Throughout my first year as an inner city high school teacher, I have been personally exposed to many of the harsh realities that have plagued our wonderful city for some time. In addition to the immense joys I have received interacting with a new culture and experiencing a new way of life, I have likewise witnessed first hand the poverty and lack of resources that so many of our citizens struggle with on a daily basis. Needless to say, there is more to New York City than the Mickey Mouse, Time Square image we try to sell to tourists and there are many socioeconomic issues that have yet to be resolved. Being that I entered the field of education within this environment, I immediately felt as though I had to confront a variety of social and political issues I had never even thought about in my own education. Within a short period of time, I needed to develop my own code of ethics to exist within the chaos that surrounded me and had to decide where I stood on some of these hotly contested topics. What situations would I be willing to let go, and where did need to draw the line and speak my mind? While I am still learning about the issues present in the field of education and my philosophies are changing on a seemingly regular basis, I am interested in exploring the links between extra-curricular activities and student achievement, and the lack of funding for these programs throughout the city.
I first became interested in this topic after a discussion with one of the baseball coaches at my school. Since he had just helped lead our team to the city championship earlier in the summer, I though he would be ecstatic about the state of sports and extra-curricular activities within the school. This, however, proved to be far from his state of mind. He then explained to me that of the roughly 1,500 female students scattered across the four educational campuses of our building, only 54 of those students had participated in school athletic programs over the course of the year. Being that less than 4% of the female student population had participated in these activities, he felt as though our athletics program could not be considered a success. While the athletes themselves were passing their classes and achieving in school, the coach could not help but think about all the students who were left out of the process simply because we did not have the money to invest in more opportunities for them to play. Whether it was through clubs, intramural teams, or more junior varsity programs, he wholeheartedly believed that we needed to do more through sports and the arts programs to keep our kids off the streets and offer activities that would make them want to succeed in the classroom.
The more I thought about the coaches arguments, the more I believed in his message. Many studies suggest that sports and extra curricular activities greatly support student academic achievement. If this is truly the case, then why isn't the city doing more to support these programs? Why isn't this a higher priority within the budget system? Now that I have had some time to reflect back on the school year, I cannot help but think about how little the majority of New York City high schools offer to their students. We do not help them get jobs or internships, we do not offer enough clubs or after school programs to keep them off the streets, and we do not provide positive and fun outlets for their creative endeavourers. That being said, is it really a surprise that so many students feel disenfranchised by the public school system and fail to live up to their academic potential? By offering interesting programs outside of school, I maintain that we would help provide the motivation necessary to improve performance inside the classroom. To further support these ideas, I felt I would be well served to scan the literature of the education community and see if documented studies could better support these fundamental beliefs.
Exploring the link between extra-curricular activities and student achievement is hardly a new phenomenon. As multiple studies conducted in the early 1990s suggest, participation in extra-curricular activities may increase students' sense of engagement or attachment to their school, and thereby decrease the likelihood of school failure and dropping out (Lamborn et al, 1992). This foundational research has been critically analyzed and expanded upon by the United States’ federal government, who also seems to at one point have supported this basic principal. According to a study conducted by the United States Department of Education’s Institute of Education Science and published by the National Center for Education Statistics, it is clear that participation in extra-curricular programs and success are strongly associated with academic achievement as evidenced by participants' better attendance, higher levels of achievement, and aspirations to higher levels of education (Owings et al, 1995).
While the study could not directly prove a casual relationship between the two factors, the data also indicated that students of a low socio-economic status participated less than did their high socio-economic status classmates. They even maintain that “this participation gap is a cause for concern, especially if extra-curricular activities can be a means of bringing at-risk students more fully into the school community, thereby increasing their chances of school success” (Owings et al, 1995). Clearly, the government itself has recognized the importance of such after school programs in raising academic achievement. From this perspective, one can ask why local and federal agencies are not doing more to implement their own findings and why the current education trends dictated by the No Child Left Behind legislation would not provide the funding necessary for these programs.
Other scholars and researchers have also gone to great lengths to highlight the connections between these two critical factors. In fact, some have gone as far to argue that the co-curriculum (or extra-curriculum) is of equal importance as the basic subject areas and is especially important at the high school level (Johnson, et al, 2005, pg 425). More specifically, one must not look far to find a large body of published studies that suggest a positive link between these after school activities and student achievement. As one such study conducted at Ohio State University found, participation in interscholastic sports during both 10th and 12th grades has small but consistent benefits for students’ grades, positively associated with both their math grades and reading test scores (Broh, 2002). Focusing primarily on the field of athletics, the study also found that interscholastic sports participation significantly improves self-esteem, locus of control, and time spent on homework assignments (Broh, 2002). This finding is of monumental importance, as few could argue against these factors contributing to higher student achievement. Needless to say, the better our students feel about themselves and the more time they spend on their various assignments, the better off they will be. Lastly, some of the other less developed elements of this statistical analysis also found music participation to improve math scores, providing yet another important link between extra-curricular activities and student achievement.
Throughout my first year as a teacher, I found it extremely evident that the city was not doing enough to support the need for extra-curricular programs at the high school level. As I look back, perhaps making such observations were an important part of the first year on the job, allowing teachers to gain a firmer grip on reality and a better understanding of the problems that plague our school system. Now that we get ready to embark upon the second year and beyond in our educational careers, it is time for us to step up to the plate and begin to look for solutions to some of the problems we see on a daily basis. As teachers, we must not wait around for the city to make these changes from above, as I fear we will all wait in vein. Instead, we would be better served to confront these problems on an individual level, through actions such as fundraising initiatives and program proposals.
References
Broh, B.A. (2002, Jan.). Link extracurricular programming to academic achievement:
Who benefits and why? Sociology of Education, 75, 69-95.
Johnson, J.A., Musial, D., Hall, G.E., & Gollnick, D.M. (2005). Foundations of American
education: Perspectives on education in a changing world. Pearson Education Inc: Boston, MA.
Lamborn, S.D., Brown, B.B., Mounts, N.S., & Steinberg, L. (1992). Putting School in
perspective: The influence of family, peers, extracurricular participation, and part-time work on academic engagement. Chapter 6 in Student engagement and achievement in American secondary schools.
O’Brein, E., Owings, J., & Rollefson, M. (1995). Extracurricular participation and
student engagement. NCES Education Policy Issues, 95-741.
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