Laggards In Our Schools

In 1909, Leonard Ayres charged in Laggards in Our Schools that although these institutions were filled with "retarded children," school programs were, alas, "fitted [...] to the unusually bright one"[p.29]. Ayres invented means for measuring the efficiency of school systems by computing the dropout/holdover rate—a game still in evidence today. This was begging the question with a vengeance but no challenge to this assessment was ever raised.