Advertisement

Opinion: California kids -- not quite as unfit as you’re led to think

Share

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Time for the annual alarm bulletin from the state Department of Education about the allegedly woeful state of physical fitness among California students. Fewer than a third, it tells us, passed the state’s physical fitness test this year.

And it will be time for Californians to take this seriously when the state devises a reasonable system for determining who ‘passes’ the test. Right now, students have to be up to par on all six segments of the test to be considered passing. How many tests do you know that call anything less than 100% a failure?

Advertisement

Able to run a marathon and do stomach curls all day, but lacking in flexibility? You’re a failure. Able to jump, twirl and bend for a couple of hours straight in a high-energy dance class, but lacking in upper-body strength? Another failure.

Looking at this a little more realistically, let’s examine the pass rates of ninth-graders, who were the most fit of the three grades -- five, seven and nine -- tested. Only about 37% passed all six tests, but 59% passed five of the six. Five out of six is, in percentages, an 83%, or a B. Close to 80% passed four of the six tests. That would still be a passing grade, though a low one, on, say, a math test.

It’s not helpful to the public, students or educators to measure fitness this way, and it tends to mask the more serious problems among the state’s youth. In all tested grades, for example, less than 60% of students were within the target range for healthy body composition, and the scores were the worst among the youngest students. Is this a marker of a growing obesity problem among the youngest students? If so, it doesn’t represent a failure among school physical education programs, but it’s a matter for societal worry. No matter how many pushups an overweight child can perform, serious health problems are more likely to be in his or her future.

The state should set aside its annual headlines of disaster and start measuring fitness in reasonable and informative ways. We can almost always measure results in ways that make schools look like failures, but that’s not helping us develop a realistic picture of the ways in which schools should improve.

ALSO:

Teachers and test scores

Advertisement

Teachers who just don’t care

Ex-porn star Sasha Grey in the classroom -- or not

Back-to-school night: A shift away from ‘passion for learning’

--Karin Klein

Advertisement