‘Activity levels are going down’
State schoolchildren’s physical fitness rates plummet, assessment shows
Fitness rates among Connecticut students are at a decade-low, the latest results of the state’s physical fitness assessment show.
Only 45.5 percent of students passed the last Connecticut Physical Fitness Assessment, which is administered every year to students in grades 4, 6, 8, and high school.
And while the fitness test may seem like a singular evaluation, the plunge in pass rates has serious implications for the overall state of physical health in children, said Joseph Velardi, coordinator for health and physical education for the Connecticut Association of Schools.
“It’s a tip of the iceberg sort of indication,” he said.
The Connecticut Physical Fitness Assessment (CPFA) includes a curl up, mile run, push up, and sit and reach, which measure four aspects of physical fitness: muscular endurance, muscular strength, flexibility, and cardio fitness.
To pass the CPFA, students must receive scores that meet or exceed the Fitness Zone Standard, which is a designated range of fitness scores associated with good health. The 45.5 percent pass rate refers to students reaching the fitness zone standard on all four assessments.
“We know not only that we have an obesity crisis, but we also have an inactivity crisis,” Velardi said. “And it begins really young.”
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, fitness assessment pass rates remained relatively stable, hovering around 50 percent for over 10 years. But the 2021-22 report shows that rates dropped to 45.8 percent, around a 7 percent decrease from the 2019-20 data.
The pandemic certainly made things worse, Velardi said, with a spike in inactivity that has reflected in the scores. However, experts have known for years that fitness levels were on the decline.
“Activity levels are going down and obesity levels are going up. Diets are getting worse,” he said. “And physical education and health education keeps getting cut.”
In addition, kids are just not playing outdoors like they used to, Velardi said. “Their time is being competed for with media devices, and the food industry is not helping.”
The combination of those factors has essentially created the perfect storm for depleting the physical health and fitness of children and teens.
Although the CPFA pass rate has clearly declined, the difference between some school districts’ performance is massive. The lowest performing school district was Torrington at 18.3 percent, and the highest was Lisbon at 93 percent.
That’s because of a mix of issues, Velardi said, and some of it just comes down to socioeconomic demographics, district budgets, and where geographically the schools are located.
For example, in urban schools like Hartford’s, 32.7 percent of students reached the fitness zone standard. “You can just see that, you know, city kids don’t have the outdoor space that kids in the suburbs do,” Velardi said. “And they have less PE, they have less budgets for equipment.”
And in more wealthy, suburban districts like Darien, fitness assessment pass rate was at almost 72 percent.
Schools that tend to perform higher on all kinds of standardized tests tend to be more advantaged and have better opportunities for more nutritious foods, and have more health and physical education than other schools do, Velardi said.
Velardi said that not only was it a matter of budgeting and funding that would make a difference in fitness rates, but prioritizing health and physical education at a younger age, and across the board.
“The amount of physical education, particularly in the younger grades, is minimal at best,” he said. “Health education at the younger grades is virtually nonexistent.”
So, if students aren’t getting any nutrition education, or very little fitness education, until they’re 12 or 13, it gives them enough time to form bad habits, Velardi said. Putting health and physical education at the forefront of schooling in the early grades was imperative to combat this.
Velardi said it was also important to note that kids don’t naturally go out and do a fitness test. So what schools, PE teachers, parents, and communities should be doing is helping find kids physical activities that suit their personality, and things that intrinsically encourage them to stay active.
“There’s something for everyone,” he said. “And a real goal is to have enough education and to have enough opportunities for kids to find their thing.”