Testing kids’ fitness after taking away chances to be active 

LOFOSYOS | UNSPLASH

As children spend less time on physical activities, their fitness levels fall as a result.

It’s back to school this fall for the Presidential Fitness Test, a Trump administration initiative to measure children’s strength, endurance, speed and agility. 

But here’s the important question: What are we doing to help kids get in shape? 

Opportunities for physical activity have been disappearing for decades. Physical education, once a daily staple in schools, has been squeezed by poor funding, lax standards and pressure to focus on math and reading scores.

Recess time has shrunk in many schools for the same reasons, especially in low-income communities and communities of color. It may be no more than 10 minutes a day. All too often it’s withheld as punishment.

Outside school, youth sports are increasingly commercialized, expensive and beyond the reach of many families. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that children ages 6 to 17 engage in at least an hour daily of moderate to vigorous physical activity, spread throughout the day. More than 70% of kids don’t move that much, and we can’t pin all the blame on cellphones and video games.

There’s no national data on children’s fitness levels, and very little statewide data. Nobody really knows how strong American kids are, what percentage can run a mile, and which kids would struggle to complete even a single lap around a track.

In July 2025, President Trump signed an executive order reinstating the Presidential Fitness Test, a school fixture for decades. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. officially launched the test in June 2026. Although it’s not mandatory, Kennedy said many states will soon begin administering it.

“I’m super-excited,” said Renata Simril, president of the nonprofits LA84 Foundation and the Play Equity Fund. “You have to measure what’s important. If you don’t measure it, it doesn’t matter.”

You also have to invest in what’s important. If the new test inspires a fresh commitment to staffing and upgrading fitness programs, facilities and education that promote youth fitness, especially in underserved schools, it will have broad, lasting value. 

But if the test becomes merely an annual drill of push-ups, pull-ups and a 1-mile run, it will repeat the flaws of the old presidential fitness tests, which were administered in various iterations from the late 1950s until 2012. 
Generations of adults, myself among them, remember those tests as a dreaded ritual of performing exercises we’d never been taught or had an opportunity to practice. And we had to do them, or fumble trying, in front of the whole class.

“I’m an epidemiologist. I care about testing, I care about data. I want that all to happen,” said Hannah Thompson, director of the Nutrition Policy Institute at University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources. “But we need the foundation first. Strong school-based physical activity programs — PE in particular, recess, and all those other wraparound sports — those are the critical foundation for the test. And that’s really missing right now.”

Health experts call for 150 minutes of PE a week in elementary schools and 225 minutes in middle and high school. Many students don’t receive anything close to that. Only five states mandate that much PE instruction, 26 states mandate half that amount and 11 have no time requirement, according to a study published in April.

PE mandates are rarely enforced or funded, so schools don’t always meet even the low standards a state might set, said Chad Killian, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor of kinesiology at the University of New Hampshire. Many schools have steadily cut PE along with recess, music and art to devote more of the school day to academics and preparation for standardized exams.

It’s a misguided trade-off. A CDC review of 14 studies of PE in schools found strong evidence that it improves cognitive skills and academic behavior — and no evidence that more PE time diminishes learning. The same review analyzed eight studies of recess, with similar findings: Unstructured breaks were associated with cognitive gains, improved concentration and better classroom behavior.  

Physical activity also boosts mental health, a significant benefit when so many children are struggling with anxiety and depression.

“When it’s well implemented, physical fitness testing is so important,” said Killian, a former elementary school PE teacher. “But if you’re not having regular PE classes in order to learn about fitness, develop fitness, and practice fitness, testing loses its utility. Actually, I would say it’s inappropriate. It’s putting the cart before the horse. What do we want to test if we don’t have conditions to learn?”

Disparities run deep in physical education. In a survey of California school districts, Thompson found that the more Black and Latino students a school had, the less likely it was to have a PE teacher on staff.

A study in Connecticut found that wealthier, predominantly white school districts, which have better facilities and more experienced teachers, have nearly four times higher fitness scores than economically disadvantaged, racially diverse districts. The state is one of the few that systematically tracks and publicly reports detailed information on student fitness.

Of course, athletic programs, teams, clubs and leagues outside school can promote fitness too. But families must have the money and time to invest in the commercialized enterprise that youth sports has become.
As private equity has poured into the field, the pay-to-play ethos has become so extreme that a couple of states are investigating youth sports investors for anti-competitive business practices. A congressional committee held hearings on the issue in June.

Parents pay, on average, $1,000 a year for their child’s primary sport, a 46% increase since 2019, according to testimony at the hearing. They devote three hours to that sport every day their child has practice or a game.
It’s not surprising that children from low-income families are much less likely than their more affluent peers to play in leagues or on teams. Sports participation among kids from low-income households fell from 36% in 2012 to 25% in 2024.

These trends make physical activity in schools all the more important. In May, the American Academy of Pediatrics released its first new guidance on school recess in 13 years, reaffirming its importance and calling for multiple breaks with a minimum of 20 minutes every day.

The revival of the Presidential Fitness Test gives journalists an opening to investigate whether schools are providing students with at least the minimum PE and recess time recommended by health experts.

How much PE do students actually receive? Are classes too packed for kids to move, or are they playing sports, learning dance, practicing yoga, working out on equipment? 

Are they doing drills so they can pass the test, or engaging in activities that might inspire lifelong fitness habits?

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