Vicky Rideout, Vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation and director of the Program for the Study of Entertainment Media and Health, points out:

• Today’s young people devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes to using entertainment media across a typical day. This adds up to more than 53 hours a week, the equivalent of a full-time job.
• About half (47%) of media heavy users (more than 16 hours a day) report getting Cs or lower in school, compared to almost a quarter (23%) of light users (less than three hours a day).
• Half of the kids say that when doing homework they usually multitask by using some other form of media at the same time.
• The average student’s homework to internet time is 16 minutes of homework to 1.5 hours of internet.

Although children with any media rules consume nearly three hours less media per day than those with no rules, only about three in ten young people say they have rules about how much time they can spend watching TV (28%) or playing video games (30%), and 36% say the same about using the computer. Child psychologist, Dr. Jennifer Hartstein recommends that parents disallow video chatting and TV watching while doing homework. For kids who don’t live by these limits, parents may choose to remove the offending media until the student is able to avoid distractions and make education the priority.

Another option offered by Rideout is for parents to use these findings to “look at what goes on in their own families … and talk about it.”

All these scenarios are considered and tips provided in Parents’ Custom Report Card on FamilyEducation.com.

Perhaps, for example, your child works very hard, but her grades are low or she’s not working to her potential:

If your child’s report card doesn’t jibe with his ability, you may need to do a bit of detective work to figure out why. A lack of motivation can come from frustration at not being able to do schoolwork. Rather than admit they can’t do it, some children will just give up or pretend not to care. Lack of motivation can also be an indicator of other problems.

• Ask your child what’s going on out on the playground, in class, and at lunch.
• Ask him if the work seems too hard, but be on guard — you may not get an honest answer.

You’re the expert on your child. Through caring questions, you can find the underlying reasons for unsatisfactory grades.

Some problems can be addressed with outside help. Individualized tutoring is successful for many; for some students, it is recommended by pediatricians.

It used to be that cheating was done by the few, and most often they were the weaker students who couldn’t get good grades on their own. There was fear of reprisal and shame if apprehended. Today, there is no stigma left. It is accepted as a normal part of school life, and is more likely to be done by the good students, who are fully capable of getting high marks without cheating. “It’s not the dumb kids who cheat,” one Bay Area prep school student said. “It’s the kids with a 4.6 grade-point average who are under so much pressure to keep their grades up and get into the best colleges. They’re the ones who are smart enough to figure out how to cheat without getting caught.”

Academically strong students aren’t the only ones, of course. Athletes bring a win-at-all-costs mentality to the classroom according to the article.

In a survey of nearly 5,300 high school athletes conducted in 2005 and 2006 by the Josephson Institute of Ethics in Los Angeles, 65 percent admitted to cheating in the classroom more than once in the previous year, as opposed to 60 percent of nonathletes, a percentage that institute founder Michael Josephson says is statistically significant. And varsity athletes were more likely to cheat than nonvarsity.

This is a great article and one worth reading and talking about with your middle or high-school-aged student. As the piece concludes, quoting ethicist Josephson, “No one is putting the flag in the sand and saying, ‘This is wrong! It’s dishonest, it’s unacceptable, I don’t care what the stakes are and why you’re doing it, it’s wrong, and we will not permit it.”

For students who don’t see why they need to apply themselves in school, rewards can kick-start academic interests. But for students in general, experts discourage conditioning students to expect treats for school work.

So what can you do? The article gives these suggestions:

Celebrate hard work and improvement, not just grades.

Reward with special time. Acknowledge a child’s success with a family outing or activity. Recognizing a child’s effort afterward is different than offering an advance enticement, experts say.

Encourage children’s dreams. “After a certain age, the child will not ‘perform’ for parents and teachers unless they can see their own goals being met as well,” notes Anne Rambo, author of I Know My Child Can Do Better. “Your child should ideally perceive you as an ally, someone who wants to help him or her achieve goals.”

Find natural consequences. For example: Stop weeknight video-game time or friend visits until students can balance these activities with school work. Or have teens who don’t qualify for a good-student discount make up the difference with the regular insurance rate.

See how kids perceive rewards. A recent study found rewards worked more effectively for boys; teacher rewards, even more than parent rewards’, linked positively with boys’ academic goals and motivation. Girls received more rewards, but that wasn’t associated with higher motivation.