WASHINGTON, May 10 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Phil Lawler, Director of Training and Outreach for Kansas City-based non-profit PE4life, testified today before the House Subcommittee on Healthy Families and Communities about the importance of daily, health-and-wellness-based physical education in the nation's fight against childhood obesity.
Lawler testified alongside actor and wellness advocate Chevy Chase, Dr. Jim Marks of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Dr. Virginia Stallings of the Institute of Medicine, Georgia middle school student and activist Chandler Converse (2006 recipient of the PE4life National Youth Service Award), and Nora Howley of Action for Healthy Kids. The hearing was hosted by the Department of Education to follow up on the progress of the School Wellness Policy mandated this past year.
Lawler pointed out that children today have a shorter life expectancy than their parents for the first time in 100 years. He also emphasized that obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure are but a few of the many health problems facing inactive children as they move into their teens and adulthood.
To combat these problems, Lawler stressed the importance of the PE4life Way for getting kids active now and instilling the lifetime benefits of health and wellness. Lawler said PE4life's mission is to inspire active, healthy living by advancing the development of daily, health-and-wellness-based physical education programs for all children, not just the athletically inclined.
"The PE4life Way is about enabling each student to maintain a physically active lifestyle forever," testified Lawler. "It means emphasizing fitness and well-being, not athleticism. It eliminates practices that humiliate students. And it assesses students on their progress in reaching personal physical activity and fitness goals. A PE4life program exposes kids to the fun and long-term benefits of movement - it's really that simple."
Lawler presented several findings about how PE4life programs consistently improve the fitness levels of students. However, he also got the attention of the panel by pointing out that physical education not only builds healthier kids who become healthier adults but also enhances academic performance and decreases discipline issues.
"The bottom line is, fit kids perform better academically," said Lawler. "This is a critical point in this era of No Child Left Behind."
The evidence supports him.
In a California Department of Education study looking at 5th, 7th, and 9th graders, based on the well-respected Fitnessgram, the students that were the most fit also performed the best on math and reading assessments.
In another study, undertaken at a PE4life Academy, high school students that took a fitness-based physical education course before the regular school day began, in addition to a literacy class, improved their reading and comprehension scores by 1.4 years on a grade-level equivalency scale. That represented a 50% greater improvement in reading and comprehension scores than seen by the students in the study who took the literacy class alone.
Lawler presented another exciting piece of PE4life research from the PE4life Academy in urban Kansas City, Missouri. The study at Woodland Elementary School looked at discipline issues before and after the implementation of a daily PE4life program at the school. Suspension days dropped from 1,177 to 392 (a 67% decrease). Discipline incidents (fighting, etc.) dropped from 228 to 94 (a 59% decrease). The only significant difference from one year to the next at Woodland was the implementation of a daily PE4life program.
Woodland's principal, Craig Rupert said, "PE4life has had a tremendous positive influence on the lives of the students at Woodland Elementary School. It has not just increased the levels of fitness we are seeing in our kids, but they are also more motivated throughout the day. Enthusiasm is way up and office referrals are way down."
During his testimony, Lawler stressed that PE4life is perfectly positioned to be an ideal School Wellness plan implementation partner for schools across the nation.
"Our Academies provide training to a wide-variety of school and community leaders in the development of their own PE4life programs, including a step-by- step implementation plan for their School Wellness initiatives," said Lawler.
Contact: Shanna Goodman, PE4life (816) 472-7345
PE4life
CONTACT: Shanna Goodman, PE4life, +1-816-472-7345
