and these had all entered the high school by September, 1913. If a child enters the 1A grade at 7, normally he should enter the high school at 14 years. All of these 6 children are at the ages of 13 or 14. Therefore these children are accelerated from the standpoint of age and progress. Two of them, both boys, one at 13 and the other at 14, are in the second year in the high school, due to the fact that they have been able to skip two grades in the elementary school. It should be noted, too, that all of the children who are accelerated entered the high school. The table further shows that 50 children, or 7.97 per cent, completed the elementary school in seven years, the normal time. Of this number, which consisted of 20 boys and 30 girls, all but 2 entered the high school. Therefore the number of children of the 1A grade of September, 1906, completing the elementary grades in normal or less than normal time and entering the high school is 8.6 per cent.

TABLE 4.-Age, grade, and progress of unfinished group (white).1

1 There were no pupils under 13 years of age or below grade 3B.

Table 4 shows the progress made by those children who were still in the elementary school in September, 1913. It is read as follows: At the age of 13 years there was 1 girl who was in the 4B grade, 3 boys and 4 girls in 5A grade, 1 boy and 1 girl in the 5B, etc. There are still in school 194 children, or 30.94 per cent, distributed all the way from the 7B grade down to the 3B grade. All of these children have been in school seven years, which is long enough to have completed 14 terms' work, while as a matter of fact—

22 boys and 24 girls had completed 13 terms.
18 boys and 18 girls had completed 12 terms.
6 boys and 19 girls had completed 11 terms.
20 boys and 19 girls had completed 10 terms.
15 boys and 9 girls had completed 9 terms.
8 boys and 8 girls had completed 8 terms.
4 boys and 2 girls had completed 7 terms.
4 boys and 1 girl had completed 6 terms.
1 boy and 1 girl had completed 5 terms.

The median number of terms made by these 194 children is 9.8 terms for the boys and 10.4 terms for the girls, while the median age for the boys is 13.5 years and for the girls 13.3 years.

It is evident, then, that this group of children is greatly retarded, some of the individuals more than others. Since all of them have been in school seven years, which is long enough to have completed 14 terms, the normal number of terms these children ought to have made can be found by multiplying the normal number, 14, by the number of individuals, and the actual number of terms by the number of individuals; so that 22 boys ought to have made 22 times 14, or 308 terms, while as a matter of fact they actually made 22 times 13, or 286 terms. By this process the following data are secured, which show the number of terms these boys and girls ought to have made and the actual number of terms they made in seven years:

Number of terms nine groups of boys and girls should have made, and number actually made.

By dividing the actual number of terms made by the normal number of terms, the following percentages are obtained:

The boys show 74.5 per cent normal progress, or 24.5 per cent retardation. The girls show 77.5 per ce t normal progress, or 22.5 per cent retardation. Boys and girls show 76.8 per cent normal progress, or 23.2 per cent retardation. It must be borne in mind that this 23.2 per cent of retardation was made in seven years, or in the time when a child ought to have done the work completely. Some of these children have repeated but one term, others have repeated as many as nine terms. It is safe to say, then, that this group of children will show a much larger percentage of retardation by the time they eventually leave the elementary schools. Nevertheless, the percentage of retardation made by these 194 children, in spite of the fact that there was no compulsory attendance, is sufficient to show that some children do persist in their desire to get on in school, and furthermore, that there are misfits.

TABLE 5.-Age, grade, and progress of nonretarded group-dropped (white).1

1 There were no pupils over 15 years of age or in grades 7A and 7B.

TABLE 6.-Age, grade, and progress of retarded group-dropped (white).

Tables 5 and 6 show that in Spetember, 1906, out of 627 children who were in the 1A grade, 377, or 60.13 per cent, had already left school prior to September, 1913. These children are distributed according to their grade and age when they left school. Of these 377 children, 92, or 24.4 per cent (14.7 per cent of the total group), had not repeated a grade, while 285, or 75.6 per cent (45.6 per cent of the total group), had repeated one or more grades before they left

school. But it would be unfair to any school system to hold it responsible for the children who move to other communities. On Table 7 it is shown that 97 children, or 25.7 per cent of these 377 children who left school, moved out of the city. These 97 children, or 15.5 per cent of the total number (627), will reduce the percentage of children leaving school for causes over which the system has some control from 60.13 per cent to 44.63 per cent. These nonretarded children, according to Table 5, leave school anywhere between the 1A and the 7A grades, and between the ages of 6 and 15 years. The median ages, however, at which these children leave school are 8.7 years for the boys and 9.8 years for the girls. The low median ages seem to indicate that, when children have become accustomed to a school and are making progress, parents hesitate about changing them to other systems.

The retarded group, however, as shown in Table 6, indicates clearly that there are certain grades and certain ages when the children leave school. The median age at which the boys drop out is 12.3 years, and at which the girls drop out is 11.8 years. This fact is surprising. If leaving school is caused by economic reasons, it would naturally be expected that the girls would have a higher median age for leaving school than the boys. That there are more boys leaving the 3A, 3B, 4A, 4B, and 5A grades, and that the median age is near that when boys can go to work is a possible indication that these children make an effort to do the work assigned them by the schools; but, failing in this, they resort to some other activity outside of school. This fact is further indicated in the following data:

Boys and girls dropped out of the different grades.

In Tables 5 and 6 it was shown that 377 children, or 60.13 per cent of the total number, 627, had left school. Manifestly this is a number far too great not to be profiting by a scheme of education which has been planned for them. But the system can not be held responsible for all of these children leaving school, as stated above. From these

377 children who left the Richmond public schools, the following data, taken from Table 7, are secured:

97, or 25.7 per cent, moved out of the city.

137, or 45.9 per cent, are employed in or out of the home or are unemployed.

45, or 11.9 per cent, are unknown.

29, or 7.7 per cent, left the public schools and went to private schools.

23, or 6.1 per cent, are dead.

6, or 1.6 per cent, are married.

These data are significant. The fact that 25 per cent of the children who were dropped left the system for other communities would indicate the presence of a much larger transient element in the school population enrolled than would be expected in a city where there is a very small foreign population, and where it is generally held that most of the school children will make their homes when they become adults.

TABLE 7.-Showing what has become of the 377 children (white) who dropped out of school.

It must be borne in mind that these 377 children did not remain in school seven years. It is quite evident that to this number of dropped children of the entering group will eventually be added a good percentage of the 194 children who were still in school September, 1913. It could hardly be expected that a child who had been in school seven years and had made only five terms, or was retarded nine terms, would remain in school long enough to complete the elementary grades. Since almost 45.9 per cent of those who drop out in seven years, or 22 per cent of the total entering group, go to work, it would seem that there is a strong demand for vocational training to meet the needs of the workers in the industries of this city.1 This number of children who go to work is further increased by those who are still in school and who will drop out before they complete the elementary school. Retardation and dropping out go hand in hand; 88.5 per cent of those who go to work or 40.6 per cent of those who dropped out and went to work have been retarded, while only 11.5 per cent of those who go to work or 5.3 per cent of those who dropped out and went to work are not retarded.

It is evident, too, that there is an urgent demand, not only for more accurate methods in the recording of a child's school history, but also

1 See, in this connection, the report of the Richmond survey by the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education.