ANAHEIM : Students Say They’re Diligent at Studying

Despite notions that high school students care more about hanging out than getting good grades, an annual survey of students in the Anaheim Union High School District indicates that teen-agers study diligently after school.

The results of the survey, recently released by district Supt. Cynthia Grennan, show that 80% of the district’s 19,000 junior and senior high school students say they spend two or more hours a day doing their homework.

“I’m very pleased with the results of (the) survey,” Grennan said.

Among high school students, the survey reported, about 57% of the teen-agers worked on homework at least two hours each night, and 23% said they did more than three hours of work nightly.

About 56% of the junior high students said they worked at home on assignments for at least two hours.

The survey also showed that the majority of students read books other than those assigned in class during the school year. Since September, 71% of the high school students reported reading at least three non-assigned books, and 40% said they had read more than six books.

At the junior high level, 76% of the students said they had read at least three books since September, and 49% stated they had read more than six.

The annual survey is designed for district officials to gauge student involvement in their courses. It also records student satisfaction with other on-campus issues, such as school safety, extracurricular activities and teacher responsiveness to student concerns.