B. A. Phillips, studying the public elementary schools of Philadelphia,
found[137] that the percentage of retardation in the colored schools
ranged from 72.8 to 58.2, while the percentage of retardation in the
districts which contained the schools ranged from 45.1 to 33.3. The
average percentage of retardation for the city as a whole was 40.3. Each
of the colored schools had a greater percentage of retardation than any
of the white schools, even those composed almost entirely of foreigners,
and in those schools attended by both white and colored pupils the
percentage of retardation on the whole varied directly with the
percentage of colored pupils in attendance.
These facts might be interpreted in several ways. It might be that the
curriculum was not well adapted to the colored children, or that they
came from bad home environments, or that they differed in age, etc. Dr.
Phillips accordingly undertook to get further light on the cause of
retardation of the colored pupils by applying Binet tests to white and
colored children of the same chronological age and home conditions, and
found "a difference in the acceleration between the two races of 31% in
favor of the white boys, 25% in favor of the white girls, 28% in favor
of the white pupils with boys and girls combined.
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