An empirical investigation similar to the above in early childhood and early adolescence suggests that school type may influence the students' moral development. McCann and Bell (1975) report on 20 children between the ages of 6 and 11 matched on various characteristics and assessed in two differ- ent schools, one stressing adherence to authority and the other stressing democratic decision making (a Freiret school of Montreal). The children in the latter environment showed significantly higher levels of moral development than the other group. The dependent measure, however, involved stories adopted from Piaget (1932) using Kohlberg's (1963) scoring criteria. No reliability or validity properties of the measure are reported. It should be noted, however, that this study did not measure change as it is directly influenced by an intervention. In- stead, it showed differences that exist across types of courses. A priori subject characteristics, then, may be responsible for the differences.