Merit (1920-1945)
Eight Year Study
With the popularity of the practical curriculum, some educators tried to show that such a curriculum well prepared high school students for college. In 1930, the Progressive Education Association sponsored the Eight Year Study, which was initially funded by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
The significance of the Eight Year Study is that it highlighted continued and renewed concerns about the articulation between high school and college. It reflected secondary school people's questioning of perceived college dominance of the high school curriculum and raised the question about appropriate curricula for college preparation.
The Eight Year Study held out the promise that those students not held to admission requirements and taught by progressive methods would succeed as well as or better than students admitted to college in the traditional way.
The Eight Year Study compared the differences in college success between students educated in a traditional curriculum and those engaged in an experimental curriculum. The study involved the graduates of 28 private secondary schools and two public secondary schools. It tracked the collegiate performance of these graduates admitted to college without their having met the formal entrance requirements.
The results of the study, which continued into 1939-1940, showed that the students unshackled from traditional entrance requirements did a bit better than other students when college grade point averages were compared. However, they did not succeed much better than the traditional group.
The Progressive Education Association attempted to use the Eight Year Study to promote secondary school people's control of the curriculum and progressive pedagogical methods. Many school people at the time thought that the college, through its testing and admissions requirements, controlled the secondary school. The study was a way to prove the success of progressive educational experiments and pedagogical reform.
Like with other pedagogical reform efforts, those involved in the Eight Year Study did so for different reasons. The Progressive Education Association wanted to eliminate college domination and course requirements so that secondary education would be free to experiment with progressive methods. The Progressive Education Association used the results to argue that the traditional college preparation curriculum was not any better at preparing students for college than any other, more experimental curriculum. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching incorrectly thought that the Eight Year Study was about replacing the standard units of course requirements for college admission with test requirements.
