Like an exhausted child straining on a pull-up bar, the Presidential Physical Fitness Test is losing its grip on public schools.
School officials say the 44-year-old test, once the gold standard for measuring fitness, embarrasses and discourages out-of-shape children while doing little to motivate students to become healthy.
Schools increasingly are replacing it with the FitnessGram, tests that measure individual progress toward health goals rather than how a child ranks against his peers nationally. It also gives kids a range of fitness targets to hit.
To qualify for the Presidential Fitness Award, for example, a 10-year-old boy needs to do 22 push-ups. To hit his “healthy fitness zone” under the FitnessGram program, he has to do between 7 and 20 push-ups.
“It strikes a different chord about bringing up the average child instead of having kids compete against other kids to be the top,” said Iowa State University assistant professor Gregory Welk, FitnessGram's scientific director.
Tens of thousands of schools nationwide have adopted the program, developed in 1982 by the Cooper Institute of Dallas, a nonprofit health research center. The shift is part of a national trend to refocus physical education classes from teaching sports skills to promoting healthy lifestyles, especially as childhood obesity rates increase.
But not everyone is eager to dump the Presidential Fitness Test, which challenges students to place in the top 15 percent of the nation for their age and gender in pull-ups, sit-ups and other exercises.
Students at Chase County Elementary School in Imperial, Neb., earn more Presidential Fitness Test awards each year than any other Nebraska school of comparable size. They have brought home the Presidential State Champion Award 30 of the past 35 years.
Physical education teacher Jodie Schuller is trying to keep the tradition alive.
Schuller, 39, is a fan of in-your-face personal trainer Jillian Michaels, who goads obese contestants to get into shape on NBC's “The Biggest Loser.” In this age of “biggie”-size meals and video games that don't involve much activity, she said, putting a little pressure on kids can be a good thing.
Kids sometimes don't know what they're capable of until they're challenged, Schuller said.
“To me, life is sometimes made too easy on kids nowadays,” she said. “We hand them things. I guess I'm old-fashioned.”
If you're between 20 and 50 years old, you probably took the Presidential Fitness Test. President Lyndon Johnson established the national test in 1966 amid rising concerns that U.S. kids, softened by industrialization and affluence, were not as fit as European children. Thousands of schools employed the test, and millions of children tried to push, pull and run their way to earn a handsome blue patch and a certificate bearing the president's signature.
Gretna Public Schools physical education teachers abandoned the program five or 10 years ago when they “found over and over again that it wasn't motivating kids,” said Superintendent Kevin Riley.
“Conceptually, it's very good,” Riley said. “However, if you've got a heavyset kid who can't do a pull-up, it doesn't do anything to motivate them to get better.”
Julane Hill, coordinated school health director for the Nebraska Department of Education, foresees a day when the Presidential Fitness Test will be gone.
Eighteen Nebraska school districts, including the five largest, have switched to FitnessGram. The Lincoln and Millard school districts adopted it a decade ago, the Omaha Public Schools in 2008.
In Iowa, FitnessGram and the Presidential Fitness Test are believed to be about equally used, said Elaine Watkins-Miller, spokeswoman for the Iowa Department of Education.
With the Presidential Fitness Test, districts typically test upper elementary and middle school students each fall and spring in five events: curl-ups or partial curl-ups (sit-ups), shuttle run, endurance run/walk, pull-ups or right angle push-ups, and V-sit or sit and reach.
Boys and girls who score at or above the 85th percentile of U.S. youths on all five events, based on standards established in a 1985 study of youth fitness, are eligible for the award.
With FitnessGram, students also test twice a year, or sometimes more often. They try to keep their scores within the health fitness zones for three areas: aerobic capacity; body composition; and muscular strength, endurance and flexibility. The zones are established by research to reflect levels of fitness necessary for good health, the company says.
It's the bottom number that's most important, because it's the threshold for fitness. Scoring below that puts a child in the “needs improvement” zone.
Children periodically get a colorful FitnessGram report highlighting their successes, reminding them to lead a healthy lifestyle and offering tips for improvement. A child who scores low in pull-ups might receive a message to increase arm exercises or climbing.
The switch to FitnessGram may be driven by the national alarm over childhood obesity, as school districts search for physical education programs that work, said Annette Eyman, spokeswoman for the Papillion-La Vista Schools, which switched this year.
Between 1976 and 2006, childhood obesity in children ages 6 to 11 increased from 6.5 percent to 17 percent, raising the risk of diabetes, asthma and sleep apnea, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The ultimate goal of the FitnessGram is to give kids a lifelong measurement tool that can help encourage and promote that physical activity,” Eyman said. “That's the goal, versus a one-time recognition.”
In Chase County, however, recognition is a part of the winning formula. Patches, certificates and a tradition of winning help motivate kids, Schuller said. “It's mainly the tradition,” she said. “The kids want to be like big brother or big sister.”
Robert and Robyn Forsyth of Papillion have raised four Presidential Fitness Award-winning kids. Their children even practiced the exercises at home.
Beth, 12, earned the award twice and prefers the Presidential Fitness Award to the FitnessGram because it's more challenging. “It's important to challenge kids because then they'll work harder in other things,” she said.
Beth sees some good in the FitnessGram. When the girls in her sixth-grade class ran a FitnessGram aerobic test, nearly all of them reached their healthy fitness zones. That was good for the girls who were not able to earn the Presidential Fitness Award, she said.
The Presidential Fitness Test is still used in the David City Schools, where Tom Jahde taught PE for 20 years. He encouraged kids to try to at least pass one or two of the exercise tests. During the mile run, he grouped kids by ability to minimize embarrassment. He looked for improvement.
His district passes out the patches during a parents awards night.
“We try to promote it and make a big deal about it so kids really feel proud of what they accomplished,” he said.
The only thing he didn't like about it was that kids had to pass all the tests to get the award.
Pull-ups were Megan Adkins' Achilles heel. Now 30 and president of the Nebraska Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, she is a fan of FitnessGram.
“When adults go to the gym, it's not ‘Well, we're going to compete against the person next to us on the other treadmill to see who can run faster.' We're trying to improve our own self and our own bodies,” she said.
Adkins, now a physical education lecturer at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, never earned the Presidential Fitness Award because of what she calls those “stinkin'” pull-ups.
“I tried and tried and tried,” she said, “and never could get that pull-up and never could get that Presidential Award.”
