obtain reliable evidence was that of the relation between the pattern of the preparatory school program and college success. Thirty schools of various types were selected for participation in the Study, some of them known as very progressive, others as relatively conservative. Liberal arts colleges from every part of the country were almost unanimous in expressing their willingness to admit from these schools, during the eight-year period of the Study, students who seemed competent to carry the work of the college successfully, without reference to specific requirements for admission.

Seven of the eight years have passed, and many students who entered the Thirty Schools when the Study started have now complete(] three years of college work. Students in the following years have completed two and one year respectively, of college residence. There is now available a wealth of information as to the college success of these students who received their preparation in the Thirty Schools. Many predictions were ventured at the beginning of the Study, but only recently do we have a real ground for conviction.

It should be stated that many of the Thirty Schools modified during their preparatory school course on the subjects of their greatest interest.

In order to obtain a comparison between the Thirty Schools graduates and their mates in the control group, members of the staff of the Eight-Year Study have visited the institutions where any considerable number of the students were registered in order to become personally acquainted with them and with their controls, so that they might reach as well considered opinions as possible regarding their adjustment to the work of the college, and the measure of success that they attained, both in their studies and in their social relations. Comparisons in each of the major fields of study between the Thirty Schools graduates and their control mates have been made with scrupulous care. I will not go into the statistical results at this time. Sufficient to say that a comparison of the 1,475 students from the Thirty Schools, which were about evenly divided between the sexes, indicates very little difference in college grades between them and their controls. On the whole, the students from the Thirty Schools were superior to the control group. Those who have been in college for three years excelled slightly in the humanities, the social sciences, and the physical sciences. The grades were almost exactly even in English and the biological sciences. They were distinctly inferior in the foreign languages, but distinctly superior in such subjects as fine arts, music and the like. I will not attempt to analyze the results for those who have bad only two or one year of college experience, except to say that the students front the Thirty Schools who entered in 1938, and whose college records for only one year are available, excel their controls from the other type of school in every field of study, notably in English, humanities, physical sciences, and mathematics. This may reflect the careful job that the faculties of the Thirty Schools have done during the past three years in improving their curriculum, and affording a more adequate intellectual training for their students.

One further observation is interesting. A report on the college success of the graduates of the six of the Thirty Schools whose programs differ most from the conventional pattern is compared with that of their comparison groups. A complementary report has been made on the college success of the graduates of the six of the Thirty Schools which differ least from the conventional pattern as compared with their matched pairs. There were 361 students from the least conventional six schools, and 417 from the most conventional schools. It turns out that the students from the least conventional schools excelled their controls by a score that may roughly be expressed as 27 to 7, while the students from the most conventional schools of the Thirty were excelled by their control group by a score that may roughly be expressed as 14 to 16. That is, so far as these data are significant, the students from the schools whose pattern of program differed most from the conventional were very distinctly superior to those from the more conventional type of school.

I should add that in extra curricula interests non-athletic in character, the graduates of the Thirty Schools were markedly more alert than their comparison group.

The results of this Study seem to indicate that the pattern of preparatory school program which concentrates on a preparation for a fixed set of entrance examinations is riot the only satisfactory means of fitting a boy or girl for making the most out of the college experience. It looks as if the stimulus and the initiative which the less conventional approach to secondary school education affords sends on to college better human material than we have obtained in the past.

I may add that this report to you has been approved by a Committee of the Commission on School and College Relations consisting of the following membership: President Barrows of Lawrence College, President Park of Bryn Mawr, Dr. Gummere of Harvard, Dean Speight of Swarthmore, Dean Brumbaugh of Chicago, and myself.

Herbert E. Hawkes, Chairman

National Middle School Association University of Maine at Farmington MAMLE - Our Maine Concern McMel - Maine Center for Meaningful and Engaged Learning Mike Muir
Casey J. Brooks
Erica Haywood
Page Updated Tuesday, May 09, 2000