Physical activity plays a big role in the healthy transition to adulthood.

Schools keep kids active through Physical Education (PE), which gives them more energy, helps improve concentration, and supports healthy interaction. There's more structure to PE than most people realize.

Physical Education helps kids in three main areas: Physical health, Academic Performance and Psycho / Social interaction. Childhood physical activity and fitness patterns often persist into adulthood. Physically active people need (and make) fewer visits to physicians, have lower hospital usage, and require less medical attention overall than less active individuals. To the extent that PE courses help students develop habits of physical activity, they contribute to a healthier life and a less costly American population.

Does your school provide kids enough PE time?

Across the country, state laws require schools to provide kids with regular physical activity.

Here are California's requirements:

States vary in their policies for physical education, and data about them tend to be patchy. The Physical Activity Alliance, a non-profit organization, collects what they can to produce a national report, with a target up updating the data every two years. This is the last vestige of what was once a big national program known as the Presidential Physical Fitness Award. For many years, starting in 1966, federal law required students to take an assessment known as the Presidential Physical Fitness exam. This federal mandate was dropped in 2013, but a shadow of its legacy remains in the form of FITNESSGRAM®, an assessment used in many states, including California. California students take it in grades five, seven and nine. For many years, the California Department of Education collected these results and made them public on a statewide basis. As of 2025 it appears that this information is no longer released except through local School Accountability Report Card reports. According to the possibly final state report, in 2019, many students fell short of fitness standards:

Kids learn more when they are active

Research consistently shows that kids learn better when they are active — especially in elementary grades. One influential study documented that it makes sense to sacrifice some classroom time for physical activity. Students who spent more time in school-based physical activity either maintained or improved their grades. Their scores on standardized achievement tests also improved, even though they received less classroom instructional time than students in control groups.

Physical activity plays an important role in mental health, too — reducing anxiety and depression.

In the following short video, John Ratey, author of the popular book Spark, describes research that connectes cardiovascular fitness with improved mental fitness:

Sports and Recess

During the No Child Left Behind era (2002-2015), schools had an incentive to focus intensely on tested subjects, such as reading and math. Spending on athletic programs and facilities lost favor, and many never recovered. Today, organized, competitive sports are not offered by all schools, and we know of no reliable data about their availability ofer time. (If you know a data source, please contact us!)

In 2024, California created a Guide for Physical Education to help school boards, educators, and parents implement higher-quality physical education programs. The guide is based on California's standards for physical education and the related frameworks.

The standards set forth what students need to know and be able to do at each grade level. The frameworks feature practical examples and scenarios of student learning to assist teachers as they plan instruction.

As explained in Ed100 Lesson 8.5, school boards in California have considerable power to spend money based on their priorities. If your school isn't offering recess programs, athletic programs, and the like, it is the result of a choice. To better use more of the school day and mitigate the chaos of recess times, some schools have opted to get help. Programs like Playworks.org, a national non-profit organization, have become experts at helping schools run recess well.

Quality Counts

Of course, not all P.E. programs are good. In 2018, a provocative study examined the unintended negative effects of a middle-school program in Texas. About one out of five students reported being bullied once per week or more, and the playground is a classic location for conflict to erupt. The study found evidence of increased disciplinary incidents and reduced attendance. It makes some sense. If students feel uncomfortable or unsafe, some will stay home.

Next Steps

The National Institute of Health and the PTA provide strategies to encourage physical activity.

Updated June 2025.