When we make inquiry as to what portion of the graduates in each of the above groups ‘goes through’ in four years or less, we get the series of percentages indicated below.

  PERCENTAGE OF THE GRADUATES WHO FINISH IN FOUR YEARS OR LESS,
  FOR EACH OF THE ENTERING-AGE GROUPS

  Ages 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

  % of Each Group 84.3 85.7 75.8 79.5 84.3 80.4 100

It appears that the ones in the older age-groups who do graduate are not so handicapped in reference to the time requirement for graduation as we might have expected them to be from the facts of the preceding pages.  Perhaps that fact is partly accounted for by the not unusual tendency to restrain the more rapid progress of the younger pupils or to promote the older ones partly by age, so that by our school procedure the younger and the brighter pupils may at times actually be more retarded, according to mental age, than are the older and slower ones.

Since the same teachers, the same schools, and the same administrative policy were involved for the different entrance-age groups, the prognostic value of the factor of age at entrance will seem to be unimpaired, whether it operates independently as a gauge of rank in mental ability, or conjointly with and indicative of the varying influence on these pupils of other concomitant factors, such as the difference of economic demands, the difference of social interests, the difference in permanence of conflicting habits of the individual, or the difference in effectiveness of the school’s appeal as adapted for the several ages.  One may contend, and with some success, that the high school regime is better adjusted to the younger pupils, with the consequent result that they are more successful in its requirements.  The distractions of more numerous social interests may actually accompany the later years of school age.  In reference to the social distractions of girls, Margaret Slattery says,[23] “This mania for ‘going’ seizes many of our girls just when they need rest and natural pleasures, the great out-of-doors, and early hours of retiring.”  But surely such distractions are not peculiar to the girls alone.  The economic needs that arise at the age of sixteen and later are often considered to constitute a pressing factor regarding the continuance in school.  But VanDenburg[22] was convinced by the investigation, in New York City, of 420 rentals for the families of pupils that “on the whole the economic status of these pupils seems to be only a slight factor in their continuance in school.”  A similar conclusion was reached by Wooley,[24] in Cincinnati, after investigating 600 families, in which it was estimated that 73 per cent of the families did not need the earnings of the children who left school to go to work.  The corresponding report by a commission[25] in Massachusetts shows 76 per cent.  The same facts for New York City[26] indicate that