The Eight-Year Study was an experiment that tested how American progressive secondary schools would prepare their students for college when released from the curricular restrictions of college admissions requirements. Between 1933 and 1941, the Progressive Education Association sponsored curricular experimentation in 29 model schools with the security that over 200 colleges would admit their students on the recommendations of their principals rather than curricular requirements. The schools received curricular consultants, but were otherwise uninhibited in their curricular choices. Their changes tended towards individualized student attention, with more cross-disciplinary programming and greater emphasis on arts and extracurriculars. The General Education Board and other foundations offered significant financial backing towards the study.
The study concluded that, when compared to their peers in traditional secondary school programs, students of the study's experimental programs performed on par academically and showed more activity in artistic, political, and social engagement. Students of the study's most experimental schools outperformed the others. The implications of the study were limited by the natural advantages of the student–participants' high social class backgrounds and their schools' lack of privations, even before the study's added resources. The reforms instituted in the participant schools subsided within a decade of the study's end, owing to the more conservative political climate of World War II and the Cold War, the reforms' increased labor demands on teachers, and increased competition in college admissions. Nevertheless, the study showed that the curricular structure of American high schools could change under propitious conditions. Its influence was reflected not in direct change but its influence on its participants and subsequent reformers.