Play Hard, Work Hard

Cutting physical education in order to boost test scores has the opposite effect, studies show.

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There’s a certain amount of irony here.

For several years now, many policymakers and school districts have been trying to reduce the time allotted for physical education at school. Not illogically, they argue that high-stakes testing and the need to prepare students who can compete in a global arena make it imperative that school days be devoted to core subjects like reading, math, and science. The result is that in most states physical education isn’t required in all grade levels, and the time devoted to it is often minimal.

The problem is that a growing body of research from a wide variety of fields indicates physical activity is associated with improved academic performance and helps students focus. According to the data, reducing physical education time may actually hurt grades and test scores.

Kinesiology and health education professor Darla Castelli conducted one of the major recent studies looking at the relationship between physical fitness and academic achievement in a group of elementary school students. “[She] found that, in field tests, aerobic capacity was positively associated with academic performance,” says her colleague Dolly Lambdin, an instructor in UT’s Physical Education Teacher program. “Body-mass index, however, was inversely related to academic achievement, which means that overweight and obese students tended, overall, to perform less well cognitively.”

Reducing physical education time may actually hurt grades and test scores.

Castelli also found that vigorous physical activity leads to the greatest gain in cognitive performance, both in total academic achievement and specifically in math and reading.

“And then, of course, there’s also the issue of childhood obesity being at an all-time high,” said Lambdin, “and the numerous health risks associated with being overweight or obese. This is a compelling reason to get children off of the couch or out of the chair in front of the computer and engaging in some sort of vigorous play and exercise.

“We know that a sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy food choices hurt your health. Now we also have excellent reason to believe that lying on the bed and texting rather than riding a bike or going for a swim, for example, may cause you not to do as well on tests as you could. I think it’s safe to say that we have just about every good reason in the world to get our children moving.”

Read more about research on the effects of physical education here.