State Students Make Weak Showing in 1st Fitness Test

California’s schoolchildren are woefully out of shape, although girls appear to be in somewhat better condition than boys, results of the state’s first attempt to test students’ physical fitness showed Tuesday.

In releasing the results, Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig said the scores for the nearly 800,000 fifth-, seventh- and ninth-graders surveyed last spring confirmed the experts’ suspicions that most California children are couch potatoes.

“These results substantiate what we have been saying for some time,” Honig said. “Many youngsters begin school physically unfit, and though the picture brightens somewhat as students progress through the grades, the majority of students remain unfit.”

The physical education tests are the newest addition to the California Assessment Program, which annually evaluates the state’s students in academic areas. As with the academic tests, results are intended to provide a way to assess schoolwide performance, so students do not receive individual scores.

It was developed by the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance and consisted of four tasks: a “sit and reach” flexibility test, modified sit-ups, pull-ups and a one-mile run/walk. There was also an optional body-composition assessment examination.

Although allowances were made for gender differences, girls did better than boys in most areas: sit and reach, body composition assessment and the walk-run test. Only in the pull-ups were the boys consistently more successful in meeting their standards than were the girls.

Nancy Sullivan, research analyst for the CAP office, said she was surprised by the girls’ generally better showing but cautioned against reading too much into the results.

“We really need to have comparative data,” Sullivan said. “Given this is the first year of the test, we can’t say how significant (the girls’ better results) are.”

Statewide, only 15% of fifth-graders, 20% of seventh-graders and 26% of ninth-graders met at least four of the five fitness standards. Students in Los Angeles County did even more poorly: only 13% of fifth-graders, 17% of seventh-graders and 21% of ninth-graders met those standards. Because the fitness standards represent minimal levels of satisfactory achievement, students must meet at least four of the standards to be considered fit.

California students at all grade levels did best on the sit-and-reach task, which measures the flexibility of the lower back and hamstring muscles, while the pull-up test of upper body strength and endurance proved to be the most difficult.

Students were evaluated based on their age and sex. For example, girls 9 to 12 are required to run or walk a mile in 11 minutes or less, while the minimum standard for 9-year-old boys is 10 minutes.

The tests were administered last spring to roughly 95% of the state’s fifth-graders, 88% of the seventh-graders and 77% of the ninth-graders, Sullivan said. Beginning this spring, every district in the state will administer the test annually to its students at those grade levels.

Results of the tests administered last spring indicate California’s schoolchildren have much in common with their sedentary counterparts in the rest of the nation. Recent studies by the Amateur Athletic Union and the President’s Council on Physical Fitness showed that fitness among American youngsters is actually on the decline.

“American children are becoming more sedentary,” warned AAU Director Wynn F. Updyke in releasing his organization’s study in September.

Honig said the California test results give schools their first data to evaluate physical education programs.

“Schools need to examine what is and what isn’t happening in physical education and health classes,” Honig said.

For Mary Anderson, who oversees physical education at John Adams Junior High School south of downtown Los Angeles, the attention to student fitness is long overdue.

But she believes the test itself is unrealistic, especially for Adams students whose crowded inner-city campus leaves them with no classroom space for physical education instruction. And she said the school’s large percentage of students who speak little or no English have trouble filling out the test’s written questionnaire.

At Adams, only 3% of seventh-graders and 6% of ninth-graders were deemed physically fit by meeting the standard in at least four of the test’s five areas. Adams is a part of the Los Angeles Unified School District, where just 6% of fifth-graders, 8% of seventh-graders and 10% of ninth-graders met fitness standards.

“The problem is not with the kids. It lies with the system,” Anderson said. “Our program is pretty good by 1950s and ‘60s standards, but not for the kids of the ‘90s.”

“Until the people who make the decisions are willing to commit to creating programs that work, nothing will really change,” Anderson said, citing class size (55 students), outmoded curriculum, a tendency to still segregate activities by sex (even though forbidden by the federal government since 1973) and an emphasis on competition instead of cooperation and personal achievement.

“Someone has to decide that physical education is important, that fitness is important,” Anderson said.

Some Adams students offered reasons of their own for poor fitness.

Gerardo Gatez, 14, whose habit of running every day after school enabled him to complete the one-mile test in seven minutes, said teachers do not have the time to offer much encouragement or personal attention. “Sometimes they just give you the ball and tell you to go play,” he said.

Tanya Sanchez, 13, said many of her classmates “don’t want to do exercises. They just play around.”

HOW FIT ARE CALIFORNIA’S STUDENTS?

The state Department of Education for the first time last spring tested the physical fitness of fifth-, seventh- and ninth-graders. There were four mandatory exercises--sit and reach, sit-ups, pullups and mile run. A fifth test--of body composition--was voluntary and not all students participated. The results were compared against a minimun fitness standard for each grade level. Listed below are average percentages of students in each grade level who met the standard in four or more areas, three areas, two areas, one area and none. Not all schools in California participated in the survey.

4+ 3 2 1 0 STATE AVERAGE 5th grade 15 21 26 25 12 7th grade 20 26 25 21 9 9th grade 26 26 24 18 6 LOS ANGELES COUNTY 5th grade 13 20 26 27 14 7th grade 17 23 26 24 10 9th grade 21 24 25 22 8 ORANGE COUNTY 5th grade 17 23 26 24 10 7th grade 22 31 25 16 6 9th grade 28 28 24 15 4 SAN DIEGO COUNTY 5th grade 19 22 25 23 11 7th grade 27 26 23 16 7 9th grade 32 76 22 15 5