Taking Physical Education Seriously: Mandatory Reporting in Washington State
While it is easy to get people to agree that we want our children to be healthier, the real challenge comes with the “how.” Recognizing that challenge, advocates with the Washington State’s Childhood Obesity Prevention Coalition have taken an incremental approach to help make an ironclad case for increased physical education standards in that state’s schools.
In Washington, where almost one in four children are overweight or obese, a lack of physical inactivity continues to be a serious health concern that negatively impacts children there. And while students in Grades 1-8 are required to have an average of at least one hundred instructional minutes of PE per week throughout the year, and high-school students are required to complete one credit of physical education to graduate, those state requirements fall short of current national standards for physical education.
While physical-education requirements in Washington are at least something that can be built on to further improve opportunities to help children achieve a healthy weight, there are no statewide reporting requirements for the current physical-education standards so it is impossible to know to what extent schools are complying with those standards.
Victor Colman, the director of the Childhood Obesity
While it is easy to get people to agree that we want our children to be healthier, the real challenge comes with the “how.” Recognizing that challenge, advocates with the Washington State’s Childhood Obesity Prevention Coalition have taken an incremental approach to help make an ironclad case for increased physical education standards in that state’s schools.
In Washington, where almost one in four children are overweight or obese, a lack of physical inactivity continues to be a serious health concern that negatively impacts children there. And while students in Grades 1-8 are required to have an average of at least one hundred instructional minutes of PE per week throughout the year, and high-school students are required to complete one credit of physical education to graduate, those state requirements fall short of current national standards for physical education.
While physical-education requirements in Washington are at least something that can be built on to further improve opportunities to help children achieve a healthy weight, there are no statewide reporting requirements for the current physical-education standards so it is impossible to know to what extent schools are complying with those standards.
Victor Colman, the director of the Childhood Obesity