Major Differences Between Ten Top-ranking and Ten Bottom-ranking South Dakota High Schools: A Study in English

It is the purpose of this project to analyze in depth the pre-college profile of selected S.D.S.C. students and the relationship of these profiles to success and failure in College Freshman English. The basic premise of the project will be that as yet unidentified or un-isolated factors in students’ backgrounds play a large part in their success or failure in college freshman English – and in later work calling for the possession of the skills and the general maturity implied in the freshman English credits. The purpose of the work will be to discover, isolate, and describe the premised factors; and to prepare material concerning them that may be communicated to the college and to the people of the state, the form of the prepared material to be typical by anonymous profiles of students prepared by their backgrounds for success or for failure in college freshman English. Ability and intangibles of motivation will not, of course, be overlooked in the profiles, but the search will be for an accurate picture of other governing factors in the environment