| With budget cuts being required in school systems around the country, many schools are struggling to justify the continued funding of athletic programs. Many students in the United States are faced with the formal education process ending after high school without the students having had the opportunity to become involved in extracurricular activities that may provide them with skills beneficial in meeting their future goals. Through participation in school athletics, students can learn and apply skills that are relevant to learning across disciplines: social skills, work ethic, self-confidence, and internal locus of control. The purpose of this quantitative, causal-comparative study was to determine whether there was a difference in the cumulative GPA of students who participated in interscholastic athletics versus students who did not participate in interscholastic athletics. Archival data were retrieved for 2,483 students enrolled in three selected high schools in Georgia. Bandura's social learning theory served as a theoretical framework for the study. A two-factor (3x2) ANOVA was used to test the significance of the effects of athletic participation (three levels) and of the possible moderating effect of gender on students' cumulative GPA. Results of the study indicated that students who participated in extracurricular sports did not have higher cumulative GPA scores than their peers who did not participate in sports, and gender was irrelevant to the relationship between athletic participation and academic performance. These findings should be considered as leaders weigh the options of programming extracurricular activities including athletics and have to address gender equity and budget limitation concerns. |
