do not enter this study in determining the successful and failing
grades or the sizes of schedule. Yet it is true that such subjects do
demand time and work from those pupils.


4. SOURCES OF THE DATA EMPLOYED

The only records employed in this whole problem of research were the
official school records. No questionnaires were used, and no statements
of pupils or opinions of teachers as such were sought. The facts are
the most authoritative and dependable available, and are the very same
upon which the administrative procedure of the school relative to the
pupil is mainly dependent. The individual, cumulative records for the
pupils provided the chief source of the facts secured. These school
records, as might be expected, varied considerably as to the form, the
size, the simplicity in stating facts, and the method of filing; but
they were quite similar in the facts recorded, as well as in the
completeness and care with which the records were compiled. It may be
added that only schools having such records were included in the
investigation.

After the meanings of symbols and devices and the methods of recording
the facts had been fully explained and carefully studied for the
records of any school, the selection of the pupil records was then
made, on the basis of the year of the pupils' entrance to the school,
including all the pupils who had actually entered and undertaken work.
(Pupils who registered but failed to take up school work were entirely
disregarded.) These individual records were classified into the failing
and the non-failing divisions, then into graduating and non-graduating
groups, with the boys and girls differentiated throughout. As fast as