Remember the obesity crisis? Guess not.
In the mad obsession to raise test scores and to outcompete the world, physical education classes are being turned into opportunities to teach reading, math, geography, and almost anything that might be on the test.
The story reads:
On a recent afternoon, the third graders in Sharon Patelsky’s class reviewed words like “acronym,” “clockwise” and “descending,” as well as math concepts like greater than, less than and place values.
“Ms. Patelsky, the physical education teacher at Everglades Elementary School here, instructed the students to count by fours as they touched their elbows to their knees during a warm-up. They added up dots on pairs of dice before sprinting to round mats imprinted with mathematical symbols. And while in push-up position, they balanced on one arm and used the other (“Alternate!” Ms. Patelsky urged. “That’s one of your vocabulary words”) to stack oversize Lego blocks in columns labeled “ones,” “tens” and “hundreds.”………
“Spurred by an intensifying focus on student test scores in math and English as well as a desire to incorporate more health and fitness information, more school districts are pushing physical education teachers to move beyond soccer, kickball and tennis to include reading, writing and arithmetic as well. New standards for English and math that have been adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia recommend that teachers in a wide variety of subjects incorporate literacy instruction and bring more “informational text” into the curriculum. Many states have interpreted these standards to include physical education and have developed recommendations and curriculum for districts and teachers to incorporate literacy skills and informational text into gym classes.”
Stop.
This is going too far. Why should students be denied the physical activity they need in the service of test prep?
Somehow I suspect no one is doing nonsense like this at Sidwell Friends or Lakeside Academy in Seattle or Deerfield Academy or Maumee Country Day School in Toledo.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“I don’t work for Parks and Recreation… I’m a teacher.” Many critics are ignoring this quote from a PE teacher in the article. America got into the obesity crisis as children were taking “Gym” class, mostly team sports for 30 minutes a day, two times a week. How will continuing the same type of Gym class that got us into the crisis, help us get out?
Calling it nonsense is incredibly unfair to today’s PE teachers. They have gone through an entire philosophical shift in the last decade or two. Today’s PE classes are about health, fitness, teamwork, and sportsmanship. Incorporating academics isn’t test prep. Students need reading and math to learn about health and fitness. PE teachers have Masters. They do lesson planning. They design complex and challenging tasks while managing large groups of children.
When the media covers the shift they’ve experienced, supported, and encouraged, it’s called nonsense and they’re blamed for perpetuating the obesity crisis. It’s compelling how much we all want things both ways – we want education to change but when aspects look different than what we remember, there is panic and anger.
Jennifer, you’ve constructed a disjointed argument about physical education delivery around your market niche, rather than undertaking any study or consideration whatsoever of children’s physical needs.
While you’re holding forth about how we got into the “obesity crisis” as a generality, remember that individual children are facing metabolic syndrome, prediabetes, and even full-blown type II disease at younger and younger ages.
My husband is a researcher in nutrition in the Clinical Sciences Department of a public university. I’ve helped him design, implement and evaluate intervention programs for middle-school children at risk for permanent health damage There is a body of knowledge on interventions that can and should be implemented immediately, and they aren’t the ones you’re advocating.
We shouldn’t have to be scrambling for these resources in the first place, or competing with data-driven accountability entrepreneurs at all.
Interesting, especially since I didn’t make an argument. Rather, I responded to Diane picking quotes from the article to support her argument. Regardless of my market niche (which I think you may have misjudged, perhaps based on my tongue-in-cheek Twitter name), I don’t disagree with the interventions you mention. In truth, the only thing I passionately advocate for is quality, equitable public education. I struggle with our very human desire to see what we want to see. We hate the Common Core, we see test prep in PE class. We’re all guilty of confirmation bias. Calling out someone for logical fallacies does not mean I endorse bad policy, or misguided data-driven accountability.
Jennifer I wish this was true
“Today’s PE classes are about health, fitness, teamwork, and sportsmanship. Incorporating academics isn’t test prep. Students need reading and math to learn about health and fitness.”
PE time is a dwindling asset in our schools. In NYS kids are suppose to get 120 minutes of PE time each week. Often it’s only 80 in an actual PE class. The other 40 being delegated to the classroom teacher to try ti fit it into their schedule.
Take that 80 minutes and use 10 each period to incorporate academics as you say. That leaves only 60 minutes per week. Looking at the data that’s a minimal amount of time in a week to teach health, fitness, teamwork, and sportsmanship. Shall we divide that time up equally as well? 15 minutes a week on health, fitness, teamwork, and sportsmanship?
Let’s not forget the new NYS APPR requirement to pre test and post test in PE, and taking the mandatory computer based attendance for VAM purposes.
This post may be somewhat of a stretch ( purposely so) but the facts remain as I posted earlier.. we’re all racing to oblivion.
Jennifer, I think that physical education classes should be a time to run and play, to learn team sports, and to exercise. In many districts, such classes–so necessary for children’s health–have been reduced to only once or twice a week. That’s a shame. It hurts children. It really harms them.
I disagree on Team Sports as being a focus in Physical Education. This model has been prevalent in PE for decades and by in large has failed children. 3% of adults over the age of 21 stay physically active through team sports. Look towards the work done by the late Phil Lawler in Naperville, IL around quality Physical Education built around individual health, wellness and fitness & the work of Dr. John Ratey from Harvard regarding exercise and the brain.
This is happening in music classes.Otis madness.it co,ES Crome
Elementary principals and teachers living on fear of test scores.
Sorry,IPAD.It is madness. It comes from elementary principals and teachers living in fear of testing.
The gradual inclusion of academics in PE class has been happening since the 2000’s. I’m not sure how we can conclude it’s a fear of testing. Granted, APPR has impacted how PE teachers assess but many of things in the article have been happening in PE classes for years.
But what’s wrong with letting children be children without having to put more “academics” into it? Why can’t kids play kickball or soccer without having to spell or do math problems? I guess it’s better to do that than to cut out PE altogether, but why does it have to come to that?
I grew up in the days where we went out and organized our own games with very little adult intrusion. I don’t remember being taught to do much of anything until jr. high and high school. That was when they taught us how to play basketball with girls’ rules. I think we could only bounce the ball three times before we had to pass it. I wonder if we could have used it to solve math problems? Ridiculous.
Sorry, does that date work for Don Sternberg
Burris from my iPad
Our P.E. teacher now has to give short writing prompts. Granted, they are based on skills learned in P.E. class, but remember I teach in an elementary school.
Completely ridiculous, but hardly rare I would guess. In my own school, this is happening right now as we approach our test date in April. I am the elementary librarian and I must now shift to teaching reading skills such as main idea, etc. in place of library curriculum (because who needs that stuff, right?). The tech teacher is teaching math and so on. Where is a line going to be drawn?
As an elective teacher (high school culinary arts) I was expected to teach language arts and math during our 45 minute Impact period. Once a day, for 45 minutes, a group of students would come to my classroom, for the express purpose of preparing them for the standardized tests.
All teachers in the school no matter what you taught, were expected to have a Word Wall posted, containing the “Word of the Week”, selected by language arts department. We were to use these terms, and expect our students to use them as well, whether they fit in our content or not.
I was also rated unacceptable on my teacher evaluation because during a lesson I didn’t have my students convert recipe amounts into percentages. We don’t cook using percentages…it’s fractions or whole amounts…but the administrator who was observing said I should have had the students practice converting to percentages because they have to do that on the state exam.
Robots…mindless, data-driven, standardized-loving robots are running our schools. In the end, these measures didn’t help us reach our benchmarks…administrators began to use unethical and illegal means to do so. In one year our math scores jumped 26%, and almost 100 seniors who were failing multiple classes a month before graduation, crossed the stage and received their diplomas.
“I didn’t have my students convert recipe amounts into percentages”
That’s hysterical. Oh, God, you can’t make this stuff up. They’re holding teachers, and little children, accountable to driveling idiots.
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina and commented:
lunch time test prep is surely next.
There’s something fundamentally false and misdirecting in this article. PE barely exists in the school districts I know well, and resources for it, not at all. Look at this quote:
“Chellie LaFayette, the physical education teacher at Roxhill Elementary in Seattle, used an iPad purchased with a federal grant to show her students pictures of the Iditarod sled dog race and maps of mountain ranges for which she had named routes on a climbing wall.”
Aside from the question of climbing sled-dogs, she has a climbing wall at Roxville elementary? And there’s a bin full of sports-themed storybooks next to racks full of basketballs at Manatee Elementary?
Administrator Eric Stern gives one rationale for the zaniness on display, “As budget cuts force school officials to make choices between subjects, “it’s just a way to make P.E. teachers more of an asset to schools and seem as important”
The problem is with the bait-and switch. Charming activities with giant Legos don’t sound so bad, but they’re only offered (briefly) in demonstration districts. Children get no giant Legos in the real data-driven world. The’ll just click and drag them in proprietary standards-based PE curriculum on the iPads.
Briefly, upon reading I first thought what a great way to drive home the meaning of “alternate.”, using P/E as a reinforcer. As a corporate director of training, we have settled on “train-by-doing”, so this example jumped out as a solid idea.
If it is only being done for the test however, that is wrong. But were it being used as a way to reinforce the knowledge being instilled, I would have to say, it is what we probably need more of…
I’m just thinking of the games that a PE teacher could come up with which would make learning a lot more fun for those who can’t learn sitting down, and make PE a lot more fun for those who always hated it, because their brainpower overwhelms their physical tone…
Common Core is nothing but a grand social experiment. What we are seeing in PE and other classes is nothing more than the continued indoctrination mandated by this experiment. Gone are the days of PE that taught skills, sportsmanship, and physical fitness.
Our PE teachers are being forced to continue the indoctrination as schools across the nation are forced to lockstep in this race to oblivion.
It’s no wonder that we need to start anti-bullying programs. Kids don’t know how to play together, interact together, explore games together. Look in your own schools, recess incidents are on the rise, because kids don’t know how to play. At home, they no longer gather on the sandlot without it being organized by adults.
They tend to play in organized leagues, travel teams, and other adult oriented competitions. They have no chance to develop those emotional skills that really make them college and career ready.
Now our PE classes have been converted into (buzz nonsense coming) an interdisciplinary differentiated opportunity-
We’re in trouble.. this great social experiment is going to doom us all.
Sorry, but blaming bullying on lack of PE is ludicrous. I went to school back in the good ole days of PE 5 days a week and bullying was rampant. In fact, PE was one of the worst places for bullying because it’s much harder for a PE teacher to be aware of everything that’s going on in a large gym setting (that and the fact that PE was the only class that required stripping naked before and after).
Even though bullying was prevalent in PE classes years ago, I can only hope hope it has been reduced with better teaching practices. Rratto makes a valid point regarding unsupervised play away from school. Kids today no longer play outside until “the street lights come on” like many in my generation did. We learned how to avoid trouble and solve problems. Today, kids are used to having an adult present when they play; they don’t acquire the skills or independence to solve conflicts.
When did we take JOY out of anything we do anymore. The joy of making our body move in different ways like the face of a baby taking his first steps. The joy of music. The joy of making something with ones own two hands. The joy of reading our first words. The joy of eating. The joy of talking to another human being. The joy of learning something new. The only activities that I continue to engage in are the ones that bring me JOY.
I need joy!
I have thoroughly enjoyed the back and forth on this topic. And then the best comment of all!
May I call your posting “An Ode to Joy”?
🙂
This is potentially a very interesting development but this anecdote is perhaps not so great to illustrate the point. The gym teacher in question “instructed the students to count by fours as they touched their elbows to their knees during a warm-up. …while in push-up position, they balanced on one arm and used the other (‘Alternate!’ Ms. Patelsky urged. ‘That’s one of your vocabulary words’) to stack oversize Lego blocks in columns labeled “ones,” “tens” and “hundreds.” That’s not actually undermining gym class; they’re still very much getting exercise. Why is adding math and vocabulary words to fitness classes a problem? There’s no indication they’re getting less exercise.
del2124, I wonder if you’ve thought through what it is kids need to learn in physical education.
I have some doubts about the lesson description you quote: “while in push-up position, they balanced on one arm and used the other to…”
Go try that. People are just making up any old thing, instead of building on with the serious study that’s already been done on physical development needs, and also on child-engagement.
Recess incidents? What recess? My first grader in NYC public school is allotted 30 minutes for recess. That 30 minutes is usually whittled down to 10-15 minutes a day — the 30 minutes of lunch period not being time enough for all the children to get and eat their food. Consider elementary schoolchildren of 6 & 7 getting 10-15 minutes a day of free time. When I was a kid we had at least an hour of play time in a school day. Gym is only a couple of times a week. Physical activity and play are a tiny fraction of the 1st graders’ school-day. And I know there are NYC public school kids who get far less than that.
At barely 7, my child’s constant comment about school is that they don’t have enough time — never enough time for their teacher to give them a snack in the long afternoon, not enough time to finish lunch, not enough time to play, to be outdoors. Not even enough time to do classroom activities the kids enjoy, like presenting News to their peers, having Reading Buddy time with 4th graders, or work choice.
Research from Dr. John Ratey of Harvard and others shows vigorous exercise affects the brain, learning process and student behavior. The trend in American public schools of cutting physical education in favor of increasing study time in math, science, and English is an effort to help students pass tests dictated by the No Child Left Behind Act. The PE programs mentioned in the NY Times article are a byproduct of nclb and the focus on standardized assessment data in core subject areas.
Jennifer made the connection to nclb with this quote “The gradual inclusion of academics in PE class has been happening since the 2000′s.”
I would ask you this —– are these PE programs evolving supported by Nueroscience research from Ratey, Medina, Hillman or are they conforming to the mandates of nclb and rttt —driven by test scores?
As a Physical Educator I found this quote deplorable: “As budget cuts force school officials to make choices between subjects, “it’s just a way to make P.E. teachers more of an asset to schools and seem as important” as teachers in core subjects like language arts, math and science, said Eric Stern, the administrator in charge of physical education for the Palm Beach County schools, the country’s 11th-largest school district.”
To suggest that PE teachers are not as important as core content teachers is reprehensible — especially when the quote is from an administrator overseeing PE. Suggesting that PE teachers need to teach math, reading and science to be an asset to our schools is insulting.
PE teachers are an asset to schools and the communities they serve. They are just as important to schools as core content teachers. To suggest they need to start acting as reading and math interventions to save their jobs due to budget cuts shows the greater problem we face in this “reform” era and a lack of leadership from this administrator.
Core content teachers should be providing students brain breaks throughout the day or class period. Movement should be a part of a core content teachers daily routine. Sadly, the reform movement is pushing for more seat time and PE to become test prep PE.
(CJ Cain, you’re absolutely right, and help may (or may not) be on the way.)
LISTEN UP, EVERYBODY. This is breaking news, I think, by way of a Nike press release.
“First Lady Michelle Obama, Nike’s Mark Parker to make P.E. announcement”
“…next Thursday in Chicago about the importance of bringing physical activity back to schools… Studies show kids need at least 60 minutes of physical activity each day to stay healthy, but …”
“”Yet, only 4 percent of elementary schools, 8 percent of middle schools and 2 percent of high schools currently offer daily P.E. and only 9 states require recess in elementary schools.”
http://www.oregonlive.com/playbooks-profits/index.ssf/2013/02/michelle_obama_nikes_mark_park.html
Somehow, we have to pick this up and run with it, so we get some recess and PE for the kids, and get some marketing opportunities for sport equipment instead of for these standards-based hucksters.
Also, we need an American manufacturer of lacrosse sticks, don’t we?
I am not buying anything the First Lady is selling. Let’s Move is 3 years old and has done NOTHING for Physical Education. In a video she raved about Duck Duck Goose as being an active game. She means well — but is clueless in regards to what Quality Physical Education is. There is a difference between Physical Activity (ex. recess, brain breaks) and Physical Education. Both are important, but are not one and the same.
Saying that she means well is being overly generous for no reason.
Agreed! You are a wonderful asset and much needed. I also believe the brain needs mental breaks! When I run, my mind clears and some creative thoughts start to sprout. It is quite an exhilarating sense of relaxation.
I think while you are at it – run, hula hoop, juggle bowling pins while balancing a book on your head all at once. Oh, that’s right that’s what being an “effective” PE teacher involves now – actually all teachers. (ha,ha)
There is no disconnect between a quality physical education program and integrating other subjects. Bryant Cratty wrote a short book called “Intelligence in Action” way back in 1973. Teachers have been integrating the curriculum for a long time. This is nothing new. The problem arises when physical educators forget that they are there to teach lifetime skills and fitness concepts. Their primary purpose is to help their students become lifelong movers. Integration is secondary, and not there just to improve test results. But if you can integrate math, language arts, science and social studies once in awhile and not take away movement, fitness and skill building, why not do it? It is just too bad that classroom teachers do not know how to integrate their subject areas with movement. Wouldn’t that make learning more fun and reach children who are kinesthetic learners?
Howie, I see that you published your book in 2008, and you mention your games are fun, and allow teachers to focus on making sure kids are having fun and learning the PE goals you set.
I’ve seen games and fun change kids lives. There’s lots of good stuff out here, and health career students used it in some pilot programs run jointly by Boys and Girls Clubs, a neighborhood health center, and my husband’s university. We couldn’t get any public schools involved; they were moving toward shutting down their PE programs so they could bring in politically-connected after-school vendors. They had downsized their PE faculty. The children begged for more activities, but the grant had run out. In the end, they got nothing.
So now you’re thinking of developing standards-based games yourself. Please don’t try to monetize any particular PE approach by tying it to the current regulatory-capture strategies of market-based accountability. It’s too important, and you have too much to contribute this vital struggle.
It seems that in PE students are getting the best of both worlds. They are deepening their understanding of/or relearning classroom concepts while being physically active. A Pe teacher is still a teacher and can help students in various ways. I try to incorporate all of the above in my units. I get to see the students every other day for 50 minutes and feel that all of the debated topics can be accomplished.
At first, I thought this article must be a spoof. Can no one imagine what hell this would make of childhood? We are allowing people without the sense of a slug to direct our education policy. And these experts claim this nonsense will raise our international standing?!
Because the parents of kids at those schools were doing those kinds of things in the home when the kids were four.
I remember as a kid playing an imaginary baseball game for hours with only 5 friends. We made up new rules.( no hitting to right field, run the bases in reverse order) showed collaboration and innovation. We used our imaginations as we mimicked the star players of the day, trying to duplicate their swing, etc. Vital skill needed in today’s world.
PE should be working on those skills as well as promoting good physical health, not Math, or reading test prep. Getting tired of the ‘dog and pony shows’ that claim to be about education.
Maybe we need to revisit history
http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Physical-Fitness.aspx
I remember obesity really well. That’s because I am an endocrinologist. Though trained in internal medicine, we rounded with the pediatric endocrinologists as well.
Which begs the question of Bloomberg’s ban on large sugary sodas.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-23/nyc-judge-told-big-soda-ban-is-unfair-to-small-business.html
When I started my first year of my fellowship training at Harbor UCLA in 1989, an obese teen-aged Hispanic girl was admitted with diabetic ketoacidosis. The pediatric endocrinologists asked, “Type I diabetes or something else?” After all, type II diabetes was “adult onset” diabetes.
Briefly these obesity-related, insulin-resistant kids were labeled type 1 and 1/2 diabetes!
In 2004 NIKE sponsored Richard Carmona (who was the current US Surgeon General) in his address to the Portland City Club. “Undoing the Obesity Epidemic: Making the Connections, Meeting the Challenges.”
http://blog.senseoworld.com/?p=4893
A few members, like me, raised questions about whether the federal government should intervene in school fund-raising through vending sugary sodas. His response? We should turn to corporations like Nike and Kraft to create market-based solutions!
SO HOW DOES THAT WORK WHEN THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY INVESTS IN THE FAST FOOD INDUSTRY?
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/04/15/insurance.fast.food.stock/index.html
Remember Michelle Obama’s efforts? Let’s Move!
Just three months after launching the campaign, the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity released the campaign’s action plan. Michelle Obama stated, “No one gets off the hook on this one—from governments to schools to corporations to nonprofits, all the way down to families sitting around their dinner table.” “Looking back on it, it’s enough to make you weep. So little has been able to be achieved,” said Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, public health and food studies at New York University.
http://www.thenation.com/article/170485/michelles-moves#
More excerpts below:
———————————————–
“At the same time that the administration hinted at the possibility of new regulations, it also sought out partnerships with the food industry in what might be viewed as a carrot-and-stick approach. The question raised by this tactic was: Do voluntary partnerships actually work, or do they merely allow food companies to burnish their image, even as their Washington lobbyists battle real reform measures?
(Kelly) Brownell, (director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University)… spelled out the divergent views in a commentary for the journal PLOS Medicine in July. On one side are those who believe that food manufacturers shouldn’t be regulated in the same way as tobacco or alcohol companies…
‘The assumption is that this industry is somehow different than others, and that because people must eat, the industry is here to stay, and like it or not, working with them is the only solution,’ Brownell wrote.
But after thirty years’ work on policy and public health, Brownell has concluded that this position is “a trap,” writing: ‘I expect history will look back with dismay on the celebration of baby steps industry takes (such as public-private partnerships with health organizations, ‘healthy eating’ campaigns, and corporate social responsibility initiatives) while it fights viciously against meaningful change (such as limits on marketing, taxes on products such as sugared beverages and regulation of nutritional labeling).’…
While Brownell concedes there are small victories to be gained by working with industry, he insists that the childhood obesity crisis won’t be solved without forcing food companies to do the things they don’t want to do. History is littered with unfulfilled industry promises to protect kids’ health, he said in an interview. A recent example was the ‘Smart Choices’ label, introduced in 2009 by fourteen major food companies, including Kraft, Kellogg, PepsiCo and Unilever. The program gave Fudgsicles, Lucky Charms and Kid Cuisine Magical Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza a little green check mark designating them as ‘smart’ choices. Nutrition experts argued they were anything but healthy.
Or as Brownell put it: ‘How many more times are we going to get sucker-punched by the industry?’ “
Reblogged this on 70jamsession and commented:
Again, thank you, Diane Ravitch. What a fascinating article! Now, I must say, I actually do NOT disagree with some points here. I am a poster-child for a PE student who probably should not have earned full credit — in the 1980s. The use of literacy and perhaps even some mathematical skills could prove beneficial and supportive for a contemporary PE class. What I do find very harmful from this article are the points about the overkill of integrating such skills into gym class simply for the sake of our obsession with testing and “drilling and killing.” This is not acceptable.
Well said Jamsession. High stakes testing, NCLB, RTT, emphasis on evaluating teachers based on test results, and the absolute nonsensical verbiage of Common Core are not only harming physical education, but every single subject area as well as students, parents, teachers and principals. Somewhere, there are happy corporations smiling down on us.
Darn everyone! At least your students have gym class! Our incredible phys ed teacher was excessed in June because of budget cuts. (NYC)