The school examinations employed to dispose of the failures are of two types.  The ‘final’ semester examination, employed by certain schools and required of pupils who have failed, operates to remove the previous failure for that semester of the subject.  The success of this plan is not high, because of the insufficient time available to make any adequate reparation for the failures already charged.  Of the 1,657 examinations of this kind to satisfy for failures, 30.7 per cent result in success.  The boys are more successful than the girls by 4.5 per cent.  This particular procedure is not employed by more than two of the eight schools.  The other form of school examination employed for disposing of failures is the special examination, usually following some definite preparation, and given at the discretion of the teacher or department head.  Its employment seems also to be limited pretty much to two of the schools, because for most of the subjects the Regents’ examinations tend to displace it in the schools of the New York State and City systems.  As only the successes were sure of being recorded in these tests we do not know the percentage of success attributable to this plan of removing failures.  It probably deserves to be credited with a fairly high degree of success, for relatively few pupils (less than 200) utilize it, and then frequently after some extra preparation or study—­such as summer school courses or tutoring.  These two forms of school examinations jointly yield 37.5 per cent of successes on the number attempted, so far as such are recorded.

4.  THE SERVICE RENDERED BY THE REGENTS’ EXAMINATIONS IN NEW YORK STATE

Whatever may be the merits or demerits of the Regents’ examination system in general for academic school subjects, these tests certainly perform a saving function for the failing pupils, by promptly rectifying so many of their school failures and thus rescuing them from the burden of expensive repetition.  A pupil’s success in the Regents’ examination has the immediate effect of satisfying the school failure charged to him.  At the same time, it is possible, as is sometimes asserted, that the anticipation of these tests inclines some teachers to a more gratuitous distribution of failing marks as a spur to their pupils to brace up and perform well in reference to the Regents’ questions.  However, there is no trace of that policy found so far as the schools included in this study are concerned.  For the three New Jersey schools considered jointly have a higher percentage of failing pupils, and a slightly higher average in the number of failures for each failing pupil than have the three New York State schools.