U.S. school districts are slashing physical education classes and recess as they require students to spend more time in the classroom to improve test scores. It may seem like an old story, but it's still a current story — except now the story has glimmers of hope, as some states are adopting new testing procedures and physical activity requirements to combat the increase in childhood obesity.

"The idea of taking physical education out of schools is the equivalent of academic malpractice," says Todd Whitthorne, the chairman of Our Kids Health Foundation and the CEO of Cooper Concepts, which is part of the Cooper Aerobics Center in Dallas. "If you make kids sit in chairs for a longer period of time, it won't make them smarter. If you get them moving during the day, you'll get them in the position to learn."

A study appearing in the Journal of School Health found that test scores on standardized math and English tests were higher for physically fit children than for less fit kids. The study of students in the Cambridge Public School District in Cambridge, MA, used a fitness assessment called the FitnessGram, which was developed at the Cooper Aerobics Center.

The FitnessGram test also was used during a two-year period by the Cooper Institute (part of the Cooper Aerobics Center) to test 2.6 million Texas elementary and high school students. The $3 million research project found that students' fitness levels dropped by each passing grade. In other words, young children were more fit than older children.

"This is slam dunk research," Whitthorne says. "Only 10 percent of the students that graduate from high schools are fit. It's hard to argue with these numbers."

Despite this research, Phil Lawler, who worked as an elementary physical education teacher for 35 years and is now the outreach director of PE4life, says that many state governments are burying their heads in the sand.

"While some people think that the childhood obesity research has served as a wake-up call, I think most of our country has hit the snooze button," he says.

Childhood Obesity Prevention

However, some states are lowering the prevalence of childhood obesity and enforcing policies and procedures. To recognize their efforts on both fronts, the University of Baltimore published an obesity report card in 2006. Dr. Ken Stanton, one of the co-authors of the report who plans to soon update the research, awarded six states with an "A" for their efforts — California, Illinois, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Tennessee. Twenty-one states earned a "B," while 23 states barely squeaked by with a C, D or F.

Stanton, who is now an associate professor at Coppin State University in Baltimore, says states earned partial credit for trying to pass legislation and full credit for passing laws to protect children. When grading the states, he and the other researchers considered factors such as school-based nutrition standards, physical education and recess requirements, obesity education and programs, vending machine access, and body mass index (BMI) tracking.

Despite positive steps in some states, often the policies, programs and procedures that are in place vary from school to school. To truly fight the epidemic, the United States must have a cohesive strategy rather than a patchwork of strategies, says Richard Hamburg, director of government relations for Trust for America's Health , Washington, DC, which publishes an annual report on obesity in America called "F as in Fat."

"The goal is to have the best policies implemented everywhere and not a few implemented here and there," says Hamburg, who compared loosely connected laws in the fight against obesity to those in the battle against smoking. "When you see more effective policies in more places, you will see a greater effect."

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