New Hampshire wonders which came first - the extracurricular activities, or the high scores?
A questionnaire given to 10th grade students taking part in this past spring's New Hampshire Education Improvement and Assessment Program testing also shows that students who work limited hours while attending classes also have a firmer grasp on subjects...This year's 10th graders were offered a questionnaire that sheds lights on how activity outside the classroom might impact learning...a statewide analysis of results showed that student who took part in five or more extracurricular activities (i.e. sports, band, theater and more) had the highest mean scale score on this years test.
Students who took part in five or more such activities — of which Laconia had 9 percent responding — had a statewide mean scale score of 269 out of 300 points in reading and 270 out of 300 in math...The questionnaire showed that students who took part in no extracurricular activities...[had mean scores that] place [those] students in a category that identifies them as having a "basic" knowledge of those subjects.
The polling data showed in general that the more extracurricular activities a student took part in, the higher they scored....One difficult thing to determine is whether students are performing better because they are involved in such activities or whether students who are more committed to school are more likely to engage themselves in endeavors outside the classroom...
Yes, indeedy, it is a difficult thing to determine. It's not a surprise that students who work fewer hours, read more outside of class, and take part in more outside activities have higher test scores, but it isn't simple to disentangle these and draw firm conclusions about what causes what.
For example, students could be urged to work less outside of school, which would leave them more time for reading and other activities. But students from low-income families might be forced to work many hours, and it might be the genetics, family dynamics, home environment, and/or lack of parental education that drive the low test scores more than the time spent behind the counter at Burger King. For such a student, the familial incentive to read (or join the marching band) might be nil, while the time spent as a cashier might be helping them learn valuable job and cognitive skills as well as keeping them from unproductive extracurricular activities.
But there was one survey result that suggests a pretty clear cause-and-effect relationship (if I understand the tortured phrasing correctly):
Students who responded as receiving regular homework assignments also showed to perform considerably better on the math portion of the test than those who did not.Posted by kswygert at September 12, 2005 12:48 PM