Let’s get physical

P.E. struggles to make the grade

The problem is as obvious as those extra pounds:
Americans are overweight and getting more so each year.
An astounding 66 percent of American adults are overweight or obese, and a new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Human Nutrition says it’s only going to get worse.
By 2015—just eight years from now—they predict the figure will be 75 percent.
“And by 2040, some statisticians project it will be 100 percent,” warns Greg Payne, a professor of kinesiology at San Jose State University.

But as worrisome as those numbers are for adults, they are even more troubling when applied to children who, by their youth and nature, should be pictures of health and well-being. Too many, though, are not.
A report last year by the Cities, Counties and Schools Partnership, a coalition of CSBA, the League of California Cities and the California State Association of Counties, cited that nearly 30 percent of children and teens (ages 6-19) were overweight or obese—twice as many as just 10 years earlier.

That bodes ill for the future. Overweight adolescents have a 70 percent chance of becoming overweight or obese adults, and an 80 percent chance if one or more parent is also overweight or obese, according to the U.S. Surgeon General’s Office. Excessive weight increases the risk of health problems ranging from heart disease and Type 2 diabetes to high blood pressure, several forms of cancer and beyond.

But the present isn’t too comforting, either. For educators, the health of children is clearly, indisputably tied to their academic success. “The body and mind are interconnected,” declares Tom Templin, a professor of health at Purdue University and a former president of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education. “Children who are healthy are better learners than children who are not.”

It’s a point that state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell also made in announcing results from the California Department of Education’s 10th annual physical fitness tests last November. “Being physically fit is not only healthier, but studies have shown it can lead to higher academic achievement,” O’Connell said.
A 2004 CDE study, “Physical Fitness and Academic Achievement,” is generally cited among the best sources on the topic. Although couched in cautious statisticians’ terms, that report does say: “Results indicate a consistent positive relationship between overall fitness and academic achievement. That is, as overall fitness scores improved, mean achievement scores also improved.”

For generations, schools essentially addressed the issue through physical education classes. For a specified period in their weekly schedule, kids decamped from the world of books and desks and chairs to run and jump and unleash some of their youthful energy under a phys ed instructor’s trained and caring eye. OK, maybe it wasn’t really like that in your school, but that was the idea, anyway.

The current state of fitness and activity among modern American children, however, has slipped further from that time-honored concept than many of us realize or want to believe. Children who have their own televisions, computers and electronic game consoles in their bedrooms have less reason to engage in physical play on their own, and those who may lack the finer things in our plugged-in lifestyles may also lack safe outdoor areas for play. Soccer moms and Little League dads may take up the slack for some, but many parents fall woefully short on that score, and many don’t provide physically fit role models themselves.

On this subject as on so many others, public schools are often asked to shoulder a disproportionate share of the burden and, in the harsh glare under which they typically find themselves, many schools find the quantity and quality of the physical education that they do provide is called into question.

Part of the solution
Putting a more constructive spin on the topic, conscientious friends of public education—joining concerned educators and school governance teams—are also asking what can and should be done to boost kids’ physical activity and, by extension, their current and future lives. That question will be among the focal points of the  School Wellness Conference, slated for Oct. 1-2 in Anaheim, the first such conference of its kind. Sponsored by CSBA, the California Department of Education and the California Department of Health Services, the conference (www.csba.org/apps/swc/) will bring together school board members, administrators, teachers, parents, students, health experts and advocates.

“Schools are obviously a significant part of children’s’ lives,” says Nora Howley, interim executive director for Action for Healthy Kids, a partnership of more than 50 national organizations and government agencies advocating for education, health, fitness and nutrition. “They have a responsibility to build skills for life. They play a role in interacting with parents and communities in developing and promoting physical activities and an active lifestyle.”

“Schools should not be seen as solely responsible for children’s health and activity levels,” cautions Jacqueline Kerr, a post-doctoral researcher at San Diego State University and the University of California, San Diego. “But they are a key location where all children should be able to have equal opportunity for physical education.”

Parts of the problem
At the moment, in some places, it doesn’t seem like much of an opportunity.
The state Education Code requires that students in grades one through six receive at least 200 minutes of physical education per 10 school days. For grades seven through 12, the PE requirement is 400 minutes per 10 days. These minimum requirements, however, are not being met in many school districts. According to Categorical Performance Monitoring by the state, 48 percent of elementary schools and 23 percent of middle and high schools were noncompliant with PE time standards in 2004-05.

“And keep in mind the CPMs do not measure the quality of the PE,” reminds Joanne Gooley, a physical activity specialist with the California Department of Health Services’ Project LEAN.
Indeed, a pair of reports this year, commissioned by The California Endowment, suggests that not only do many schools provide insufficient time for PE, but often the time that is provided is ineffectively used or wasted. For example, the policy brief “Physical Education Matters” found that, on average, only four minutes of every half-hour of physical education actually involved vigorous activity.

Among the other findings:

• Many PE classes are too big, exceeding 45 students, which translates into less real activity per student.
• PE teachers are often insufficiently trained and their equipment inadequate, especially in less affluent communities.
• PE quality and quantity are most deficient in schools serving poorer students and those in racial and ethnic groups that are already at high risk of being overweight or obese.

Improving the situation will demand changes in both thinking and action.

“Across the board, educators, community leaders, parents all feel physical education is very important,” says Sarah E. Samuels, president of Samuels and Associates, a public health evaluation, research and policy-consulting firm that participated in the California Endowment reports. “They all give high priority in terms of value. They’d like to see more resources devoted, but they are also discouraged by the availability of resources, the reality of the situation.”

“When [budget] cuts have to be made, it’s usually things like music, art and PE,” notes Payne, the San Jose State University professor.

That’s because PE isn’t generally considered to be part of the core curriculum. “It’s something else, something less than the rest of the curriculum,” Payne protests.

Part of the problem is the No Child Left Behind Act. Critics contend that the cornerstone of contemporary federal education law forces educators to curtail PE and other studies outside the core curriculum in favor of “drill and kill” teaching to standardized tests. NCLB passes judgment on schools’ results, but it punts on the broader aspects of a well-rounded education, such as phys ed.

“Because of NCLB, we’ve seen a lot of schools cut hours or teacher time that would have been spent in the past on things like PE or even recess to meet mandated testing or other requirements,” observes Lisa Cirill, acting chief of the California Center for Physical Activity, a component of the state’s Department of Health Services that promotes community-based programs and partnerships.

‘Not your father’s PE’
Payne and others propose a straightforward remedy.

“Fundamentally, there needs to be some kind of official acknowledgement of PE programs,” he says. “They should be included in the grade point average for graduation. That alone would automatically make PE more important in the eyes of kids, parents and administrators,” adds Payne, who is also a former policy adviser on physical education to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But for that to happen, policy-makers—and perhaps even the general public—must update their notions of what PE is really about, as Keith Johannes, past president of the California Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, a nonprofit advocacy group, advocates.

“There is a misperception of PE,” even within the physical education community, Johannes says. “Some call it games, others sports, some physical activity. Few people understand the concepts and principles that should be taught in physical education.”

At its core, says Howley at Action for Healthy Kids, a good physical education program teaches children the value and joy of an active, healthy lifestyle—not just for the moment, but for the rest of their lives.
“What we need to do, what parents and other advocates need to do, is make sure decision-makers know what a high-quality PE program looks like, why it’s important and why they must be willing to accept the costs,” she says.

And it’s not as expensive as one might expect, according to Paul Rosengard, executive director of Sports, Play and Active Recreation for Kids—SPARK—a nonprofit organization based at San Diego State University that has been providing research-based PE programs to schools since the mid-1990s.

“We bring a whole new slant to physical education. It’s not your father’s PE, where most kids stand around while just a few actually play with a ball. Our activities are specifically designed to keep everybody involved. Studies have shown them to increase student fitness, enjoyment, sports skills and academic achievement—all without jeopardizing standardized test scores,” he says.

“We conduct evaluations of current programs, provide new curriculum, teacher development, follow-up, even equipment matched to the activity. A school can pull together all of the pieces for less than $10,000.”
Rosengard says SPARK has worked with some 2,000 schools in California alone. It also works with other agencies, such as the Shasta County Health and Human Services Agency, where Director Marta McKenzie is enthusiastic about innovative approaches that will get kids off their duffs.

“If schools can help kids establish a love of activity as well as learning, it will help,” McKenzie says.
In Lake County, Sutter Lakeside Hospital Chief Executive Officer Kelly Mather is working with area schools on “Healthy Kids Are Contagious,” a pilot program to encourage healthy choices and habits in 3- to 5-year-olds.
Some districts, of course, do it themselves. The Eastside Union High School District in San Jose, for example, has earned kudos for a physical activity policy that provides ample opportunities for exercise in and out of PE classes and requires students to set fitness goals and maintain lifetime physical fitness plans. All programs meet state requirements.

Help available
For school governance leaders, CSBA offers resources and guidelines for developing student wellness and physical activity policies that can be customized with input from board members and superintendents, notes Martin Gonzalez, CSBA’s assistant executive director for Governance and Policy Services. “Our new tool, ‘Monitoring for Success:  A Student Wellness Policy Implementation Monitoring Report and Guide,’ will help boards across California make informed decisions about student wellness related issues.”
Of course, more expensive than a new policy or sports equipment is the need for teachers trained in the particular rigors of physical education.

“You need certified teachers teaching PE,” Payne asserts. “Right now, the fact is that teachers are generally not well-trained to teach physical education, especially at the elementary level. Doing so requires an entirely different methodology. PE teachers don’t have desks. Kids want to run around. That can scare a classroom teacher.”
But there is cause for optimism. The 2006-07 state budget allocated $40 million in incentive grants to schools to hire credentialed physical education teachers and $500 million in one-time block grants for improving art, music and physical education. “However,” Gonzalez cautions, “we’ll need many more resources to provide the well-rounded education our children deserve.”

The emergence of student wellness as a recognized education issue offers more reason to be upbeat. The National Association for Sport and Physical Education has set national standards for “a physically educated person,” and gatherings like October’s School Wellness Conference will keep the issue in the forefront.
“I’m kind of hopeful that change for the better is coming,” says SJSU’s Payne. “We now have some standards for PE. People are getting a clear picture of where they’re trying to go and what to teach. Whether it’s actually being taught is a different question and an ongoing challenge, but I think we’ve finally reached a point of critical mass.”