The Eight-Year Study: From Evaluative Research to a Demonstration Project, 1930—1940.

Abstract

From 1932 to 1940, the Progressive Education Association (PEA) conducted its Eight-Year Study. At first, the study appeared to be a poorly funded comparison of two groups of students in secondary schools. During the last four years, as more financial support became available, the Eight-Year Study became a broadly based demonstration of a wide range of educational innovations. For contemporary educators, the story of the Eight-Year Study represents an opportunity to reconsider popular principles of program evaluation such as utilization-focused evaluation or program theory in evaluation. Rather than set plans in advance, the PEA members seemed to follow the ideas of John Dewey; they allowed the purposes to widen and broaden as the study evolved. In this way, the Eight-Year Study represented a model of democratic policy evaluation. Its tentative type of planning allowed people to set and to change their own purposes in line with the needs of the wider organization. Part of the reason that the study changed direction was it gathered more financial support and could add consultants who worked in distinct program elements. In addition, the lack of consistency matched the varied nature that characterized the founding members of the PEA. Its democratic framework may have enabled the Eight-Year Study to become the PEA’s abiding contribution to American education.

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A peer-reviewed scholarly journal
Editor: Sherman Dorn
College of Education
University of South Florida
Volume 14 Number 21 August 25, 2006 ISSN 1068–2341
The Eight-Year Study: From Evaluative Research
to Demonstration Project, 1930–1940
Joseph Watras
University of Dayton
Citation: Watras, J. (2002). The Eight-Year Study: From Evaluative Research to a
Demonstration Project, 1930–1940. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 14(21). Retrieved
[date] from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v14n21/.
Abstract
From 1932 to 1940, the Progressive Education Association (PEA) conducted its
Eight-Year Study. At first, the study appeared to be a poorly funded comparison of
two groups of students in secondary schools. During the last four years, as more
financial support became available, the Eight-Year Study became a broadly based
demonstration of a wide range of educational innovations. For contemporary
educators, the story of the Eight-Year Study represents an opportunity to
reconsider popular principles of program evaluation such as utilization-focused
evaluation or program theory in evaluation. Rather than set plans in advance, the
PEA members seemed to follow the ideas of John Dewey; they allowed the
purposes to widen and broaden as the study evolved. In this way, the Eight-Year
Study represented a model of democratic policy evaluation. Its tentative type of
planning allowed people to set and to change their own purposes in line with the
needs of the wider organization. Part of the reason that the study changed direction
was it gathered more financial support and could add consultants who worked in
distinct program elements. In addition, the lack of consistency matched the varied
nature that characterized the founding members of the PEA. Its democratic
framework may have enabled the Eight-Year Study to become the PEA’s abiding
contribution to American education.

Education Policy Analysis Archives Vol. 14 No. 21 2
El Estudio de Ocho Años: desde la investigación evaluativa hasta el
proyecto de demostración, 1930-1940
Durante el período de 1932 a 1940, la Asociación para la Educación Progresista
(PEA, por sus siglas en inglés) llevó a cabo su Estudio de Ocho Años.
Inicialmente, dicho estudio parecía ser un estudio comparado con escaso
financiamiento, entre dos grupos de estudiantes de escuela secundaria. Sin
embargo, durante los últimos cuatro años, tiempo durante el cual hubo más apoyo
financiero, el Estudio de Ocho Años se convirtió en una amplia base de
demostración de una variada gama de innovaciones educativas. Para los educadores
contemporáneos, la historia del Estudio de Ocho Años representa una oportunidad
para reconsiderar principios muy generalizados acerca de la evaluación de
programas tales como, la “evaluación enfocada en la utilización”, o la “teoría de
programas” en la evaluación. En vez de formular planes por adelantado, los
miembros de la PEA siguieron las ideas de John Dewey; dejaron que los propósitos
se ampliaran y se esparcieran a medida que el estudio evolucionaba. De este modo,
el Estudio de Ocho Años representó un modelo de evaluación de políticas
democrático. Su estilo tentativo de planificación le permitió a la gente poder
establecer y cambiar sus propósitos en línea con las necesidades de toda la
organización. Parte de los motivos por los cuales el estudió cambió de dirección
fue que logró conseguir mayor apoyo financiero, pudiendo incorporar consultores
quienes trabajaron en diferentes aspectos del programa. Además, la supuesta falta
de consistencia concordaba con la naturaleza variada que caracterizaba a los
miembros fundadores de la PEA. Su marco democrático pudo permitir que el
Estudio de Ocho Años se convirtiera en la contribución perdurable que la PEA ha
dado a la educación Americana.
Keywords: democratic program evaluation; John Dewey; Progressive Era
education.
Introduction
From 1932 to 1940, the Progressive Education Association (PEA) conducted its Eight-Year
Study. According to Lawrence Cremin, this study was the association’s abiding contribution to
American education (Cremin, 1964, pp.240–253). At first, the study appeared to be a poorly funded
comparison of two groups of students. During the last four years, it became a broadly based
demonstration of a wide range of educational innovations. To the directors of the study, these shifts
were not so much problems as they were opportunities for everyone to learn and grow.
Consequently, they named the series of books that described the study Adventure in American
Education.
For contemporary educators, the story of the Eight-Year Study represents an opportunity to
reconsider popular principles of program evaluation such as utilization-focused evaluation or
program theory in evaluation. On the one hand, when Michael Quinn Patton describes how to
construct utilization-focused evaluations, he recommends that evaluators begin by carefully
considering the effects that their efforts will have on the way people use the studies. While Patton
does not recommend any particular model or method of evaluation, he notes, for example, that
evaluators have to help the intended users select the ways of measuring that best fit their particular

The Eight-Year Study 3
situations. Thus, he recommends that, as a first step, evaluators work as facilitators with the primary
intended users to determine what the study should measure, how the information should be
collected, and how the information will be used (Patton, 1997, 20–22). On the other hand, calling
their model program theory evaluation, Patricia Rogers and her colleagues suggest that evaluators
should base their measurement on the outcomes a program should cause. For example, evaluation
of a substance abuse program might seek to measure how the program informed subjects of the
dangers involved in drug use and whether the subjects changed their behaviors as a result (Rogers,
Hacsi, Petrosino, & Huebner, 2000, pp. 1–7). Unlike these two views of evaluation, the members of
the PEA did not set out a clear aim in the beginning of the project that they could measure, and they
did not seek to address a specific audience. Not only were they were unsure how people might use
the information, they did not construct a causal theory to explain any changes that might result.
Although the PEA members did not set up clear objectives in advance, they did not muddle
along without any sense of direction. Instead, they began the study as something that afforded
teachers and students the opportunity to have the freedom to set purposes for themselves. As a
result, the PEA members seemed to follow Dewey’s ideas when they undertook the Eight-Year
Study.
For Dewey, the act of setting purposes was a complicated process that took place
throughout an experience. Although he acknowledged that people had to have aims or purposes in
order to act intelligently, he cautioned against having fixed aims or goals determined in advance. For
Dewey, the function of an aim was to stimulate a person to consider more things. Thus, Dewey
thought a person should have several general aims in mind at the same time because the plurality of
purposes would set up conditions calling for varied observations that would lead to new questions.
Although Dewey did not want to foster confusion, he wanted experiences to open into other
experiences. His hope was for aims to free people’s activities allowing those experiences to proceed
in ways that led people to have more and better understandings. In this way, aims would
progressively widen and broaden (Dewey, 1916, pp. 109–110).
Commentators have noted that the Eight-Year Study reflected Dewey’s ideas. For example,
recognizing the varied efforts the participants undertook in the Eight-Year Study, Craig Kridel and
Robert V. Bullough, Jr. considered the Eight-Year Study to be a demonstration project that included
an evaluative component comparing the relative success of two groups of students. According to
Kridel and Bullough, the Eight-Year Study encouraged researchers to imitate John Dewey's
approach in the laboratory school by using the study as an opportunity to investigate, to experiment,
and to discover ways to tie teacher development seamlessly to curriculum reform by aiming toward
social improvement (Kridel & Bullough, 2000).
While Kridel and Bullough may have been correct in noting that the PEA members followed
Dewey’s approach to problem solving, Kridel and Bullough overstated the ease with which this
effort moved into other fields such as teacher development. In fact, since the study followed
Dewey’s ideas, it was not a seamless progression. The study was an experience that grew as
opportunities presented themselves, and it changed direction when obstacles appeared. Some
evidence for the view that the participants did not begin with clear goals comes from the different
ways they characterized the inception of the Eight-Year study.
The director of the study, Wilford M. Aikin, credited an anonymous member of the
Progressive Education Association (PEA) with suggesting the idea of the study at a meeting in 1930.
Aikin wrote that several of the two hundred principals and teachers who attended this meeting in
Washington, D.C. complained that college requirements restricted secondary schools from enacting
curriculum reforms in ways that could help students develop their powers and equip them to rebuild
the national life that had been profoundly disturbed by the advent of the Great Depression. As a
result, the unnamed member, who may have been Harold Rugg, recommended that the PEA

Education Policy Analysis Archives Vol. 14 No. 21 4
establish a Commission on the Relation of School and College to explore the possibilities of
coordination between school and college work and to seek freedom for the schools to seek
fundamental reconstruction. In Aikin’s account, since the PEA did not prepare to evaluate the
success of the students in colleges until 1934, the study began as a means to give high school
teachers the opportunity to be free of the feelings of external restraints (Aikin, 1942, pp. 1–2, 23,
105; Krug, 1972, pp. 256–257).
Other members of the PEA claimed the Eight-Year Study was an evaluative study; they
added that the study sought to measure more than the relative success of two groups of students.
For example, Paul B. Diederich, a member of the study’s evaluation staff, wrote that the Eight-Year
Study had two aims. The first was to see whether meeting the traditional requirements for college
entrance made any difference in the academic success of the students. To test this question, the PEA
compared the records of the graduates of traditionally oriented high schools with the
accomplishments of graduates from high schools that did not follow such curriculums. The second
question was whether freeing the secondary schools from external restraints would encourage them
to develop new programs that would be better for young people, for colleges, and for the society.
Diederich explained that the PEA selected a cross section of the secondary schools in the United
States that prepared students for college entrance and arranged for colleges to accept the graduates
of those schools with requiring them to meet the traditional entrance requirements in order to test
the effect freedom had on high schools. He added that the members of the study’s directing
committee, the curriculum consultants, and the members of the evaluation staff took care not to
impose any direction on the schools despite the fears that the participating schools would not wisely
use their freedoms. Instead, they tried to act as facilitators who helped the faculty members in the
participating schools to develop their own programs. Thus, while the traditional schools may have
held to a uniform model of curriculum, the philosophies of the participating schools varied
(Diederich, 1943, p. xvii–xix).
In part, the different accounts resulted because the study changed direction as it gathered
more financial support and added consultants who worked in distinct program elements. According
to Barry D. Karl, in the early twentieth century, groups of experts such as the PEA frequently
sought financial support from organized philanthropies to conduct scientific studies to bring about
wider social change. The process had four steps. First, a core group of interested specialists
identified a problem. Second, these specialists called a conference, involved more people, enlisted
popular newspaper and magazine writers to publicize the concerns, and appealed to philanthropists
to support the project. Third, the experts would make the study. Finally, they wrote a final report
and expected reasonable people to enact the measures they recommended (Karl, 1969, pp. 347–350).
To some extent, the PEA followed the steps described by Karl. One difficulty was that the
stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent depression depleted the resources of the
philanthropic foundations. Thus, the PEA members could not find philanthropists to support the
work. It was not until the foundations recovered their resources that the participants obtained more
money. As a result, for the first year, the study received contributions totaling $800. From 1932 to
1936, the Carnegie foundation supported most of the commission’s work with donations that
totaled $70,000. In 1936, after the first group of students had graduated from high school, the
General Education Board increased contributions until they totaled more than $1.5 million by 1940.
With the money from the General Education Board, the directing committee expanded the
evaluation staff, increased the number of curriculum consultants, and conducted workshops with
faculty in the participating schools (Cremin, 1964, pp. 256–258).
The dramatic increase in the flow of funds during the last four years changed the study. As
money became available from philanthropic foundations, the PEA created several different
commissions and committees to undertake different tasks. At first, the PEA charged the

The Eight-Year Study 5
Commission on the Relation of School and College to determine if the study was necessary, to
recruit schools and colleges to participate, and to organize the effort. To aid participating schools
reconstruct their curriculums, the Commission on the Relation of School and College created the
Commission on Secondary School Curriculum in 1932. This commission formed the Study of
Adolescents in 1934 to find out how the students developed, and it created several committees to
select and order appropriate educational experiences for young people. In 1934, Ralph Tyler joined
the study and began collecting lists of educational objectives from the participating schools. Since
the Study of Adolescents revealed that young people formed their personalities within different sets
of relationships, the PEA created the Commission on Human Relations in October 1935 to suggest
ways that curriculum might demonstrate the ways human beings form relationships. As the first
group of high school graduates entered the colleges in 1936, the Commission on the Relation of
School and College created the College Follow-Up Staff to chart the extent that high school students
profited from the freedom from college admittance requirements. In the same year, the commission
added curriculum consultants who helped the faculty members in the participating high schools
reconstruct their curriculums.
As the dates of formation suggest, the study added the component parts as funds became
available. In fact, the director of the project, Aikin, served part-time until 1935 when funds from the
General Education Board made it possible for him to devote complete attention to the study. Thus,
the study did not have a director who could devote complete attention to the effort until it was
almost half-finished (Giles, McCutchen, & Zechiel, 1942, pp. xxii–xxiii).
In part, the problems in financing caused the nature and aims of the Eight-Year Study to
change as the study proceeded. Since the bulk of the funds supporting curriculum revision in the
high schools came to the study after the first group of students had entered college, those students
could not benefit from the wide range of consulting services that the PEA established. Thus, the
evaluative nature of the study was limited. When money was available, the PEA created services for
the participating schools thereby creating a demonstration project.
Selecting a Curriculum Ideal to Test
The fact that the participating schools in the project employed a variety of curriculum
models made it impossible for the researchers to evaluate the effectiveness of one curriculum model
over another. Nonetheless, this lack of consistency matched the varied nature of the founding
members of the PEA. In 1918, Stanwood Cobb presented to about one hundred people gathered at
the Washington D.C. Public Library a document declaring that the aim of Progressive Education
was to seek the freest and fullest development of the individual, based upon the scientific study of
his or her mental, physical, spiritual, and social characteristics and needs. Although Cobb’s statement
was the basis of organization, it was not his alone. He had formed it in cooperation with people such
as Marietta Johnson, founder of the Organic School in Fairhope, Alabama; Eugene Randolph Smith,
headmaster of Park School; and Laura C. Williams, sponsor of the Washington Forum. Filled with
fervor to reform all of education, these founding members complained that most elementary and
secondary schools harmed children because the teachers forced the students to memorize
information for examinations. Unfortunately, although the PEA members knew what they opposed,
they could not agree on what they favored (Beck, 1942, pp.134–139).
The PEA remained small, and many of the members were involved in private elementary
schools. Although the organization grew during Eight-Year Study, the PEA members could not
easily agree what they wanted to accomplish. For example, the PEA established the Commission on
the Relation of School and College in 1930, and this group met for two years to decide why it should

Education Policy Analysis Archives Vol. 14 No. 21 6
encourage educational reform in secondary schools. Among the twenty-six members of the
commission were high schools principals, college deans, educational philosophers, and evaluation
specialists who had been active in educational reform. When the conferences ended, the members of
the commission drafted a report to the PEA listing seventeen reasons why secondary schools should
change. For example, the first point was that high schools lacked a clear central purpose. The second
was that the high schools failed to give students an appreciation of their heritage as American
citizens. The third was that secondary schools did not provide students with opportunities to
prepare for community life. At the same time, the commission members complained that high
schools did not challenge the students’ intellectual abilities and failed to create conditions for
effective learning. Complaining that the need to prepare students for college dominated high
schools, the commission members asserted that the curriculum did not meet the concerns of youth
(Aikin, 1942, pp. 2–12).
It is important to note that, in the 1920s, many high school teachers and principals
complained that college requirements prevented them from changing their academic requirements.
According to Edward A. Krug, these complaints were excuses and not grievances. Krug noted that
many reformers had tried to change the high schools. Most notable was the National Education
Association’s (NEA) creation of the Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education
(CRSE) to facilitate the transition of students from high school to college. Growing out of the same
complaints about the influence of college entrance requirements on high school programs, the
CRSE report of 1918 proposed that all high schools offer combinations of vocational and academic
courses and social studies courses instead of Latin and mathematics. Krug found that the CRSE
report was widely read, but few high schools changed their programs. He blamed the inertia of the
high school teachers for the lack of change adding that the teachers and principals repeated the
accusations of the rigidity of college entrance requirements to disguise their own unwillingness to
meet the needs of youth (Krug, 1972, pp. 24–27, 55–59, 63–67)
When the PEA members complained about the ways college admission requirements
prevented high schools from changing, those complaints may have been irrelevant. As noted above,
Diederich contended that one of the hypotheses the Eight-Year Study wanted to test was whether
schools would wisely use the freedom from restrictions to create programs designed to meet the
needs of youth. Diederich added that some educators claimed that the teachers would retain the
academic curriculum no matter what freedoms they enjoyed (Diederich, 1943, pp. xvii-xix). In this
way, the study could have isolated the cause of the conservatism if the PEA gave the schools
freedom and the faculty members did not change the curriculums.
At any rate, when the Commission on the Relation of School and College completed its
report in 1932, the commission gave responsibility for conducting the study to a directing committee
of sixteen members chaired by Aikin. Almost immediately, the directing committee secured
agreements from more than 300 colleges to accept the graduates from high schools participating in
the study who had the recommendation of the high school principal and who presented some
record of abilities such as scores on aptitude tests. With these promises from colleges, the directing
committee set about recruiting schools to participate in the study. The participating schools came
from every section of the country except the southeast where a similar program of cooperation was
underway among several colleges and secondary schools sponsored by the Southern Association of
Colleges and Secondary Schools. The range of educational policies in the schools extended from
conservative to radical. Fourteen were public schools or entire public school systems, and sixteen
were private. Although the researchers sought to present a balance of public and private school
experiences, they did not match these students equally. Since the public schools were usually large
and could include an entire district, the majority of the students in the study attended public schools
(Diederich, 1943, p. xviii).

The Eight-Year Study 7
To test the effect of freedom from restrictions on high schools, the directing committee of
the Eight-Year Study wanted the participating schools to be as free as possible in selecting their
curriculums. Consequently, the committee asked the educators in the participating schools to accept
only two principles to gain admittance to the study. The first principle was that life in the school and
the teaching methods would conform to what educators knew about the ways human beings learn
and grow. As the members of the directing committee and representatives of the schools discussed
this requirement, they decided that this meant the students should have opportunities to engage in
activities that had three characteristics: they had meaning for the students, they involved all aspects
of the students’ beings, and they led to other different activities. The second principle was that the
schools should rediscover their reasons for existence (Aikin, 1942, pp. 16–19).
In drafting the first principle for participation in the Eight-Year Study, the members of the
directing committee restated the founding declaration of the PEA retaining their concern for the
individual liberation of the students. They ignored other more comprehensive explanations of
education such as the need for social reform. For example, Aikin noted that neither the members of
the directing committee nor the representatives of the participating schools were willing to devote
time during the meetings to questions of the guiding principles of education. Aikin added that in
submitting statements to the directing committee on their plans during participation in the study, the
educators from the high schools did not present any common aim as they sought to fulfill the
second requirement, to form a reason for their existence. Instead, the themes that the secondary
educators offered included such ideas as adapting the work to the individual student’s needs,
providing greater mastery of skills, and offering opportunities for the release of creative energy
(Aikin, 1942, pp. 30–31).
The unwillingness of participating educators to consider social reform reflected common
attitudes among teachers in the 1920s. For example, several educators became popular by proposing
that curriculums follow students’ interests in such models as the project method. In some cases, the
projects were ways to make abstract learning more practical and immediate. These projects could
begin with students planting gardens and studying the growth of plants or teachers could arrange
large units of history and geography around stories of pioneers moving into the American frontier.
In other cases, the rationale of projects was that children developed the habits of good thinking
when they did what they wanted to do (Whipple, 1934).
The participants in the Eight-Year Study changed their perspectives about wider social aims
by 1937. When the study was nearly complete, representatives from most of the participating
schools decided had to help students understand and appreciate the ideal of democracy that was
basic to the country’s heritage. According to Aikin, once the representatives of the study accepted
the democratic ideal as their overarching purpose or philosophy of education, most of the school
people developed this principle into their work, and it permeated the reports of their schools as they
described what they had done. To illustrate this change, Aikin quoted from the report of the Denver
Public School wherein the authors acknowledged that the faculty and administration in Denver
made no connection between the curriculum and the wider aims of the study until the study had
been underway for four years. Having made such a connection, the officials in Denver sought to
adjust all aspects of school life to the concept of democracy and made the schools into instruments
of personal liberation and of social reform (Aikin, 1942, pp. 30–33).
Aikin did not explain why the representatives of the participating schools waited so long to
connect their efforts to the need to reinforce democracy. Nonetheless, when the Commission on
Secondary School Curriculum published its report, Reorganizing Secondary Education, authors V. T.
Thayer, Caroline B. Zachary, and Ruth Kotinsky claimed that the standards of an appropriate
education could come from an examination of the ideal of democracy. Since the Commission on
Secondary School Curriculum supervised the Study of Adolescents and the various curriculum

Education Policy Analysis Archives Vol. 14 No. 21 8
committees, it was a central part of the Eight-Year Study. According to Thayer and his colleagues,
new social conditions made it imperative for high schools to change the curriculums. Examples of
these social conditions included the rise of anti-democratic groups caused by the advance of the
Great Depression, the ways that industrialization and urbanization had taken away opportunities for
children to participate in essential activities in the home, and the lack of employment opportunities
during the depression. The result was that high schools had increased enrollments and the high
schools had become important institutions. Further, Thayer and his colleagues asserted that the rise
of science had reduced the need for labor and increased wealth and the new technologies caused
insecurities as life styles changed. Thayer and his colleagues added that researchers had created new
theories of learning that recognized the need for students to develop skills of thinking by
understanding and directing their experiences. To Thayer and his colleagues, these changes made
learning less a way to accumulate information and more a method for students to reshape
themselves and their surroundings. The problem, according to Thayer and his colleagues, was that
teachers in secondary schools and colleges ignored these changes and tried to have students acquire
as much of the academic disciplines as possible. To reorganize secondary education, Thayer and his
colleagues thought the high schools should meet students’ needs in ways that reinforced democracy
(Thayer, Zachary, & Kotinsky, 1939, pp. 3–25).
In their report, Reorganizing Secondary Education, Thayer and his colleagues borrowed the
name, the style, and the organization of the report issued in 1918 by the CRSE. Published when all
states had recently adopted compulsory education, the CRSE report described twenty cardinal
principles of secondary education that school people should consider as they coped with rapid social
change, increasing numbers and different types of students, and new ideas in educational theory. In
making these recommendations, the CRSE had accumulated the findings of several subcommittees
concerned with the function of various subject matters (NEA, 1918).
The 1939 report of the PEA’s Commission on Secondary School Curriculum for the Eight-
Year Study followed in three important ways the pattern of the CRSE cardinal principles report. The
first way was that the PEA’s commission did not describe plans the secondary schools should
follow. Instead, imitating the CRSE, the commission described a set of ideas. The second way was
that the PEA commission charged various sub-committees to show how to translate these basic
ideas into practice. In 1932, the Executive Board of the PEA had created the Commission on
Secondary School Curriculum headed by Thayer and his colleagues to focus attention on the needs
of youth and to further experimentation in curriculum revision. Consequently, the commission
started the Study of Adolescents to determine what the students needed in order to grow and it
created several sub-committees devoted to the study of curriculum approaches in such areas as art,
language, science, mathematics, and social studies. Thayer and his colleagues claimed the curriculums
should offer means to satisfy the students’ needs as defined by the Study of Adolescents. At the
same time, they warned that this research could not define the standards toward which students
should grow. Instead, they noted that the research could offer insight into the essential values of the
adolescent. It could illuminate trends that enhanced or retarded the students’ abilities to realize their
desires. In turn, the sub-committees could show school people how they could provide standards
that enabled the youth to grow in desirable directions. This led to the third way the PEA
commission’s report was similar to the cardinal principles report. Both documents contended that
the way to determine the standards for appropriate education could come from an examination of
the ideal of democracy (Thayer et al., 1939, pp. v-ix, 54–59).
In making the standards of education come from an examination of the ideal of democracy,
Thayer and his colleagues may have thought they were following the ideas of Boyd Bode, a
professor at The Ohio State University. Bode served on the directing committee of the Commission
on the Relation of School and College, and for the first year he was a member of the Commission

The Eight-Year Study 9
on Secondary School Curriculum. More important, Bode had close relations with the commission
members. For example, in 1924, when Bode was the head of the Department of Principles and
Practice in Education at The Ohio State University, he hired Thayer who in 1932 became the chair
of the Commission on Secondary School Curriculum. Although Thayer left Bode’s department in
1928, they became such friends during those four years that Thayer claimed Bode had shaped his
entire pattern of thinking (Bullough, 1981, pp. 64–66).
In 1938, Bode published his book, Progressive Education at the Crossroads, in which he
criticized progressive educators for placing too much faith in the individual. According to Bode,
progressive educators nurtured the pathetic hope that they could find out how to educate children
by cataloguing the children’s interests and protecting the children’s freedoms. Bode complained that
progressive educators made children’s freedom into a form of absolutism because they forbade
adults to interfere in the children’s desires to do things (Bode, 1938, pp. 39–41).
When Bode noted that progressive educators commissioned studies of adolescence in order
to determine children’s needs, he worried that progressive educators believed they could find a
pattern of instruction in a listing of the children’s needs. Bode argued that this hope was similar to
an architect expecting the plans for a building to emerge from a study of the materials out of which
the building would be constructed. To Bode, the students’ needs came from the students’ way of
life. Thus, educators had to construct the curriculum in reference to the social order. Since the
progressives admired democracy, Bode urged them to recognize the complex relationships the
democratic ideal created in the modern world. He believed that in this way progressive educators
could find the proper direction for curriculum development (Bode, 1938, pp. 67–71). This is the
view that Thayer and his colleagues expressed in their commission’s report.
Although Thayer and his colleagues appeared to follow Bode’s ideas, Bode disagreed. In a
review of Reorganizing Secondary Education, Bode noted that the report began well by pointing out
that teachers should treat students’ wishes in ways that improved those desires. Nonetheless, Bode
complained that the report soon fell into apart because it claimed the direction of these changes
came from the democratic tradition. If Thayer could make this claim for the American tradition,
Hitler could make a similar claim for a Nazi tradition. If the report by Thayer and his colleagues
represented the PEA’s program for reorganization, Bode concluded that it would fail because it did
not represent a fundamental reorganization. When democracy appeared as a standard, it
contradicted the hope behind democracy that intelligent people could find answers for themselves
(Bode, 1940).
In his reply, Thayer expressed shock and disappointment. He went on to quote from his
report to show that his committee did not conceive of students’ needs in a limited sense. Further,
Thayer retorted that his committee adopted democracy as an ideal because it implied standards that
provided a frame of reference without resorting to eternal principles similar to those a dictator might
impose (Thayer, 1940).
Moving toward a Demonstration Project
When the Eight-Year Study began, the Commission on the Relation of School and College
had held annual conferences of representatives from the schools to determine how to form
curriculums. The PEA’s effort to seek cooperation from the participating schools was part of the
effort to free the schools from principles of curriculum organization imposed by outside institutions.
Unfortunately, these conferences were inadequate because they lasted only a few days. In 1936, with
increased funds from the General Education Board, the PEA began summer workshops as an
experiment in the in-service training of teachers. At the same time, in 1936, the Study of

Education Policy Analysis Archives Vol. 14 No. 21 10
Adolescents began to explore the needs of youth as a basis for curriculum theory, the sub-
committees for curriculum areas had generated instructional ideas, and the evaluation staff was
seeking ways measure the results of curriculum innovations. Since the information from these
efforts could help teachers, the PEA held the first six-week long seminar for teachers of science and
mathematics at Ohio State University in 1936. They held a similar workshop at Sarah Lawrence
College in 1937. Open to teachers across the United States, the Sarah Lawrence conference required
teachers to bring some definite instructional problem on which they were working. In 1938, the
PEA set up additional workshops in New York, Colorado, and California (Ryan and Tyler, 1939, pp.
5–7).
The workshops did not consist of formal classes. Instead, the teachers and the sub-
committee members worked cooperatively, exchanged ideas, and sought practical teaching
innovations. In each of the workshops, the participants concentrated on ways to meet individual
students’ needs. Usually, the teachers spent the mornings in small group meetings that focused on
some particular subject such as science, social science, or student guidance. In the afternoon, groups
might meet to consider topics such as evaluation or test making. In all these cases, attendance at
these meetings was voluntary. Consequently, many teachers worked independently (Ryan and Tyler,
1939, p. 15).
When the workshop coordinators tabulated the participants’ responses to questionnaires,
they found several things that participants thought had made workshops productive experiences.
For example, the groups of teachers worked best when program directors formed teams in which all
the members could contribute. This meant that the directors had to choose staff members and
participating teachers who could work cooperatively and who could bring instructional problems to
the workshops that would lead to other considerations without being so broad they defied
resolution. Further, the teachers in every group at the summer workshops noted they could not
complete their work until they had some understanding of a general philosophy of education.
Although the members of the various groups focused their conversations on specific subject
matters, they had turned to questions about the function of the subject matter in general education
at some point in the process. Nonetheless, the members of the summer workshops agreed that
specific instruction in the philosophy of education would not have been helpful. They contended
that the understandings of philosophy had to arise from their struggles with specific issues. They
claimed they would not have benefited from attending lectures comparing various philosophic
systems (Ryan and Tyler, 1939, pp. 38–46).
Since a philosophy was to arise from efforts to solve classroom problems, these summer
workshop participants expressed the view about democratic teaching methods that permeated the
Eight-Year Study. This was a bias to work inductively. For example, the curriculum sub-committees
urged teachers to use inductive methods of curriculum construction and instruction. In this model,
curriculum would begin with the recognition of the students’ problems and the belief that the
subject matter would provide the means to solve those difficulties.
To some extent, when Thayer and his colleagues planned the work of their Commission on
Secondary Curriculum, they followed an inductive format. That is, they looked to the researchers on
the Study of Adolescents to suggest the framework that the curriculum sub-committees would
follow. In the final report of the Commission on Secondary School Curriculum, Reorganizing
Secondary Education, Thayer and his colleagues claimed that the Study of Adolescents had found
most students had similar needs and that the needs fell into the categories of immediate social
relationships, wider social relationships, economic relationships, and personal living. Thayer and his
colleagues added that the curriculum sub-committees had found ways that teachers could take these
four categories of needs into account and help the students change these needs in desirable ways. In
all cases, the direction in which the teacher would direct the changes was toward the democratic

The Eight-Year Study 11
tradition that implied the worth of the individual, the relationship the individual had with his or her
group, and the free play of intelligence to solve problems (Thayer et al., 1939, pp. 44, 50, 86).
When the sub-committees on curriculum translated these general statements into specific
suggestions, their reports recommended an inductive method of instruction. Taking their direction
from the three tenets of the democratic tradition that Thayer and his colleagues expressed, the
subcommittees recommended that teachers value the problems that the students faced, concentrate
on the relationships the individual had with the group, and enhance the free play of intelligence.
Bode had made these same recommendations when he wrote Progressive Education at the
Crossroads (Bode, 1938, pp. 120–122).
A description of the report of the Committee on the Function of Science in General
Education illustrated the ways the subcommittees on curriculum infused a bias for induction into its
work. Published in 1938, the report served as the model for the other curriculum committee reports.
In suggesting why and how teachers could tailor the instruction to the needs of students, the report
noted that teachers should concentrate on the relationships the individual had with the group. It
recommended that lessons should enhance the students’ ability to think. Since the committee was
drafting a manual to teach science as a part of general education, the authors set out what they called
a frame of reference. This included a definition of the purpose of general education as meeting the
needs of individuals in ways that promoted the realization of personal potential and the most
effective participation in a democratic society. Since the definition depended on what the members
of the committee on science thought were student needs, the authors repeated the claim of Thayer
and his colleagues that students’ needs fell into four categories. For the authors of the science
report, their frame of reference listed the student needs as personal living, immediate personal-social
relationships, social-civic relationships, and economic relationships. The authors of the report of the
committee on science claimed the areas of pure or applied science could aid in meeting the students’
needs because the disciplines could illuminate the ways the students’ lives were changing and how
society developed. Finally, the frame of reference included the recognition that democracy required
three interrelated qualities: optimum development of personality, reciprocal individual and group
responsibility for promoting common concerns, and the free play of intelligence (PEA, 1938, pp.
23–57).
Building on their frame of reference, the members of the committee on science described a
method by which science teachers could construct an appropriate curriculum. The process began
with teachers making investigations to discover the problems and interests of the specific students in
the classrooms and conducting surveys of the community to determine such factors as occupational
conditions, civic atmosphere, and religious climate. Thus, the process began in an inductive fashion.
To the information about the specific students and the local community, the teachers could add
reports from professional educational organizations, findings from authoritative books on science,
information from textbooks, and patterns of organization from courses of study from other schools
to determine the scientific material that could be included in the curriculum. From this information,
the teachers, students, and other curriculum makers could decide what materials to include and how
to present them. Although the report suggested several models teachers could follow in designing
the courses, the committee on science refused to recommend any specific one. The members
claimed that teachers should select the style of the curriculum that best suited the needs of the
students and the characteristics of the community (PEA, 1938, pp. 443–454).
Since the Committee on the Function of Science in General Education was the first to
publish its report, the other committees such as the Committee on the Function of the Social
Studies in General Education sought to blend those suggestions with the findings from the Study of
Adolescents. While the authors thought the perspective they took would result in revolutionary
changes in secondary schools, they did not recommend any specific form of curriculum

Education Policy Analysis Archives Vol. 14 No. 21 12
organization. They believed the changes would come from the teachers’ growth in insight and
thoughtful personal experimentation (American Education Fellowship, 1940, pp. v–ix).
It is important to note that the reports of the curriculum committees were reports of the
conclusions from the demonstration project. The activities of the curriculum specialists and the
child psychologists took place after the first group of students had graduated from the participating
schools. While the workshops for teachers represented reasonable demonstration projects, they had
not begun in time to be important parts of the evaluation project. Even Bode’s complaints about the
tendencies of progressives to build curriculums on lists of students’ needs came late in the study. To
some extent, the lack of funding delayed the start. For example, the funds to support the curriculum
consultants did not arrive until 1936.
The alterations in the Eight-Year Study were not the exclusive result of increased financial
support. They were an aspect of the model of thinking the members of the study followed. As one
set of problems revealed another set of difficulties, they opened new questions that led to new
thoughts. As a result, the participants in the project could not have considered these aspects in 1930
before they began their efforts. Nonetheless, the lack of planning did not deprive the Eight-Year
Study of practical effects. For example, Daniel and Laurel Tanner credit the Eight-Year Study with
making the idea of teacher workshops to bring about curriculum change an important aspect of
teacher in-service training for most school districts (Tanner and Tanner, 1990, pp. 235).
Growth as the Criterion of Educational Evaluation
Faced with the difficulty of determining the effects of the new curriculums, the progressive
educators devised methods of evaluation in the same inductive manner they used to create the
curriculum. In 1932, when the directing committee of the Commission on the Relation of Schools
and Colleges secured the consent of 300 colleges to waive their traditional entrance requirements,
the directing committee had not specified what the schools would have to provide to satisfy the
admissions officers of the colleges. As a result, the directing committee established a Committee of
Records to help determine what information about the students to gather, how to collect it, and how
to present it (Aikin, 1942, pp. 11–16).
The Committee of Records worked for two years selecting different tests the participating
schools could use to verify the mastery their students had achieved in various fields. Educators from
several schools complained that general tests reduced the possibility of curricular innovation because
such tests would measure the students’ abilities to recall specific subject matters in traditional
fashions. It fell to Ralph W. Tyler to solve this problem. In 1934, Tyler joined the study as research
director for the Eight-Year Study to coordinate the work of the College Follow-Up Staff. He made a
preliminary study of the research needs and devised plans to construct evaluation instruments. In
1936, when Tyler received a substantial contribution from the General Education Board, he
established an evaluation staff and to help participating schools evaluate their work in relation to
their own goals (Smith, Tyler, & Staff, 1942, pp. 3–5).
According to Tyler biographer Morris Finder, the Eight-Year Study had reached a crucial
impasse before Tyler joined the program. The Carnegie Corporation threatened to recall their
funding of the Eight-Year Study unless the PEA used the General Culture Test that the
Pennsylvania Study of School and College Relations had developed. Finder claimed that the
representatives of the participating schools resisted because the test would impose a curriculum; the
teachers would gear instruction toward the test. When Tyler suggested that tests should cover what
the students learned in the classes, the PEA hired him to direct the research and the Carnegie
Corporation restored the funding (Finder, 2004, pp. 16–17).

The Eight-Year Study 13
Tyler and his staff chose to use evaluation rather than measurement because the former
implied a process through which the educators in the participating schools clarified the values they
pursued. In this process of evaluation, the staff assumed that teachers sought to change students’
behavior and these changes represented the objectives. To find out if the teachers succeeded in
bringing about these behavioral changes, the evaluation staff used more than one measure or test
because the evaluators realized that the traits of human behavior were complicated and interrelated.
Thus, the evaluation staff used observational records, questionnaires, lists of activities, and
interviews as well as typical paper and pencil tests. Most important, in this process, evaluation was
the responsibility of everyone in the school, and everyone shared in the preparation and application
of the procedures (Smith, Tyler, & Staff, 1942, pp. 5–15).
When the evaluation staff worked with the educators in the participating schools, they
followed a set of procedures that involved seven steps. First, the faculty members formulated a
statement of the objectives they sought in the curriculums. Second, they sorted these objectives into
different categories and levels of generality or specificity. Third, the teachers defined what behaviors
they wanted the students to exhibit. Fourth, they noted what situations would call forth those
behaviors. Fifth, the teachers selected the measures that would indicate the relative success of the
students for each objective, and in the sixth step, the evaluation staff refined those measures. In the
last step, the faculty and the evaluation staff decided what the accumulated information indicated
about the program (Smith, Tyler, & Staff, 1942, pp. 5–34).
In following these steps, the evaluation staff and the teachers in the participating schools
developed methods to assess such apparently elusive qualities as the ability to think clearly. The way
they did this was to break the general activity into constituent parts. In one example, the evaluation
staff selected the ability to interpret data; the ability to apply principles from the sciences, from the
social sciences, and from logic; and the ability to understand the nature of proof. To measure these
abilities, the staff broke these parts into related behaviors such as the ability to perceive relationships
in data and the ability to recognize limitations of data. To measure student achievements, the staff
and the teachers constructed tests wherein the students would perform the functions in ways their
successes could be measured (Smith, Tyler, & Staff, 1942, pp. 35–47).
Since Tyler formed the evaluation staff after 1936, most of the work in evaluation with the
schools took place after the educators had decided to integrate their efforts around the social ideal
of democracy. As a result, the efforts the evaluation staff undertook considered the development of
skills that would lead to widespread social reform while they preserved the original concern for
personal liberation. For example, the evaluation staff sought to enable school people to inculcate
social sensitivity among the students and to measure their success in teaching students to be aware
of social problems, to avoid dogmatic precepts, and to participate in groups concerned with social
action. In these efforts, the evaluation staff formed two committees to take statements about
objectives for social sensitivity and make analyses that would provide the foundation for its
evaluation. From 1935 to 1938, a Committee on the Evaluation of Reading held meetings to develop
instruments that would help teachers appraise students’ reactions to reading. The committee chose
to measure various personal reactions such as satisfaction with reading, the desire to read more, the
desire to know more, and the desire to express oneself creatively. In 1938, the evaluation staff began
studying ways to understand, to teach, and to measure personal and social adjustment. Using
information from the Study of Adolescents, the evaluation staff distinguished between personal
adjustment, feelings of adequacy, and social adjustment, abilities to develop relationships providing
adequate and effective interactions. Defining adjustment as a series of compromises that allowed the
individual and the group to avoid conflicts, the evaluation staff chose to use paper and pencil
surveys to measure the essential traits such as acceptance of oneself, enjoyment of home life, and
activities that involve members of the opposite sex. The advantages of questionnaires were that they

Education Policy Analysis Archives Vol. 14 No. 21 14
groups of students could complete them, they could be measured objectively, and the results from
one individual could be compared to the results from another person (Smith, Tyler, & Staff, 1942,
pp. 157–162, 245–251, 349–361).
In these ways, the evaluation staff devised strategies of measurement that fit the aims of the
school people. Tyler could apply his method to any type of school although he forced teachers to
use behavioral objectives and to plan the curriculum in ways that pointed to measurable changes in
students’ behavior. Thus, Tyler’s method held student growth to be the aim. In line with the
inductive bias of the Eight-Year Study, Tyler’s approach began with the concrete situation or
problem the teachers faced. It asked the teachers to think about their aims and to state those
objectives in ways that enabled to recognize success or failure. Consequently, evaluation in Tyler’s
hands was specific to the situation. Instead of devising a test, he wanted to help the teachers in the
classrooms resolve the problems they faced.
Tyler created his method of evaluation because representatives from the participating
schools feared that a system of evaluation would dictate a specific curriculum approach. As noted
above, the directing committee took pains to avoid pressuring the schools to adopt any model of
curriculum or teaching. Indeed, Tyler’s method of creating curriculums through the adoption of
measurable changes in students’ behavior remains an important contribution of the Eight-Year
Study. Nonetheless, the participating schools could not use it until well after the first group of
students had graduated from the participating schools. Thus, although the Eight-Year Study
provided an opportunity for Tyler to create and demonstrate his rationale for curriculum
development, it did not affect the curriculums of the first graduates from the participating schools.
Completing the Evaluation Project
To complete the evaluation portion, the College Follow-Up Staff faced a daunting task. First,
the directing committee had selected participating schools that differed widely. Thus, the staff could
not make simple comparisons. Second, the College Follow-Up Staff did not begin its work until the
study was half over. Therefore, the members had to find ways to measure the effects of work already
finished. Descriptions from Milton Academy and the Ohio State University Schools illustrate the
extent of the first problem by showing the differences among the participating schools.
Explanations of how the College Follow-Up Staff constructed its measures illustrate the ingenuity
they used in evaluating a program that was nearly complete.
In the volume Thirty Schools Tell their Story, the educators at Milton Academy described
their school as one that retained a conservative approach. The authors contended that the primary
aim of Milton Academy was to shape the curriculum for the aptitudes of each student. Claiming the
academy had followed a policy of holding conferences between students and advisors and among
parents and faculty for more than 33 years, the authors described how the faculty had created a
variety of ways for students to master the subject matters. While acknowledging that instruction
within the academy remained focused on mastery of academic subjects, the authors noted how,
during the Eight-Year Study, faculty shortened the periods of drill for the various sections of the
College Board Examinations. The authors proudly noted that student success rates remained high
despite having less direct preparation for the examinations. At the same time, the authors noted how
a few students had undertaken independent studies under close faculty supervision (Thirty schools,
1943, pp. 483–490).
On the other hand, at the Ohio State University School, the subject matters had little
separate identity. In general, the students enrolled in core courses that included several subject
matters related in functional ways. Not only did the students work cooperatively on these projects,

The Eight-Year Study 15
but the administrators, the counselors, the teachers, and the parents worked in cooperative,
democratic relationships. In addition to frequent conferences among these parties, faculty
representatives served on more than twelve committees that take responsibility for various areas of
governance. Even student evaluation comprised a medley of measures. Organized in cumulative
folders, the measures included records of accomplishments, performance on achievement tests,
anecdotal records of teachers, and reactions of parents (Thirty schools, 1943, pp. 718–745).
In 1938, the students of the Ohio State University School wrote and a major publishing firm
released the 300-page Were We Guinea Pigs? to record their accomplishments. Claiming that the
aim of the school was to fit every student to the place in life for which he or she was most suited,
the students described how they worked together with their teachers on several projects. The first
was to change their classrooms into a home. This required studies of such subjects as home
economics to select furniture, of architecture and aesthetics to design the layout, and of science and
literature to select the library resources. To perform the work, the students formed committees and
divided the responsibilities. They wrote the text in a similar cooperative way. Since the students
governed and shared the work, they claimed there were no problems with discipline. Each student
accomplished as much as he or she was able (Ohio State University School, 1938, pp. 3, 29–54, 295–
299).
Despite the differences among the experiences of students in participating schools, the
original question remained as to whether students from high schools freed from college entrance
requirements would do as well students who met those requirements. In July 1936, the Commission
on the Relation of School and College used the funds it received from the General Education Board
to set up a staff of four deans from prestigious universities, a college instructor, and a university
placement officer to evaluate the college experiences of the graduates of the participating schools.
Although this College Follow-Up Staff began its work after the first group of students had entered
college, they sought ways to compare the students’ progress with those of students from traditional
schools (Chamberlin, Chamberlin, Drought, & Scott, 1942, pp. 1–3).
The College Follow-Up Staff had to define and to measure college success. To accomplish
this goal, the staff chose to use such things as student grades, honors, questionnaires, interviews in
which students revealed their interests and activities, reports from instructors, and a series of tests of
reading and research skills as measures of college success. In addition, the College Follow-Up Staff
had to select control groups and collect data after the students had left the participating schools.
Since they could not set up control groups, the staff chose use a process of statistical matching to
create comparisons. The staff matched about 1500 of the graduates of participating schools with
students who were attending the same type of university and were similar in regards to sex, race, age,
type of secondary school, home community, and social or economic class. In 1936, the first year the
graduates entered college, the staff conducted several interviews and distributed questionnaires
frequently. As more students entered college, though, the frequency with which the staff sampled
the students declined. In all, the staff collected data from four years for the 1936 graduates of
participating schools. They collected data for three years from the 1937 graduates, for two years
from the 1938 graduates, and for one year from the 1939 graduates (Chamberlin, et al., 1942, pp. 3–
14).
In the staff’s report, the authors acknowledged the many problems that they encountered.
For example, College Follow-Up Staff noted that some of the participating schools offered
traditional subject matter curriculums and required that students take College Board Examinations
while other schools offered radical curriculums and did not ask students to pursue traditional
examinations. To assess the differences in these distinct curriculum approaches, the College Follow-
Up Staff measured the differences between the graduates of the most progressive schools and their
comparison students (Chamberlin, et al., 1942, pp. 17–21).

Education Policy Analysis Archives Vol. 14 No. 21 16
The results were favorable if not spectacular. For example, the College Follow-Up Staff
found that the graduates from the participating schools in the study earned slightly higher grades.
They appeared more intellectually curious, objective in their thinking, and resourceful. Since these
small differences appeared consistently, the College Follow-Up Staff claimed that benefits did not
occur by chance. They concluded that the participating schools did a somewhat better job of
preparing the students for college. The greatest differences came when the follow-up staff compared
the results of the students from the most progressive schools such as the Ohio State University
School with the students from less innovative participating schools, such as Milton Academy. The
staff proclaimed that students profited more from the more experimental schools (Chamberlin, et
al., 1942, pp. 206–209).
The College Follow-Up Staff claimed their study showed that colleges could safely leave the
preparation of students to the teachers in the secondary schools. The teachers could find ways to
serve the different students in their classes and produce students who could complete college work.
The follow-up staff added that the teachers in the participating schools had advanced beyond the
college faculty members. While those teachers had worked together to form consistent philosophies
of education, the college faculty members had not. In most cases, college training consisted of a
sequence of unrelated courses taught by professors who were unconcerned with the students
(Chamberlin, et al., 1942, pp. 210–213).
Perhaps the most important finding the College Follow-Up Staff made was the difference
between the graduates of the more progressive schools and the more conservative ones. The Ohio
State University School had designed the curriculum in the ways that the curriculum consultants for
the Eight-Year Study recommended because the faculty members sought to meet the needs of the
students and to help them learn to think rationally and become cooperative citizens. Milton
Academy represented the type of school that the consultants disliked because the faculty considered
curriculum reform to be reducing time spent in drill over Latin verbs. Although the students of the
Ohio State University School did not study strictly defined academic courses, they did better in
college than did the graduates of Milton Academy.
Influence of the Eight-Year Study
In 1942, the College-Follow-Up Staff could not comment on the success of the students
who went to work instead of college or the success of the students after college. Although the Eight-
Year Study had shown that radical the changes in high school programs led to improved student
performance in college, the PEA members complained that the experiment did not cause
widespread curriculum reforms in secondary schools.
In 1950, Frederick L Redefer, the former director of the PEA during the study, claimed that
most of the experimental schools returned to conservative practices within eight years of the Eight-
Year Study’s end. Redefer based his conclusion on the results of a survey he conducted during a
meeting he had called of the heads of the participating schools. He found that two of the
participating schools had closed and several of the schools had new headmasters or principals.
Although a few school leaders reported that the faculty members in their schools retained liberal
educational viewpoints and sought to overcome subject matter distinctions, no school engaged in
developing programs of general education as the Eight-Year Study had emphasized. Only one
school reported continuing work on the core curriculum that had been popular among the
participating schools. Most important, no school reported that the needs of the adolescents
dominated curriculum planning as they had during the study. Most of the participating school
officials told Redefer that their schools had retreated toward traditional college preparatory

The Eight-Year Study 17
programs. Furthermore, Redefer complained about the poor sales of the books written by the
committees involved in the Eight-Year Study. The basic volume sold 6,400 copies and other reports
sold about 1,000 copies apiece, though there were over 325,000 secondary teachers at the time and
more than 500 teacher training institutions (Redefer, 1950).
Redefer’s complaints about the books reflected his own feelings more than they described
the situation. Since the books about the Eight-Year Study were destined for libraries rather than
coffee tables, low sales figures seem reasonable. In fact, other studies showed that the Eight-Year
Study had extensive impact on curriculum research. For example, in 1950 William W. Brinkman
concluded that most of the descriptions of practices and principles of secondary education came
from the Eight-Year Study. If there was a problem, Brinkman thought the difficulty was that
educators adopted the findings or the examples set by the study without subjecting them to adequate
criticism (Brinkman, 1950, pp. 90–91).
Two factors make it difficult to recognize the influence of the Eight-Year Study. First, the
way the PEA set about this effort was roughly similar to the conclusions they derived. That is, the
various committees and subcommittees engaged in forms of inductive thinking. They moved from
particular situations to derive some general principles for action. Further, when those committees
decided how to structure lessons, they recommended that teachers use the same from to teach the
students to think in the same inductive pattern. Since this method of thinking led to diverse results,
it was difficult to gauge how many schools followed it. Second, the model of the research the PEA
followed called on experts to raise public awareness to a set of problems and to make
recommendations for people to consider. This requirement that citizens consider the findings
reduced the role of direct planning for utilization. The public could use the findings as they wished.
According to Karl, the uncertainty of democracy had caused some liberal social scientists during the
1920s to call for a form of dictatorship such as found in Mussolini’s Italy. He added that the model
of the surveys retained faith in people’s rationality. In that way, the model followed the ideas John
Dewey expressed in his book, The public and its problems (Karl, 1969).
In The public and its problems, Dewey noted that people could not understand modern,
urban societies. Consequently, they needed experts to illuminate the complex events that unfolded
around them. Unfortunately, the experts tended to remove themselves from common interests and
to become a class of their own. To make experts share in a democratic form of government, Dewey
recommended that experts work to improve the methods and conditions of the public debates. He
thought that experts could perform inquiries and disseminate information enabling people to have
intelligent discussions about public issues. As a result, the public could cast intelligent votes during
elections for particular policies, and they could oversee the execution of those plans (Dewey, 1927,
pp. 205–209).
Although the vagaries of democratic policy setting may hide the influence of the Eight-Year
Study, they illustrate the differences in the model of evaluation that the PEA used and the more
focused models program evaluators use today. While focus, utility, and causal theories are important,
other less stringent paths can be beneficial especially if an important goal is the growth of the
participants. For theorists such as John Dewey, the hope that one experience could change another
experience required that planning be tentative at best. The tentative nature of the planning made it
democratic because people could set and change their own purposes in line with the needs of the
wider organizations.
In one sense, the effects of the Eight-Year Study may have been ironical; the study may have
had such extensive influence that it hastened the demise of the organization. The Eight-Year Study
attracted large numbers of educators to join the PEA. In 1932, the association had 5,400 members,
and the membership reached a peak of 10,440 by 1938. Unfortunately, when the Eight-Year Study
ended, the association could not find other donors for other projects. Worse, other educational

Education Policy Analysis Archives Vol. 14 No. 21 18
organizations, such as the Association for Supervision and Curriculum and Development, adopted
the new education and competed with the PEA. According to Patricia Alberg Graham, the ideas
from the Eight-Year Study became so widespread that younger educators looked upon them as the
conventional wisdom. Amidst considerable criticism, in 1955 the PEA disbanded, and two years
later its journal Progressive Education ceased publication (Graham, 1967, pp. 139–142).
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Education Policy Analysis Archives Vol. 14 No. 21 20
About the Author
Joseph Watras
University of Dayton
Email: Joseph.Watras@notes.udayton.edu
Responsible for courses in the history and philosophy of education at the University of
Dayton, Joseph Watras is the author of Politics, Race, and Schools, Foundations of Curriculum
and Diversity, and Philosophic Conflicts in American Education. With Christine Woyshner and
Margaret Smith Crocco, he is an editor of Social Education in the Twentieth Century.

The Eight-Year Study 21
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The Eight-Year Study 23
Archivos Analíticos de Políticas Educativas
Associate Editors
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