Most Students Failing In Fitness
More than two-thirds of Texas schoolchildren flunked the state’s physical fitness test this year, a troubling trend that doctors worry could get worse with the Legislature loosening the requirements for high school gym class.
The bright spot among the newly released state data involves elementary and middle school students, who met the healthy benchmarks at slightly higher rates than they did two years ago when Texas became the first state to mandate annual fitness testing.
Third-grade girls continued to perform the best this year, with 37 percent passing all six tests, which involve running, strength and flexibility exercises and a body fat measure. High school seniors did the worst, with about 8 percent of each gender meeting the healthy standard.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends that children get at least 60 minutes of physical activity — most of it aerobic exercise – every day.
Texas law says elementary students must get at least 30 minutes of physical activity a day – or 150 minutes a week – though an exception allows districts to slash 15 minutes off the weekly mandate. Middle school students must get a half-hour of daily physical activity for four of their six semesters.
For high school students, the Legislature last year reduced the number of physical education credits needed for graduation from three semesters to two starting with the upcoming school year.
State Sen. Jane Nelson, who sponsored the 2007 bill requiring annual fitness testing, said she was encouraged by the improvement among younger students but concerned overall.
The high school passing rates have remained relatively flat or dipped over the last two years, though educators caution that many of the students in the older grades don’t take the test and if they do, they don’t take it seriously.
All students are supposed to participate, but many high school students are exempt from gym classes – where the testing typically takes place – because they are in athletics, cheerleading or marching band.
A state analysis last year found that schools with better fitness results also had higher academic performance and fewer discipline problems.
The so-called Fitnessgram test developed by the Dallas-based Cooper Institute asks students to run, do sit-ups and push-ups or pull-ups, reach their toes from a seated position, and do trunk lifts, which assess back strength. It also measures body composition through a skin-fold test or using the body mass index, which looks at healthy levels of height and weight. The passing standard varies by gender and grade level.
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