Senior Survey Investigates How Students Skip Class

Madeline Shapiro

The Stamford High parking lot in the morning. A student survey investigated the frequency of skipping class at SHS and whether students go to the parking lot when they skip.

Jessica Scanlon, Reporter
March 22, 2022

In the beginning of this year, I conducted a study to find if there was any correlation between leaving campus and GPA. Going into this, I hypothesized that there is little to no correlation between skipping class and a student’s GPA. About 100 seniors from a wide array of classes and unweighted GPAs ended up taking the survey to investigate any correlation, and the results prove my hypothesis to be true.

Results from a survey of about 100 Stamford High seniors conducted by senior Jessica Scanlon. This pie chart displays responses to where students go when they skip class.

As shown in the pie charts below, about 60% of students who took the survey actually skip class. Of those who skip, about 48% leave the campus. This means that in our senior class of about 430 kids: 206 leave campus when skipping, 52 stay on school grounds when skipping, and 172 do not skip at all. Most students who took the survey have an unweighted GPA that falls between 2.3 and 3.9

Bar graph displaying how many classes per week the average Stamford High senior skip class.

The students who leave campus regularly tend to only be gone for one class period a day. When asked about the frequency, however, the numbers were inconsistent. Seemingly, most of the student body does not have a specific schedule for leaving or staying. This is most likely due to having a substitute teacher rather than their real teacher.

When asked about whether or not they think leaving campus affects GPA, the answers were very polarized. One student responded, “Not at all. Most assignments can be completed online and do not always require additional instruction. I typically do not skip class, but do leave during my study hall. When I do skip class, it is only if I have a substitute. A student will either do their work or they won’t. Plenty of students with perfect attendance still have poor grades due to laziness or other external factors.” Many of the answers were very similar to this one, agreeing that their GPA is not affected by leaving campus.

Bar graph from survey displaying how many days per week seniors at Stamford High skip class.

However, some students believed the contrary. They said, “Yes, it’s different if a student is skipping class to get an extra class period of studying for a big test rather than skipping because they want to get food or just not go. Skipping class out of nowhere can make you fall behind in classwork and not understand material in the future, making you get a bad grade and lowering your GPA. Even if some people skip class, they make sure to be on top of everything they missed so they don’t suffer in the future, which is what I believe all students should be doing.”

A pie chart from senior Jessica Scanlon’s survey that displays the GPA distribution of students who skip class.

Overall this study proved to show that the correlation between GPA and leaving campus is pretty much nonexistent. Though we cannot discount the students who skip their important classes frequently, when done once in a while leaving does not have any effect at all.