<p>Students here must take two years. The second year has health & classroom drivers ed. mixed in. All are graded. It is NOT A for effort. A test on volleyball rules should not take away time from my students spanish mid-term! The middle school started a program where students who did not meet specific physical fitness standards were put in a different class for training to bring them to that level. Absolutely hideous. I have enough battles with the public schools so I didn’t fight that one. If it effected my child I would have.</p>
<p>As long as that goal of getting the heart rate up is met, it really doesn’t matter that Suzie takes 15 minutes to run a mile whereas Johnny does so in 8 minutes, or that Suzie will never be a good volleyball player</p>
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<p>I’m not sure that I agree with this. If an english teacher asked kids to write an essay that was 8 paragraphs long and the kid who slacks off and writes only 5 will be docked points. The person who runs a 15min. mile needs more practice, just like the kid who hasn’t yet learned to write out 8 paragraphs.</p>
<p>Our public school requires only one semester (or is it one year?–maybe they just increased it)
of PE. My boys are not particularly athletic, but it is easy to get an A: show up on time, wear the T-shirt, participate, try to improve. They have swimming, weight and exercise machines, bowling, running, etc. with an emphasis on health and lifelong fitness . . Athletes on school teams can opt out of PE. It is much kinder/gentler than when I was in school.
There is also an academic health class. Both count toward GPA, which is fine with me.
Our college phys ed classes also counted toward GPA, but were only 2 credit hours.</p>
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But kids who don’t perform at the same level of fitness as some others aren’t necessarily ‘slacking’. People come in all sizes and shapes including different health/physical conditions (asthma for example or a turned foot as another example), have different innate coordination, and even have different types of muscle fibers making some activities easier for some than others. That kid who can run faster than another might actually be putting less effort into it.</p>
<p>Most people can improve relative to their own starting point but that doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily ever be up to the level of some others regardless of the effort put into it. For example, very few people would ever be able to be as good at swimming as Michael Phelps simply due to the physiology attributes he was born with regardless of how much effort those people put into it. I know this is an extreme example but it’s just an illustration.</p>
<p>I agree with pizzagirl’s post - most adults who choose to be fit will do so not through team sports (many of which for men seem to involve beer/pizza afterwards) but rather, walking/running/hiking/aerobics/weight training rather than volleyball, football, or murder ball (remember that?). A key aspect of lifetime fitness is to find what’s enjoyable the most, or at least tolerated the most, by the individual. Some people love biking and others prefer running or walking. I know some people who’d rather workout to an exercise video, others who’d rather work the aerobic machines at a fitness club, others who’d rather weight train, and others who prefer to be outdoors doing something like running/walking/skiing. There can be too much focus in HS on team sports (although they should probably be introduced) that really have no long term value to most of the students. To compare it to English, most students will likely get some lifelong benefit out of the ‘rules’ of English yet very few will ever have much need to understand the rules of volleyball/football/basketball/etc. unless they happen to be interested in it. It’s not important in the least.</p>
<p>“But kids who don’t perform at the same level of fitness as some others aren’t necessarily ‘slacking’.”</p>
<p>Same can be said for math skills though. Again, I’m not saying it should be a part of the GPA, just saying it’s nice to see some kids get a chance to do well in something, even if it’s not in the classroom.</p>
<p>but there are kids who are athletically inclined and others who are able to slam out 8 paragraphs in 20 minutes. The English-inclined person might be putting less effort into writing because it just flows better with him/her.</p>
<p>The academically inclined students often have the chance to take AP classes where they have more challenging work, middle of the road students take college prep, and students with difficulty take remedial classes. It is not one size fits all. Physical Education classes that grade on ability do not factor in natural ability, or make a distinction of ‘highly able’ students vs. students that are not. In academic classes the benchmark for letter grades are not the same. When you start breaking down PE classes for Varsity athletes vs. students who are less able and are working towards reaching a goal and do achieve that goal, then I’ll be on board with grading PE.</p>
<p>I thought the thread was about including PE classes in the GPA, not about grading on ability.</p>
<p>^ Fair enough Shrinkrap, I believe we (or at least I) got off topic a bit because of the different ways schools grade PE. A school that uses P/F does not count towards GPA. Schools that grade on effort may count towards GPA, however some find this more equitable than grading on ability.</p>
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It’s not really a good comparison though. As blueiguana siad, there are often different levels for the academics so one can be placed at the more appropriate level and be graded (compared) to those on a relativiely similar level. </p>
<p>I guess one needs ot look at the goals of the PE class which I’m sure varies from school to school. In thinking about it, I’m not really even sure what their goals are. But if the goal of the PE class is to improve one’s fitness level as opposed to all students achieving a particular level then ‘improvement’ should be what’s evaluated. If their goal is to make sure everyone knows the rules of volleyball or something then I suppose they should be evaluated on their ability to regurgitate the rules of volleyball although I see no value in it.</p>
<p>Regardless, a lot of schools distinguish between ‘academic’ subjects and ‘non-academic’ subjest, which usually would include PE, in calculating the GPA. As I said, the UCs, whcih perform their own calculation of teh HS GPA, excludes PE from it. At my kids’ public HS I think they indicated 2 grades on the transcript - one that included PE (‘overall’) and the other which excluded PE. I think it was the one that didn’t include PE that was used for determining class rank.</p>
<p>As an aside, given the overall state of fitness in the USA maybe the goals and methods of the the PE classes in HS should be overhauled.</p>
<p>The goal of PE is to get the heart rate up and find an exercise that people will want to do long term. If Suzie runs a mile every day and it takes her 15 mins, that is just as good of an outcome as Johnny who runs a mile at 8 mins. This is different from English, math, etc. where a certain mastery level is important. PE teachers of the past failed Suzie by making the focus be on her getting to the 8 mins and teaching her to despise running when they would have been better off encouraging her to run everyday. The mastery is the habit, not the proficiency or skill, IMO.</p>
<p>In our district PE is required for 4 semesters during high school. Most kids take it 9th and 10th grade but being on a sports team also fulfills the requirement. So my son who was on the Cross Country team used fall semester Cross Country every year to fulfill the PE requirement. Health is a separate 1 semester class taken sometime during high school. They are graded for PE 10% Written, 60% Participation, and 30% Fitness. The PE grade shows up on the overall GPA but not the academic GPA or the UC GPA (report cards can be very confusing!)</p>
<p>P.E. is required for 2 years here. Every year or so a rumor surfaces that it will be required for 3 or even 4 years, but that never happens. Varsity athletes are not exempt, which I agree with because a lot of students are very involved in sports or activities such as dance outside of school and there is no way that those kids would be exempt. Letter grades are given and included in GPA, but if you participate you get an A.</p>
<p>California requires two years of PE. Typically, to receive an A in the class, you just have to dress out, be on time, and participate (somewhat?) actively, i.e., try. Too many tardies, for example, means a B. Team athletics will fulfill the PE requirement in-season. Marching band also gets a PE pass in-season.</p>
<p>Our district tracks three gpa’s: overall (which includes, PE and study hall and basketweaving); academic (which includes health), and academic 10-12, which mirrors requirements for the UC ELC gpa.</p>
<p>^ In our school in California, it seems to be one year, has to include “health”, with a specific curriculum, and team athletics stopped fulfilling it three years ago.</p>
<p>Two years is the Cal state requirement for PE…with exceptions like any bureacracy.</p>
<p>[State</a> Minimum Course Requirements - High School (CA Dept of Education)](<a href=“CA Department of Education Block”>State Minimum High School Graduation Requirements - High School (CA Dept of Education))</p>
<p>Wow! It says two “courses”. Could that be two semesters, instead of two years? </p>
<p>Granted, my kids go to a "private " “Christian” school, but I talk to kids all DAY LONG…I don’t seem to hear about anyone taking it more then one year, usually freshman year. But my son, who took THREE years, seems to know a LOT of kids who do… Hmmm…</p>
<p>Doesn’t seem fair to require California kids to take four semesters and not have it “count” as A-G or in a UC GPA. There are only 6 or 7 periods a semester for most kids, and only four semesters in the UC GPA. How can these kids get so many extra A-G courses?</p>
<p>…especially if you throw in the required “Christian” school requirements…oh well…almost done</p>
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The public HS my kids went to required 2.5 years of PE which was a real pain for the academically inclined so they took a summer PE class at the local CC in the summer to take care of the extra semester so they could take another AP class that year instead of wasting the time slot. The classes they took at the CC were fitness (using a workout room - they had a nice one) and golf, which I went ahead and took with her, which was fun. I’ve heard they now changed it to a requirement of 2 years rather than 2.5 which works much better.</p>
<p>Shrink:</p>
<p>negative, in the Calif Dept of Ed, a ‘course’ is one year’s worth, as in “three courses” (years) of English, “two courses” (years) in math…</p>
<p>Similar to UC-dad, a lot of our kids take Health over the summer, freeing up an AP slot. They used to take PE at the local juco as well (golf IS popular!), but that funding was eliminated by the State a few years ago (due to some coaching scandals).</p>
<p>For a-g courses, our top students usually take 5 academic courses first two years (+PE), 5/6 academic courses Junior year and the 6 in senior year.</p>
<p>" a lot of our kids take Health over the summer, freeing up an AP slot."</p>
<p>Wow!</p>