Make the Grade?

After school, after her two part-time job shifts each weekday, Brandy Stone settles down to study so she can maintain that 3.75 average.

“If I ever have a break at work, I do study, but usually I find time at night after work or during fifth period,” said Brandy, of Lake Forest, who is a senior at El Toro High School.

Brandy’s 49 hours of work each week represent an extreme example of a recent finding about U.S. high school seniors: They work more hours at part-time jobs than their foreign counterparts.

Brandy, 17, has the youthful energy to keep up with her studies. But the international survey released this year, which shows U.S. 12th-graders ranking in the lower third in science and math among 21 nations, also found that along with spending more time at work, most U.S. teens tend to study less.

“Studying and jobs, the two are inversely related,” said William H. Schmidt, a Michigan State University professor who coordinated research on the tests. “The more time you’re on the job, the less time you study. That will have an impact on how much you learn.”

Most data about students’ everyday life that researchers gathered as part of the Third International Math and Science Study portrayed U.S. and foreign high school seniors as very similar.

Seniors in the U.S. watch the same amount of television as students in other countries, for example--an average of 1.7 hours per day.

Increasingly, education experts are focusing on lifestyle to explain the scores of U.S. students, which caused President Clinton to renew his call for sweeping reforms of the public school system.

Although educators concluded that the content of high school math and science courses, including advanced classes, deserved the most blame for U.S. performance, some of the extracurricular findings also caused concern, Schmidt noted. “Unfortunately, they raise more questions than they provide answers,” he said.

One question to ponder: Why is it that 55% of U.S. seniors spend more than three hours per day at a job, while less than half that many--27%--foreign students reported that they work even one hour a day?

“In Europe and most of the rest of the world, you’re like a little prince or princess if you go to school,” said Gary Weaver, an expert on student issues at American University in Washington.

In contrast, working “is part of American life,” Weaver said. “Here in the U.S., if you’re not working, you really don’t have any status.”

Some Orange County seniors take part-time jobs after school to pay for cars, insurance, CDs, movies and clothes that their parents won’t buy for them. Others are supplementing their family income. But most of the teenagers disagree with the notion that a job hurts their studies. They say a part-time job is a great way to learn discipline and build a resume that will help them in a career or college.

Brandy is bound for UC Santa Barbara, where she plans to major in math and teaching. But she’s paying her own way.

So a typical day for Brandy starts at 5 or 6 a.m. She folds up the couch where she sleeps at her grandmother’s house; class begins at 7 a.m.; by 2:10 p.m. she leaves school for Sun Pacific Insurance Co., where she does light office work; then around 4:30 p.m., she leaves for Sizzler in Lake Forest, where she waits tables until 9:30 p.m.

At Laguna Hills High School, 353 of 1,828 students work part-time. Most are 16 or 17 years old, and slightly more girls are working than boys, said Jan Cogar, a career specialist for the state Regional Occupational Program here.

Those who have jobs tend to be more mature, organized and punctual, Cogar said.

But does work hinder a student’s performance in school?

“I think it depends on the student,” Cogar said. “I had two daughters who went to this school [who worked in their senior year], and both of them graduated with a 4.0.”

Alexander Astin, who directs the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, said U.S. residents place more emphasis on consumerism than foreigners, and teenagers here flock to after-school jobs in a “logical extension of materialism.”

“The closer they get to full-time has a direct, negative effect on almost all educational outcomes--on their grades, on whether they get into college,” Astin said.

But some educators pointed out that working part-time often is a necessity for teenagers and tends to build character and pay dividends later in life.

In some cases, “families may have had the need for [their children] to do some earning,” said John Hyman, a professor who studies American culture at American University. “While it is tempting to make something cultural of it, I’m a little leery.”

At Chinese World in Laguna Niguel, Alice Chu, 18, whose parents own the restaurant, waits on tables for about two hours every day. She studies about 30 hours a week and plans to attend Saddleback College in the fall. She says her work never stood in the way of her 3.95 grade-point average at Laguna Hills High School.

“I study right after school, and then after working at the restaurant,” said Alice, who has helped out since she was 12 years old.

Hyman also noted that the students who participated in the international tests, administered during the 1994-95 school year, reached legal part-time working age during the economic recession.

“An important part of success for beginning students in college is the ability to balance time well. The folks who had a job in high school might have a leg up,” he said.