for the attempted comparison above, the plan was pursued of averaging
the percentages as stated for the different classes, semesters, and
years of a subject, in each school separately, and then selecting the
median school thus determined as the one best representing the city or
the system. This method was employed to modify the reports, and to
secure the percentages as stated above for Denver, Paterson, and
Butte. Any plan of averaging the percentages for the four years of
English, or similarly for any other subject, may actually tend to
misstate the facts, when the percentages or the numbers represented are
not very nearly equal. But, in an incidental way, the difficulty serves
to emphasize the inadequacy and the incomparability in the reporting of
failures as found in the various studies, as well as to warn us of the
hopelessness of reaching any conclusions apart from a knowledge of the
procedure employed in securing the data.

The basis is also provided for some interesting comparisons by
isolating from the general distribution of failures by school subjects
(p. 19) the same facts for the failing graduates. That gives the
following distribution.


THE FAILURES BY SCHOOL SUBJECTS FOR GRADUATES ONLY

Total Math. Eng. Latin Ger. Fr. Hist. Sci. Bus. Span. or
Subj's. Greek

5803 B. 660 403 521 241 191 180 251 91 7
6334 G. 782 347 673 257 240 410 394 162 12
Per Cent
of Totals 24.8 12.9 20.5 8.5 7.4 10.1 11. 4.3 .3