The Impact of Afterschool Programs within California High Schools - Research Paper Example

The impact of after school programs within California high schools CHAPTER 1 Introduction There is a looming dilemma which surrounds the conception of the after school programs that are undertaken in high schools. Students are often subjected to several different types of programs every day after the daily academic school programs and this element has met different reactions from different quarters of the world. It is in view of this that this study set out to establish what indeed is the impact of the after school programs or their absence on the academic life of the students as well as on their peers. The high schools in California were categorically selected for the exercise. 1.2 Research questions What is the impact of after school programs on the academics performance of students? What is the impact of after school programs on the students’ social life and their peers? What is the impact of the absence of after school programs? 1.3 Study Hypothesis After school programs impact positively on the academic performance of students After school programs impact positively on the students’ social life and their peers. The absence of after school programs has a negative impact on students. 1.4 Objectives To establish the impact of after school programs on the academics performance of students. To establish the impact of after school programs on the students’ social life and their peers. To establish the impact of the absence of after school programs? CHAPTER II 2. Literature review 2.1 Overview After school programs are in one way or the other always a form of play. As the famous saying goes, all work without play made Jack a dull boy. After school programs take very many different forms which are all pointed towards relaxing the brain from the strict and brain racking academic programs. Most high schools engage the students in very rigorous academic programs right from the very early hours of the morning and all through the day till evening. It would be quite detrimental if the students are let to keep reading or just sit dormant after the tight academic schedule of the entire day. Doctors and psychologists concur that indeed at the high school age, the students have a young body and brain all of which are growing at a very fast rate. There are very many changes that are taking place in the body of the students at this point in time and putting too much stress on them is a recipe for disaster. In this regard, considering the fact that the academic content in high schools is one of the toughest and nerve racking, it is very recommended that a way is devised for taking the stress away from the students. There is no better way than engaging the students in after school programs on a daily basis. It is a source of comfort that is effective in the restoration of sanity to the young minds of the high school students. In the study of the impact of after school programs within California high schools, the variables were debate, church, track, football, baseball, basketball, swim team, lacrosse, soccer, karate, volleyball, tennis, cheerleading, gymnastics, dance, no after school activities, students’ academics and community involvement. Variables are the factors or elements which make up a given argument as they act on each other in various ways. They are the determinants of how a given phenomenon shall turn out to be. There are different types of variables. Generally speaking, there are the dependent variables and the independent variables. The independent variables are those which do not change regardless. They are not affected by any other factors or variables. They are usually factors which are either permanent or are changed by supernatural factors. In this case, they are the students’ academics and community involvement which are always invariable. On the other hand, dependent variables are those which rely on other variables so as to act in a given fashion. They cannot stand on their own as changes which occur on other factors would alter them to behave in a different way. In the topic of discussion, the impact of after school programs within California high schools, the dependent variable were debate, church, track, football, baseball, basketball, swim team, lacrosse, soccer, karate, volleyball, tennis, cheerleading, gymnastics, dance, and no after school activities. The dependent variables rely upon the manner in which independent variables shall act on them so as to change and have a given stand. They cannot stand on their own and hence they are dependent. On the other hand, the independent ones do not depend on any other external factors. Data is a conglomerate of information in raw form in the way in which it was collected from the source. It is in the form of numbers, jumbled up words and figures in a way that cannot be easily comprehended in regard to a given topic. In the study topic of the impact of after school programs within California high schools, the data was the information in raw form regarding the impact of after school programs within California high schools. It comprised of the numbers of after school activities and the individual GPA of the surveyed students. There are two main broad types of data. These are qualitative data and quantitative data. Qualitative data is data in the form which is not countable. It is data in a special form that tells of a given degree or extent to which a given piece of information stretches in a given direction. Qualitative data cannot be quantified mathematically but its weight or degree can be imagined or felt in an abstract form. It includes such elements as students’ attitude, teachers’ morale and the like. On the other hand, quantitative data is raw information which is countable. It is in a form which is represented numerically and hence can be subjected to mathematical manipulations. Quantitative data is much simpler to handle and its inference is much more direct and reliable. This is considering the fact that there are readily set mathematical formulae and principles which have been tested and proven for the sake of manipulating quantitative data. It includes data such as the numbers of after school activities and the individual GPA of the surveyed students There are also a number of other data types which were incurred in the research. One of them is integers. An integer is the data type which is in the form of numerical numbers 1,2,3,4… These are very common data types which are used to represent several variables of data in their raw form. It was used in the research to represent the number of activities and the number of students. They are one of the most widely used data types. Another data type used is the Boolean. This is data in the form of a yes or a no. Boolean is very commonly used in the filling up of a questionnaire. It might look simple but in most instances it means the difference between greatly different sets of inferences. It is mutually exclusive, in that the presence of a yes implies a definite absence of a no and the two can never coexist in whatever form. They were used in filling the questionnaire in instances such as either a student takes part or does not take part in after school activities. Another data type used was character. This is data in a form such as a letter or a symbol. Data in this form is very common and more so in the form of words and sentences. Such data takes a deep analysis in order to comprehend before drawing a conclusion. Characters were used in the research to represent the names of schools, the logos of the schools, the opinions of the teachers, parents and students on the impact of after school programs within California high schools. Another type of data that was used is the floating points. This is data in decimal form. It is essentially continuous data but with a limited degree of the decimal points. It is commonly used to represent figures in raw form which are relatively less sensitive in terms of the decimal points required to express sensitivity. A sister data type to the floating points which was also used is the data type called strings. These are a data type which are essentially continuous data but with a relatively higher sensitivity in terms of the number of decimal points which it accommodates. Strings can take any number of decimal points without limitations as is the case with floating points. Floating points and strings were used for representing the average performance of the students in schools which adopt the after school programs within California high schools for instance. CHAPTER 3 3. Methodology 3.1. Overview There are very many sources of data. Given that data is the raw form in which information is collected before it can be analyzed for the sake of drawing a meaningful conclusion as is intended from the onset of the research, relevant information to the topic of discussion can be picked and put up for analysis so as to draw the most appropriate inference in regard to the topic of discussion. This implies that the sources of data are quite huge and diverse. The most important element in the analysis of the sources of data is the element of reliability. In view of the fact that a research is based upon the data which it collects, it was vital that the sources of data were entirely reliable. A research is as good as the data which it uses for analysis. A false data from an unreliable source would lead to a false inference regardless of how perfect the data analysis process shall be conducted. Therefore only reliable sources of data were used to collect information regarding the impact of after school activities in California high schools. 3.3 Study Area The study area is the State of California in the United States of America. It has numerous high schools which operate in a conventional way under the conventional system and hence forms a perfect sample to represent the views of high schools across the globe. 3.4 Target population The target population is the players in the high school education sector of the State of California. These are the parents, the students, the teachers, the school administrators, the junior and senior government officials in the education sector as well as non-governmental organizations which take part in high school activities in California. These people form the pillar source of information. 3.7 Research instrument and Data collection techniques Broadly speaking, there are primary data sources and secondary data sources. Primary data sources are those that are obtained right from the source. These are more advantageous as they have the element of reliability to a much higher degree than the secondary sources of data. Primary sources of data give the data as it is and are hence devoid of the risk which their counterpart secondary sources suffer where the data might be contaminated as it shifts hands. There is always the risk of data being subjected to aspects of bias and discrimination and hence getting to change in one way or the other as it moves from the primary sources to the secondary sources of data. One of the modes of collecting data from the primary sources that was used in this study is observation. This is where a given phenomenon like engaging in gymnasium activities after school is directly observed over a period of time and from the observation, raw information is collected regarding the phenomenon which is subjected to further analysis. Another mode of collecting data from the primary sources that was used in this study is through the conduction of an experiment. This is where the phenomenon in question like not taking part in any after school activities is put under preset conditions which are systematically manipulated with time and their effects on the general aura is recorded which forms the raw information that is subjected for further analysis. Primary data sources also include collecting data through the conduction of interviews for instance on the teachers of high schools in California and the use of questionnaires to seek for information for instance from the students. The main disadvantage of primary data is the fact that it is more time consuming and might be costly. Secondary data sources are the sources of data where information is collected from a prerecorded source. The raw information had been collected earlier on from a primary source or from yet another secondary source and subjected to analysis in the research. Secondary sources of data have the advantage that they are quite easy to collect as they are readily available in the form needed with much ease and convenience. They are therefore relatively cheaper and much less time consuming. Secondary data sources however have the disadvantage of being subjected to bias or unethical manipulations from the original form which makes them much less reliable as compared to the primary data that is in its original form. One of the forms of collecting data from the secondary sources that was used in the study of the impact of after school activities on students in California high schools is the use of the internet. There is a lot of information on the internet regarding almost virtually all topics of human civilization. By surfing through the internet the research was able to find recorded raw data regarding the topic of discussion and subject the data to analysis. Another method of collecting data from the secondary sources that was used is reading books, newspapers and magazines regarding the topic in question. These have been written by people who collected information from the primary sources or from other secondary sources or even both. The information is in the required form and all that the research needed to do was simply putting it together and in turn analyzing it for the sake of drawing a conclusion. Secondary sources of data were also used in the research by collecting raw data through the mass media. Information was collected through watching television shows, listening to the radio and even watching films and documentaries. They gave relevant information to the topic of discussion and were subjected to analysis after which an inference was drawn. CHAPTER 4 Data analysis Raw data was collected from the target population in the form of the number of after school programs which the students engage in, the GPA of the students who engage in after school programs and those who do not engage in them. This information was collected over a spread period of time to evaluate the presence of relative changes. In a bid to determine the impact of the afterschool programs on the academic performance if the students, the number of the after school activities which the students took part in was plotted against the their average GPA academic performance in a line and a bar graph as shown in the figures below. Average GPA of Surveyed Students Data collected from the parents and the teachers was also tabulated and analyzed to establish what impact the after school programs had on the social life of the students. It was used to establish how the students affected their peers. CHAPTER 5 Conclusion There are several probable effects of after school programs on high school students academically and in their peer relations. It was very crucial that data collected in this regard is strictly from reliable sources to enable the conduction of a reliable and up to scratch research. After school programs on high school students may impact on the students either positively or negatively depending on the nature of the programs themselves. Students who do not engage in the after school programs were likely to engage in destructive programs such engaging in drugs and intimate activities and this had the impact of getting into the brains of the students and disorienting them academically. They thus found it impossible to concentrate in class and these resulted in them failing academically. It also made them influence their peers negatively as they appear to be enjoying the intrigues of the forbidden elements which is always a very enticing phenomenon. Anyone who engages in something that is forbidden and seems not to get caught always has the heroic feeling and this keeps him or her going for more and more. This was very detrimental to the school and the area at large as the peers who are members of the school or members of neighboring schools were faced with the uphill task of dealing with a series of the undesired chain of unruly students. There are several after schools programs which students engage in which include debate, church, track, football, baseball, basketball, swim team, lacrosse, soccer, karate, volleyball, tennis, cheerleading, gymnastics, and dance. These programs have different impacts on the academic life of students. They have been present in schools ever since and this implies that there must be something to them. It is only through a close examination of these programs that it was possible to tell that indeed such programs have a positive impact on the academic life of the students and on their peers. It has also been established that although these programs all have positive impacts on the students, the impacts are different from program to program on the academic life of the students and on their peers. For instance it was established that a student who engages in working out at the gymnasium every day after school would have a different mindset from the one who goes to church every day after school. The one who goes to the gym would want to flex his muscles around and feel all bossy before his peers. On the contrary, the one who goes to church would want to influence his peers to be obedient to one another and to express love to one another at all points in time without any form of confrontation. Both programs however keep the students away from detrimental activities such as drugs and are hence both positive to different degrees. Through the analysis of the different variables it was clear that the impact of after school programs within California high schools is positive. The data collected proved that the more the number of the after school activities, the higher the average GPA the students obtained. All average GPAs recorded from the students engaged in after school activities were above 75 which is quite remarkable. Works Cited Stallings, William. Data and Computer Communications. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Prentice Hall, 2000. Print. Ho?rmander, Lars. An Introduction to Complex Analysis in Several Variables. Princeton, N.J: Van Nostrand, 2006. Print. End-of-year 2009-10 Progress Report to the California Legislature: Implementation and Impact of the Workforce Investment Act (wia), Title Ii Adult Education and Family Literacy Act. CASAS - Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment Systems. 5151 Murphy Canyon Road Suite 220, San Diego, CA 92123. Tel: 800-255-1036; Fax: 858-292-2910; e-mail: casas@casas.org; Web site: http://www.casas.org, 2011. Print. Read More