The primitive frontier school had one great virtue, which it passed on to later generations of American schools. It was democratic in spirit and in organization. It did not provide much education, but what it provided was open to the children of all the families in the community--both boys and girls. (page 358)

The new movements in education resulting from the writings of Hall and Dewey took on a more strictly scientific character, with the beginning of the present century, through the invention of methods of measuring the results of school work. The first notable contribution to educational measurement was made in 1897. In that year J. M. Rice, who had been publishing for some years in the Forum, of which he was editor, articles describing the leading school systems of the country, conceived the idea of making an exact comparison of the success of the various school systems through tests of children's achievements. He secured the consent of a number of superintendents to the administration of a test requiring childreii to spell a list of words. He published the results secured in an article entitled "The Futility of the Spelling Grind." He found that school systems which taught spelling by widely different methods and for very different numbers of minutes a day stood exactly the same on his test. A few years later he published the results of tests in arithmetic. These results were, in general, like the results in spelling-very discrediting to the school practices of the times. (page 378)