Running head: RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STUDENT BEHAVIOUR AND STUDENT

ACHIEVEMENT

Internship Experience for Educational Leadership

Selahattin Tiryaki

EL5091-ACE
January, 2016

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STUDENT BEHAVIOUR AND STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

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Everybody has some expectations from young generation. We all want them to be ready
for real life mentally, emotionally, and academically. Schools are responsible to prepare safe and
learning environment for students to accomplish this goal. Parents and community are
responsible to support schools to be able to serve expected education to students. Students are
responsible to come to school prepared and ready to learn. Research shows that, many factors
may effect student performance like their socio economic statuses, school environment, their
behaviors, quality of giving education, parent and community involvement etc. Their prior skills
may affect their current performance. In Harris and Robinsons words (2007), the findings
show that schooling behaviors are partially shaped by prior skills. In this study, we will analyze
the effect of student behavior on student achievement.
This study took place at a K-12 charter school that I am currently a teacher at. The
population is very diverse at this school. It is a small Title-I school (Title I, n.d.).
Data Analysis
In this school, we have coolsis school management system. This system has many useful
tools. One of them is student behavior tool. It is not just for to give negative discipline points,
it has also many options to give positive discipline points. Students have a chance to recover
their negative discipline points by taking some positive points. In the table below (Table-1), you
will see behavior scores of the students which are total of negative and positive points. I have
collected the data for 320 student from 4-12 and picked the last 20 behavior scores for this study.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STUDENT BEHAVIOUR AND STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

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Stude Grad
nt
e
Name
Grou
E
7
J
4
A
8
T
4
A
4
A
6
O
9
W
8
G
7
M
6
Z
8
K
6
T
4
I
8
A
4
O
9
Z
4
S
6
V
4
M
9
AVERAGE
SCHOOL
AVERAGE

Behav
ior
Score
-58
-58
-55
-55
-54
-47
-45
-38
-36
-33
-31
-25
-24
-23
-23
-20
-20
-19
-19
-9
-34.64
+29.9
9

Behavior
Status
Loss of
Privileges
Loss of
Privileges
Loss of
Privileges
Loss of
Privileges
Loss of
Privileges
Loss of
Privileges
Loss of
Privileges
Loss of
Privileges
Loss of
Privileges
Loss of
Privileges
Loss of
Privileges
Loss of
Privileges
Loss of
Privileges
Loss of
Privileges
Loss of
Privileges
Good
Good
Good
Good
Good

Absen
ce Day
Count
9
1
0
3
0
10
7
6
1
6
4
9
1
0
5
1
4
2
0
1
3.5
0.46

GP
A
2
2.4
4
2.6
1
2.2
2
3.1
1
2.0
0
2.9
9
3.8
6
2.4
4
2.0
0
3.8
4
4.0
3.6
6
2.0
0
2.7
8
3.2
6
3.8
9
1.0
0
3.9
5
3.5
2.8
7

Cumulative All
Courses Ranking
21/25
37/47
29/31
47/47
37/47
43/46
26/32
31/31
24/25
45/46
25/31
37/46
26/47
20/31
34/47
21/32
33/47
34/46
20/47
32/32
The Average is in the
last 19%

Table-1
There are 7 upper elementary students, 10 middle school students, and 3 high school
students in the last 20 list.
All students from upper elementary are from in the same class. As you see from the
table, four of them have good Grade Point Average (GPA) (grader than 3.0). I believe that there
should be some other effects that encourage this group to involve some incidents. It can be peer
pressure, learning environment, communication etc.
There are 10 students from middle school. 7 of them has low GPA. Two of them are
from 8th grade with good GPAs. I had interview with these two students. I have found that their

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characters are perfect. They are good listeners, kind, and successful. They got negative
discipline points for some small things. One of them, O, said that he had just one school T-Shirt
and he came to school without school T-Shirt many times and got many negative points because
of dress code violation. We have decided to inform the parents to buy a new T-Shirt to solve this
issue. The other one, M, said that he was in a mess group in the classroom. So it is a minor
communication problem. I suggested him to communicate with his teacher to change his group.
Apparently, these students have not any major behavior problem or habits. I also talked with a
couple of the middle school students. Most of them agree with me that they have some major
behavior problems to fix. They also know that because of these distractions they cannot focus on
academic. After I had meetings with a couple parents of these students, I figured out that they
were not aware about their childrens negative behavior points even they were given parent
accounts on coolsis to check everything about their children.
It is a good sign that there is no students from 10th, 11th, and 12th grades on the list. We
have only 3 students from 9th grade whose GPAs are around 3. They are all friends and
encourage each other to talk. They also encourage each other to study to achieve more.
Apparently, they talk but not get of the task. So their behavior issues either does not affect their
academic achievement or effects a little.
Limitations of the Study
I could not able to find their standardized test scores to strengthen the analysis. I also
could not have a chance to observe the students in the classrooms where they get negative
discipline points at. Addition to this, I could not have a chance to reach out the data for previous
years to see whether or not they had same issues.

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Reflection
Grothaus (2013) suggests that identifying problem behavior is the first step in
establishing action plans. I found that some discipline problems are not habits. There are some
side effects that influence students to involve a problem. As educators, we need to identify and
fix those side effects for students to achieve more. There is doubt that problem behaviors effect
students performances. The number of problem behaviors decrease significantly in upper
grades. I believe that better communication between parent-administrator-teacher-student can
prevent many discipline problems and encourage students to achieve more.

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Reference
Grothaus, T. (2013). School counselors serving students with disruptive behavior disorders.
Professional School Counseling, 16(4), 245-255.
Harris, A. L., & Robinson, K. (2007). Schooling behaviors or prior skills? A cautionary tale of
omitted variable bias within oppositional culture theory. Sociology of Education, 80(2),
139-157.
Title I, Part A Program. (n.d.). Retrieved January 25, 2016, from
http://www2.ed.gov/programs/titleiparta/index.html