| When 14-year-old Nick Valdez attends gym class every day, he
sees the importance of dribbling a basketball or running a mile differently from many
others.
“It teaches you to get along with other kids," Nick said during a break from a
basketball lay-up drill in the Cascade Middle School gym. “Just like if you’re going out
to get a job — it teaches you people skills."
Nick’s assessment of his physical education class is just the kind of thing state
education officials want to see more of in the very near future.
That’s because in response to requests from physical education teachers that the
Legislature make P.E. a part of the Certificate of Initial Mastery program — the state’s
measure of academic competence — the days of gym class taking second fiddle to the other
core requirements will soon be over.
By next school year, third-, fifth- eighth- and 10th-graders will likely have to meet
state physical education standards in much the same way they now must meet standards in
reading, writing, math and science.
“People did, and maybe still do, think of physical education as recess time,” said
Shelley Randall, a P.E. teacher at Obsidian Middle School and a member of the Oregon
Department of Education committee developing the standards.
“I think that putting it up to a more important level — at the state level — is going
to make schools more accountable for their physical education programs.”
Judith Young, executive director of the National Association of Sports and Physical
Education, said she wasn’t sure P.E. ever had a major academic role.
“But frankly, we are seeing a need for it now because our lifestyles are getting
increasingly sedentary," she said, citing many young people who would rather play a
football game on a computer than go outside and toss the pigskin around with friends.
The new standards will be modeled after several programs, including the seven
standards developed by Young’s organization. Those standards, which hint at what the
students should be able to do and know by the time they graduate, say:
- Students should be able to perform basic skills such as dribbling a basketball,
run, jump, skip, slide, crawl and catch.
For example, a teacher would work with students on specific skills of a sport rather
than simply the concept of the sport.
- Students should be able to use basic motor skills in a variety of situations and
in increasing proficiency as they get older.
- Students should exhibit a physically active lifestyle and be able to tell teachers
the benefits of being physically fit.
- Students should understand and exhibit the concept of sportsmanship.
- Students should understand and respect the different skill levels among people
around them.
But Earnie Greeno, a P.E. teacher at Cascade Middle School, said all that is
happening in his gym classes now.
Students during his fourth-period class Wednesday worked on dribbling, lay-ups and
passing the basketball.
He’s not exactly sure how putting P.E. at the CIM level will change what he and Betsy
Bosch do with the students at Cascade, but both agree that ultimately it will be a
change for the better.
“I think it will be the same, but it will be clarifying what’s needed to be done,”
Greeno said. “They’ll want us to try to do much more individualized stuff.”
A noble plan, he said, but it’s tough to do when you have two teachers trying to work
with 110 students during first period.
If the goal of the state is to really put P.E. on an equal level as the core
subjects, “I hope (the standards) force them to focus on the numbers you can have in the
class. That will be essential."
Margaret Bates, the state education department’s P.E. specialist, said that right now
the state is just focusing on developing the standards. Alleviating class-size problems
would be left up to the school districts, she said.
It will also be left up to the districts to decide how to implement the standards and
assess the students in physical education.
“The assumption is that the state will present the guidelines, but they won’t be firm
and the districts won’t have to necessarily follow them,” said Terry Wood, an associate
professor in the college of health and human performance at Oregon State University.
Wood, who also serves on the state committee, expects that because P.E. teachers have
been wanting this change for a long time, they’d work quickly to put the state’s
guidelines in place.
The change would move physical education into the “Tier 2” level of CIM, joining
second language, technology and the arts curricula as subjects with state standards but
without uniform state testing.
The committee hopes to have the first draft of the standards finished sometime this
month; a second draft is expected in January. By Feb. 1, the state plans to post the
second draft on its Web site where the public can see it and offer suggestions.
The State Board of Education will review the plan this summer and take action on it
in September.
The tough part, many agree, will be figuring out how to assess each child accurately
and objectively.
“It’s always subjective with physical education,” said Randall, the Obsidian Middle
School P.E. teacher. “I don’t think it will come down to grading the students, but
assessing whether they meet the standards or not.”
That can be done in a lot of ways, she said. Teachers can keep a portfolio of student
progress and video tape student performance over time.
Greeno, the Cascade P.E. teacher, said student performance in such things as sit-ups,
the softball toss, push-ups and others are tracked throughout the year and from year to
year.
Students take written tests about some things like volleyball and soccer, Greeno
said.
And while the goal of the standards is to get all the schools in the state on the
same page, that might be difficult, Randall said. Some schools don’t have swimming
pools, some have bigger budgets to buy more and better equipment, some have more gym
space than others, while some don’t even have gyms at all.
“That’s why we want these standards to be broad,” Randall said.
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