Relationships Between Participation in Extracurricular Activities, ACT Scores, GPA, and Attendance in Select Public High Schools in Mississippi

There are contemporary concerns about improving and sustaining positive student outcomes in secondary schools today. In light of student needs and limited time and resources available to address those needs, educational leaders are faced with making difficult decisions about what should and could be offered to students through their schools. In addition to the general curriculum, schools generally offer a variety of extracurricular activities. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between extracurricular participation and select student outcomes. The findings of this study can provide valuable insight to school leaders as they make decisions about how to allocate limited school funds for programs, especially extracurricular activities. This study is designed to examine the relationships between participation in extracurricular activities, ACT scores, GPA, and attendance in select public high schools in Mississippi. The study provides informative views on how extracurricular participation impacted key educational factors that are important to the learning environment. The goal of this study is to offer quantifiable results on how participation in extracurricular activities related to important student characteristics that impact student outcomes. A quantitative research design is used for this study. A researcher-developed survey, the Reed’s Extracurricular Perception Instrument (REPI), was distributed to teachers and building level administrators throughout the state of Mississippi. Archival data were also collected from four consenting high schools on the senior class of 2013. Gender, race, ACT scores, GPA, absences, and lunch status were all collected from these schools. Utilizing Pearson correlations, Chi-square statistics, regression analysis, and survey methodology on the data collected for meaningful results was the goal of the researcher to address the questions of the study. This study revealed that extracurricular participation significantly show positive relationships with ACT, GPA, and absences after controlling for gender, race, and lunch status. The results of REPI showed that academics, attendance, and behavior all were perceived to be positively related to extracurricular participation as well. Survey results showed that behavior was perceived to have the greatest impact as a result of extracurricular participation