The Newspaper Association of America Foundation has awarded professor Jack Dvorak, director of High School Journalism Institute, $27,109 in grant money to study the academic performances of high school and college students.

Using ACT scores, Dvorak's study will analyze student data from high school through the second year of college and will differentiate between journalism or non-journalism students. When each student takes an ACT test, Dvorak said, he or she answers an entire set of questions about hobbies, including "Have you worked on your high school newspaper?"

Dvorak said the research will help schools across the country develop a better understanding to improve their base curricula.

"People are really in need of this kind of data, with journalism constantly facing a struggle to stay alive in schools," he said, adding that journalism is often relegated to a "second class citizenship." "But those of us in journalism education on the other hand realize how valuable it is in what it could mean in terms of student performance."

Dvorak said in many ways, journalism fulfills some of the basic competencies better than some of the standard English competencies used in schools today. This research will test his theory to see if journalism students perform better academically than their peers.

This study extends Dvorak's longtime research on this subject. He is author of the 1994 book that described his research from the mid-1980s on ACT scores, "Journalism Kids Do Better: What Research Tells Us about High School Journalism." Dvorak plans to publish the new study by next May.