VOLUME VII

OCTOBER, 1921

NUMBER 1

Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office, Albany, N. Y., March 7, 1921

Signed articles are not to be understood as expressing the views of the editors or publishers

PSYCHOLOGICAL EXAMINATION AND EDUCATIONAL TESTS*

In the last annual report it was pointed out that a method of work which made certain the identification of practically all children in need of ungraded class work had been tried in two school units. A survey of this kind gives the right basis for the organization of a school but in view of the fact that the Board of Education has not yet made any adequate provision for psychological examination, a modification of this method had to be effected.

Educational psychology has made possible the classification of children on the basis of intellectual ability. Colonel Pearce Bailey, Chairman of the New York State Commission for Mental Defectives says, "When, after thousands of experiments, different examiners, working in different places can come to approximately the same general conclusions, the value of psychological tests, as measures of mind and means of sifting out the dull from the normal and the superior, cannot be denied." Psychological tests are of two kinds, group and individual. Group psychological examinations, by means of which large numbers may be tested out in a few hours are more economical than individual examinations. Success in them may be taken as a reliable indication of intellectual ability. Failure in them may be due to many factors, such as reading disability, deafness, the breaking of a pencil point and so on. For this reason, children who fail on the group examination must be given an individual examination before they can be finally classified.

* Extract from annual report (1920-21) of Miss Elizabeth Farrell, Inspector of Ungraded Classes.

I. EXAMINATION OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PUPILS

Economy and efficiency demanded that a procedure be adopted which would bring into use here the contributions made available by modern science for the identification and classification of the children who fail to succeed in the regular grades in the elementary schools. The procedure decided upon was as follows:

1. Principals were asked to report all children 3 or more years retarded, in addition to those children for whom they had requested an examination. From this group were excluded recently arrived immigrants where language difficulties existed. It has been found by investigators in this field that 50 percent of school children who are three or more years retarded are in need of ungraded class work. For various reasons many of these children are over-looked by school officials until it is too late to help them.

2. To obtain a measure of the intellectual capacity and of the educational attainment of these children, group psychological and educational tests were given to all children reported for examination who were in grades above 2B. By this objective method choice and surmise in the identification of children in the need of ungraded class work was minimized.

From the great variety of group psychological tests available, the test finally decided upon was Haggerty Intelligence Examination, Delta II. This was selected because it has well established norms of performance on the basis of mental age and school grade, and because it measures a wide range of functions. In order to find out to what extent the group examined had profited by their school life, group educational tests were used. Here, as in the psychological group test, it was necessary to choose from the large variety of excellent tests available a few which could be given in a minimum of time and which would reveal fundamental educational attainment. The tests chosen were Trabue Language Completion Scales B and C, WoodyMcCall Mixed Fundamentals in Arithmetic and Thorndike-McCall Reading. These are all well standardized according to school grade.

3. The individual examination which always included the Stanford Revision of the Binet Simon Tests, with such Performance Tests as were indicated, was given to the following groups of children:

group

(a) Those who fell below 70 I. Q. on the examination. (b) Those children below 3A grade, and certain others, who were reported for examination by the school principal. (c) Those who showed marked irregularity in the group examination.

(d) Those of foreign birth who had been in school long enough to have learned English but who failed to make satisfactory progress.

(e) Those suffering from partial or complete deafness.

1. GROUP PSYCHOLOGICAL EXAMINATION

The Group Psychological Tests have been given to 815 overage children. This work was done in 22 half days. The antiquated method of individual examination under which the Board of Education expects us to work would have required 117 days for the completion of the task.

The overageness varied from 6 months to 7 years. 492 were from 1 to 3 years retarded. 323 were 3 or more years retarded. These overage children, came from grades 3A to 8A inclusive. Figure 1 shows the retardation of the 815 children examined by the group psychological examination.

The examination revealed the fact that the great majority of these retarded children are below average in general intelligence. The range of I.Q. is from 38 to 121. The group clusters around 70 I.Q. Only 93, or 11 percent had I.Q.'s above 90. (50 percent of all children in our schools fall between 90 I.Q. and 110 I.Q. They constitute the "average" who fit well into the present school curriculum.) These 93 children could probably profit by work in the regular grades proper to their ages. They are retarded for reasons other than lack of general intelligence. Nine of this group had I.Q.'s above 110 (superior intelligence). Seven hundred and twenty-two are below average in general intelligence. Of those, 404 have I.Q.'s below 70 (seriously retarded). They need individual examinations upon which school classification can be predicated. 318 of this group are really wasting their time, in the regular grades. They need a course of study different from that offered to the average children and

also different from that given to ungraded class children. They should be in opportunity classes, with a curriculum suited to their needs. Such a curriculum would be based on the fact that these children do their thinking on the sensori-motor and perceptual level, rather than on the higher conceptual and abstract level.

Figure 2 gives the I.Q. (Haggerty) distribution of these 815 children.

The results of the group educational tests furnished additional information upon which to base recommendations for school reclassification. There was a close correspondence between ability to do school work as revealed by educational tests and the ability of the child, as revealed by intelligence tests. In most cases the results of the standardized educational tests showed that the children were in grades far beyond their ability to do school work. In some instances, however, they did work of a higher grade on the educational tests than that required in the grades in which they were. For example, one boy in a 5A grade showed good 6th grade ability. His conduct, which was rated "C," was undoubtedly due to lack of interest in his school work which was so easy that he was obliged to find other outlets for his energy. Another boy in a 5B grade showed 7th grade ability on the educational tests. Inquiry brought out the fact that the boy had been committed to a juvenile reform school four times. Is it too much to believe that had the school known his ability and worked him to the limit of his capacity that his history would have been different?

3. INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGICAL EXAMINATION

Four hundred and four children fell below 70 I.Q. on the group examination. They needed individual examinations in order to eliminate factors other than inferior mentality as the reason for the low score.