Factors Affecting Student Performance: Beyond Stress

Unfortunately, many students could not maintain their top performance at their schools. According toOrganized Wisdom, more than 58% of college students fail to provide great performances at school. It's mainly because of stress. But stress is not the only factor. there are more factors that can drop student's performance. Those factors will be presented below.

1. Health

Health is one important factor to be considered. No doubt that student's health should be kept well in order to maintain performance. Breakfast is important and should not be skipped.

It acts as student's main energy to keep him/her well until lunch. Besides breakfast, sports and nutrition must be well-balanced.

2. Stress

As told from above, stress can be deadly for some students because it can drop their performance down to the lowest level if not being taken care. There are many factors that can cause stress, such as too many assignments, exam preparations, and lack of self-confidence. Stress must be eliminated as soon as possible before it affects entirely to student's performance.

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As we can see from a reliable source, About.com, There are many ways to reduce stress. One should be able to manage their time. Besides that, students should also be able to create a perfect learning environment for their studies. These things will surely reduce one's stress and improve his / her performance.

3. Bullying

According to Wikipedia, Bullying is an abusive treatment towards someone else that may result from verbal harassment, to physical contact. In schools, bullying is usually done by students with higher "authority", meaning students with more physical abilities or someone with gangs.

Bullying can cause performance drop to other students, because they feel unsafe at school. Bullying is hard to terminate, but student and teachers must take proper actions towards bullying.

Actions

such as reporting to teachers and giving appropriate punishments may be the best action to reduce bullying. What's important is to make students feel safe at school.

4. Family Problems

Aside from bullying and stress, family problems seem to have quite an impact on certain students' performance. While bullying and stress comes from inside the school, family problems are the matter of your own. This make family problem hard to solve, because students must take action on his/her own regarding his/her family. If not taken care as soon as possible, family problems may cause students to have their mental dropped and resulted in low performance. WikiHow has given plenty of advices in sorting family matters. One must be able to talk the matter with all of his / her family members and one mustn't hesitate to ask the professionals (teachers, etc.). As students, they should try their best to maintain his/her student performance. Not only that will affect their school life, but also their careers and the rest of their lives. sources :

THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND

Introduction

The extent of student’s learning in academics may be determined by the grades that a student earns for a period of learning has been done. It is believed that a grade is a primary factor that indicates of such learning. If a student earns high grades it is concluded that they may also have learned a lot while low grades indicate lesser learning. However, many experiences and studies found out that there are also several factors that would affect the grades. Not a single factor can be definitely pointed out as predicting grades.

It has been interplay of so many factors – gender, IQ, study habits, age, year level, parent’s educational attainment, social status, number of siblings, birth order, etc. In fact, almost all of existing environmental and personal factors are a variable of academic performance. However, at this point in time, the researcher would like to investigate the possible relationship of study habits and the factors affecting it to the academic achievement of under secondary student of Jaime G. Espena High School. The investigation of on this area thus becomes a real and compelling motivation for the researcher to conduct this study.

10 Poor Excuses for Failing Grades

BY DR. PATRICIA FIORIELLO

Often teenagers ignore the early signs of failing and before they know it they are in danger of failing a class. Don’t let failing grades creep up on you. As a person with many years working with high school students, I would see it happen over and over again. I always warned students to watch for the early signs of failing a class and that the signs are evident even before the first grading period or progress report. It is all in the attitude and approach to the class. If teens do not heed the early warning signs, before they know it they are in danger of failing and one step closer to failing.

Do These Excuses Sound Familiar?

The list of ten early signs is a warning that you are not taking the right attitude towards your class. Watch for these warning signs. If you often make these types of comments or have such thoughts, it is a clue that you may be heading towards danger. 1. Always feel that the course covers too much material.

2. Not agreeing with the teacher’s comments and not trying to respect the teacher. 3. You start the class with the expectation that you are entitled to a good grade. 4. Making the excuse that topics covered in class were not on the exam or vice-versa. 5. You complain that the teacher expects too much participation in class. You think that completing the assignments alone is enough for a good grade. 6. You are always complaining that the class lectures are boring. 7. You are upset that you study for hours and think that high school credits should consist of a few hours of work per week. 8. You claim that you know the material but just do not perform well on exams.

9. You do not have time to study. Your priorities are wrong. 10. Students are customers and feel they have the right to complain about low standards that affect credits, but they must keep in mind that they are also products of a school. Are the graduates of the school lacking motivation, knowledge and skills? Or is it just you and/or a small group of students who are having problems in class? Reflect about whether it is your fault or the school’s before placing blame. Turn It Around

Does the above sound like you or a teenager you know? Instead of complaining about class, do something about making sure you do not fail. Here are the things I always recommend teens to try to do that will help improve their grades early in the semester. * Ask for help from the teacher, tutor, academic adviser, friends, the learning center on campus and even people in the school community. Ask for help the very first time you do not understand the work in class. * Find out your options if you realize you are failing. Check with your teacher and academic adviser about what can you do in this situation. Find ways to immediately work on correcting the problem.

* Also be realistic and review the logistics – whether you can drop the course and when is the drop deadline? Allow time to coordinate all the logistics for whatever you plan. If is very important to work hard but also consider what type of class it is and what will be the outcome of getting an F in the class. * Take immediate action about the situation. Do not let time pass. http://highschoolmediator.com/10-poor-excuses-for-failing-grades/

In new study, high school exit exam gets a failing grade
L.A. Cicero

Associate Professor Sean Reardon was the lead author of a study released by Stanford's Institute for Research on Education Policy and Practice that found exit exams have not improved student achievement.

Graduation rates for low-achieving minority students and girls have fallen nearly 20 percentage points since California implemented a law requiring high school students to pass exit exams in order to graduate, according to a new Stanford study. The new study said that the exit exam, which is first given in 10th grade to help identify students who are struggling academically and need additional instruction to pass the test, has failed to meet one of its primary goals: to significantly improve student achievement. The study also said the exam is not a fair assessment of the basic skill levels of minority students and girls, because it takes higher skill levels for them to pass the test. Those are some of the major findings of a 60-page study released Tuesday by the university's Institute for Research on Education Policy and Practice. "Clearly the exam has had a disproportionately negative impact on students of color and girls," said Sean Reardon, an associate professor of education at Stanford and the study's lead author.

"That is consistent across all four school districts we studied. It's a statewide phenomenon, not just a problem of one or two districts. These findings are troubling." The study also found that the exam does not motivate low-achieving minority students and girls—those who scored in the bottom 25 percent on state standards tests given in the ninth and 10th grades—to work harder and study more in order to earn a diploma. "There is no evidence that the exit exam policy as currently implemented has any benefits for students," Reardon said. "It does not serve students well, and appears to have sharply inequitable effects." The exit exam has two sections: mathematics and English language arts. Students who fail the exam in 10th grade have at least five opportunities to retake the sections they have not passed—twice in 11th and 12th grade, and at least once after high school. California, like the other two-dozen states with exit exams, spends millions of dollars and a considerable amount of time administering the exam, preparing students to take the test and offering remedial classes to students who fail the exam, the study said. "Our analysis suggests that, to date, this is neither money nor time well spent," Reardon and three co-authors wrote. The researchers found that minority students—blacks, Hispanics and Asians—received lower scores on the exit exam than white students who had the same level of prior and current academic achievement.

They also found that girls received lower scores on the math section of the exit exam than boys who had the same level of prior and current academic achievement. The researchers ruled out differences in school quality, as well as racial and gender bias in the test, as explanations for the large racial and gender differences found in the study. Instead, they attributed the differences to a phenomenon known as "stereotype threat," which prevents minorities and girls from doing as well as they could on the high-stakes test. While white students and boys may experience stress from fear of failing the test, minority students and girls taking the test "experience stress from two sources: fear of failing the test and concern about proving a negative stereotype," the study said. "If exit exam policies like California's are to be retained it is imperative that they be accompanied by serious efforts to ameliorate their negative effects on minority students and girls," the researchers wrote.

The study used longitudinal student data from school districts in Fresno, Long Beach, San Diego and San Francisco to estimate the effects of the exit exam requirement on student persistence (whether students stayed in school through the 11th and 12th grades), their academic achievement (as measured by their scores on another state standardized test given in 11th grade), and their graduation rates.

The study compared the persistence, achievement and graduation rates of students who were not subject to the exit exam requirement (those who were scheduled to graduate in 2005) with students who had to pass the test in order to receive high school diplomas (those who were scheduled to graduate in 2006 and 2007). Reardon presented the study, "Effects of the California High School Exit Exam on Student Persistence, Achievement and Graduation," last week at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in San Diego. The co-authors are Allison Atteberry and Nicole Arshan, doctoral students in Stanford's School of Education, and Michal Kurlaender, an assistant professor of education at the University of California-Davis. http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/april22/california-exit-exam-042209.html

CONCLUSION

This article argues that the nation’s graduation rate crisis in high-poverty cities intensifies in the middle grades and that the challenges of the onset of adolescence; living in distressed neighborhoods; and attending chaotic, disorganized, and underresourced schools characterized by high levels of teacher

"In the end, the researchers found only five studies that focused on vocational interventions. While this handful of studies looked at certain on-the-job programs designed to support young adults with autism and suggest these "interventions" can improve quality of life and reduce symptoms of autism, the study authors concluded, "all studies were of poor quality." They say these studies had serious flaws including the randomization or comparison groups, which makes it difficult to draw any conclusions. Lack of follow-up and the fact that most studies were small also contributed to the researchers' deeming the quality of the research as poor. The study was published Monday in the medical journal Pediatrics.

Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer for the advocacy group Autism Speaks, says she finds it remarkable that only five studies that address vocation skills were published in the last three decades and all were of poor quality. "There is a tremendous knowledge gap regarding how to help young people with autism be successful in the work environment," Dawson says."

Evidence weak that vocational programs help young adults with autism, CNN, August 28, 2012

This information does not indicate that vocational interventions are not effective. What it indicates is that the autism research community has not bothered to conduct any serious research to evaluate those interventions. The autism research community has its obsessions and it pursues them doggedly even when the results don't support their particular obsessions. But those obsessions do not necessarily result in quality autism research.

We all know that within the next couple of years the "Mottron group" will publish more studies telling us how autism is just a different, in some ways superior, type of intelligence, one that can not, and should not, be cured. There will be more studies about the genetic bases of autism without ever pinpointing specific genes or genetic groupings that explain the diverse types of autism disorders as they manifest in so many individuals. The environmental side of the autism equation will be ignored. No new treatments or cures will be explored.

The autism research community has done little to advance our understanding of what autism disorders are, how they are caused, how to treat or cure autism disorders or even, since Lovaas, how to assess or evalute interventions. The review of vocational autism research is just one more failing grade for the autism community that puts up lots of posters and makes grand speeches at IMFAR conventions in hotels around the world but really does little to help the lives of those who actually suffer from autism disorders.

I realize how pessimistic this comment is. My son was diagnosed 14 years ago at age 2. I have seen many hopes raised and false starts made but I have seen little lasting progress in the past 14 years. Instead of progress we have a new definition of autism disorders scheduled to arrive in the DSM5 that will do nothing to improve the lives of those with autism and will not advance diagnosis, treatment or cure for autism disorders. The world autism research community has been talking in circles since my son was diagnosed studiously avoiding the tough research issues but achieving nothing.

Yes my comment is pessimistic. I would love to be wrong about this. I would love to see some substantial breakthrough in understanding autism, how it is caused, how to ameliorate its challenges for my son and others, breakthroughs in treatments and cures. I do believe that progress must be achieved through research but as my son grows older I do not see the qualitative results, beyond the work of Lovaas and those who followed his lead, of any such research to date. Perhaps a review like this will help those at the IACC and other autism research leaders face some autism reality and improve the direction and quality of autism research. http://autisminnb.blogspot.com/2012/08/autism-research-communitys-failing.html

Failing Grades

Can I withdraw late from a course if I'm failing it?

No. There are regular deadlines for dropping or withdrawing from courses. Students who have valid reasons for requesting late withdrawals should contact the Science Information Centre as soon as problems arise. Students who wish to drop a course because they're failing or not doing as well as they had hoped will not have their request granted. What happens if I am registered in an honours program and I fail a course? Normally, you'll no longer be eligible for an honours program. In order to stay registered in Honours, you must obtain special permission from the Associate Dean. Otherwise, if there is a Major option, you may switch to the Major program.

If there is no Major option, then you must switch to an entirely different program that will help you achieve your academic goals. If I fail a course then take it again, will my record show a final grade that is an average of the two? Or will the failure disappear once I pass the course? The answer to both questions is "no." Anytime you take a course, whether you pass or fail, it is recorded on your academic record. So the failing grade always remains on your record. If you take the course again and pass it, that grade also gets recorded separately. Your transcript will show both grades.

Can I appeal my failed standing?

Every student has the right to appeal; however, an appeal should only be submitted if there is a compelling reason for poor academic performance. If you decide to appeal, follow the instructions described in the email that was sent to you regarding the Failed Year standing. Please note that there is an appeals deadline, to which you must adhere. To ensure that you receive this very important information, keep your email address up to date on the Student Service Centre. Please also avoid using Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail and other such email providers, as UBC messages are sometimes erroneously labelled as junk mail or spam.

Does it matter if I fail a course in the Summer Session?

Yes. Contrary to popular belief, your summer grades do matter. The Faculty of Science continuation requirements apply to both the Summer Session and Winter Session. For example, if you enroll in only one course in the summer and happen to fail that course, you will be assigned a Fail standing for the Summer Session. Don't register for a summer course unless you plan to take it seriously!

Do you feel you've been graded unfairly?

The Office of the Ombudsperson for Students is an independent, impartial and confidential resource to assist students in addressing and resolving concerns about unfair treatment at UBC Vancouver. The Ombudsperson is an advocate for fairness in general for the benefit of all students and the university community as a whole. http://science.ubc.ca/students/advising/grades