Age-grade censuses have been followed by improvement of conditions in many cities, and therefore it may be assumed that they have some value as instruments of agitation inciting administrators to make more detailed studies and to take remedial steps. It has become a question, however, whether the pioneer type of age-grade statistics is now worth the effort expended by teachers and compilers or is greatly beneficial to anybody in particular. These crude studies take account merely of the

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... between a child's chronological age and his school grade. The significant fact is the progress the child has made, and this is not accurately shown by age-grade tables. The age-grade system has usually involved the assumption that the first grade is suitable for children six or seven, or perhaps seven or eight years of age. Sometimes the grade and age allotments are a little more rigid, the first grade being intended for children six years of age, the second grade for children seven years of age, etc. Recent years have brought emphasis upon individual differences, capacities, and interests, and upon social conditions, rather than upon mere chronological age as a criterion for grade standing. It is well known that true age, or maturity, refers to the status of anatomical, of physiological, and of mental development rather than chiefly to the calendar. 700 This content downloaded from 080.082.077.083 on February 21, 2018 16:46:44 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c ERRORS IN MEASURES OF RETARDATION 701 There is nothing novel in the assertion today that an exhaustive age-grade-progress analysis is really ninefold rather than threefold, owing to the fact that pupils in any one of the three groups, over-age, at-age, or under-age, may have made faster-than-normal, normal, or slower-than-normal progress. Maxwell, Bryan, Cornman, Falkner, Ayres, and Greenwood years ago attacked the problem of age-grade censuses, and Van Sickle, Witmer, and Ayres in 1911 explained a simple device by which a fourfold, and, if desired, more numerous, grouping could easily be made.' The studies of Bachman, Bean, Henmon, Keyes, and of Allen, have further augmented the discussion of the subject. Ayres's Cleveland study makes plain the ninefold classification. Only a small number of cities or states, however, are publishing other than analyses based upon the threefold grouping, i.e., over-age, at-age, under-age. Notable examples of the use of the threefold grouping (at-age, under-age, over-age) are observed in the studies of Strayer for 318 cities,2 of Berry for 225 Michigan towns and cities,3 of Miss Rankin for 241,617 Wisconsin pupils,4 in the study of Kansas pupils, in the Dayton, Ohio, analysis, in the San Francisco survey, and in the recent report of the Gary schools.5 Where individual record cards for pupils are not available there is of course extenuation for using the easily filled agegrade blank of other days. Some of our best writers on school administration either omit entirely any reference to the necessary ninefold type of analysis (combining the elements of age, 1VAN