Stretched Too Thin?: The Relationship Between Insufficient Resource Allocation and Physical Education Instructional Time and Assessment Practices

With provisions in the Every Student Succeeds Act, attention to physical education (PE) programs in school will be crucial for developing well-rounded students. We assessed the availability of resources that have the potential to impact PE (staffing, continuing education, annual PE equipment budgets) in a nationally-representative sample of 640 U.S. public elementary schools. Higher student-to-PE teacher ratios were associated with students not receiving adequate instruction. Equipment budgets were minimal (median 1⁄4 $500) and 30% of schools had no budget at all. Additional financial support from federal and state education agencies would help schools to better meet recommendations for PE. © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Physical education (PE) in schools is a key aspect of providing children with the knowledge and skill to be physically active for a lifetime, and there is strong evidence that healthy children are better learners (Basch, 2011; Institute of Medicine, 2013). PE and school-based physical activity (PA) improves academic outcomes, including students’ scores on standardized tests of achievement (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2010). PE has received renewed support recently, due to increasing recognition of the importance of supporting the whole child in education settings, which has been articulated by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) and CDC in the “Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child” model (2015). In addition, supporting the whole child has received national support through an emphasis on well-rounded education in the Every Student Succeeds Act (2015). In other words, it is clear thatdmuch like other content areas such as mathematics, science, or civicsdPE should also be part of the educational experience for all students, rather than being considered an optional subject or one that is eliminated due to budgetary challenges. Like all other teachers, PE teachers provide instruction on a formal content area with standards, curricula, and assessments to measure student outcomes (SHAPE America, 2015). Resources are necessary for all teachers to accomplish these goals, regardless of content area. However, thus far, few studies have examined the nationwide allocation of resources to PE programs in schools, nor the impact on characteristics * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (L. Turner), tylerjohnson6@ boisestate.edu (T.G. Johnson), [email protected] (H.G. Calvert), [email protected] (F.J. Chaloupka).