Dizney Words

Results of a new study indicate that childhood obesity rates around the country may have plateaued after a 25-year increase. Federal and state programs along with public-awareness efforts on the prevalence and dangers of overweight and obesity in children seem to be making a small dent in the public-health crisis.

The mystery for New York, though, is why the state’s school-age children and teens aren’t more fit. Their public schools have had tremendous, visionary tools at their disposal for more than a decade: the state Board of Regents’ Learning Standards for health and fitness, applicable to every child, at every grade level.

It is imperative that the Regents direct the state Education Department to launch all-out public education, public relations and in-school campaigns about the Learning Standards pertaining to healthful living. The standards are well-reasoned, demanding baselines of skills and knowledge that all students need to meet to be healthy, maintain a safe environment, and manage their family and community resources wisely. Review them on the department’s Web site, along with guidelines on creative - and not necessarily expensive - ways to meet the standards. These are not your baby-boomer gym and home ec classes. These standards are designed to prepare students for a lifetime of health-enhancing physical activity while balancing the demands of daily living. These are 21st century standards for all, not just the high school jocks and cheerleaders of old.

The standards are not a new “unfunded mandate” somebody dreamed up to plague schools. They are already in place. Or supposed to be. Individual parents, children’s advocates and parent-teacher groups should be armed with them and demand of their districts evidence that they are being met. So should taxpayers, who have made tremendous investments into school facilities and teacher training in the Lower Hudson Valley the last dozen years.

Barriers to implementation

State Education Department officials concede that while mandatory, the Learning Standards that are grouped under the interrelated category of “Health, Physical Education, and Family and Consumer Sciences” are not universally implemented in New York. This is despite more than a decade of effort; despite knowledgeable people in Albany chomping at the bit to help local districts; despite a wealth of “best practices” available; despite even a new department-designed “Physical Education Profile” to assess students at the high school level; it even comes with a free DVD.

Yet the implementation of the Learning Standards is “very uneven in some districts,” Jean Stevens, associate commissioner of the office of Instructional Support and Development, told the Editorial Board. One reason, she noted, is that there is no state curriculum forced on districts, in any subject matter. Decisions on how to implement the standards are local ones. However, Stevens said, the standards are “absolutely not optional; anyone who has (programs) has to be guided by the Learning Standards.”

There is another reason: “Taxpayers have put a lot of money into these programs, and they must be driven by standards alignment,” she said. She and department experts in each of the three areas - health, physical education and family-consumer science - “try to provide support and guidance.”

Details about the 28 Learning Standards have been on the department’s Web site for years. If classroom teachers “can’t fire them off,” said Dawn Scagnelli, associate in family-consumer education for the department, they likely will be found embedded in curricula. “Unfortunately,” she conceded, “they’re not always communicated as well” at the local level, a fact she called “sad.” However, she noted, public education in the state is moving into “a new era of renewal” since the Regents have instructed a multi-year review of each of the standards.

What is even more “sad,” and troubling, is the short-shrift that the health and fitness standards have been given in too many districts, evidenced in obesity and physical fitness data, and in the blank looks on too many teachers and students who are asked about them. A candidate for the recent Mount Vernon school board election noted during an Editorial Board interview that gym is one of the most frequently failed classes by district seniors.

Ironically, one likely reason that the Learning Standards in health and fitness aren’t taken as seriously as other “core” subjects is that there is no required government testing of students to see if the schools have done their job preparing them for healthy lifestyles. Stevens acknowledged that in too many places, there is an attitude of “if it’s not tested, it’s not valued.”

Teach to the standards

Education in New York’s public schools today is, and has been for more than a decade, standards-based. It is not test-based - notwithstanding loud complaints from too many corners, repeated by the ill-informed, that it’s the state Education Department’s fault, and teachers must “teach to the test.” No, they must teach to the Learning Standards, to which the assessments should be linked. While leaving curricula and teaching approaches to local districts, state law and regulations nevertheless require that those local efforts meet three state priorities: meet the Learning Standards across all grade levels, and ensure that students graduate high school with a minimum of 22.5 credits in standards-based coursework and pass five state Regents examinations.

The standards were designed in 1996 and finalized in 1998 with the input of virtually every “stakeholder” group involved in public education represented. The standards’ focus: knowledge and skill-building. Their groupings alone indicate a shift in public-education philosophy: Subject matter deliberately crosses old-fashioned, often arbitrarily drawn topic areas in seven categories, with a total of 28 standards. Mathematics, science and technology, for example, are linked as one category, stressing their interconnection. They emphasize interdisciplinary problem-solving, vital in the technological revolution and global economy that students face.

The standards are intended to be relevant to children’s lives today, while fostering their ability to work, and be active citizens and lifelong learners in the future. The standards are supposed to run a cohesive, continuous gamut from kindergarten to 12th grade. Perhaps most important, they apply to every single child, including those with disabilities.

In fact, the standards have been around so long that the Board of Regents recently directed a multi-year study and revamp of current standards, beginning with English language arts.

Notoriously, four of the Learning Standards categories - English language arts, mathematics, science and social studies - require annual testing in lower and middle grades by the state and the federal No Child Left Behind act. New York also requires high school graduates to pass a minimum of five regents exams in those areas, including two in social studies, American history and global studies.

Ironically, because they are regularly tested by the state, schools tend to place more emphasis on those “core” areas - despite regulations that clearly state all seven Learning Standards areas are part of a comprehensive public-school education in New York. They include the Arts; Career Development and Occupational Studies; Languages Other Than English; and the life skills related to health, fitness, family and consumerism. For the latter, starting in the youngest grades, students are supposed to understand and maintain personal health and fitness plans; learn to create a safe and healthy environment at home and work; and be taught how to manage resources in areas like food preparation, homemaking, child care and personal finances.

Tools for fighting

While understanding that English and math skills are “foundational to all areas of study,” Stevens of the Education Department said, people and schools “should not devalue the others,” including the health standards.

Clearly, parents and others, including students themselves, need to agitate for their full implementation. And they, community members and state lawmakers, who often try to legislate healthy behavior, have another programmatic weapon at their disposal. Under federal child nutrition laws, started in 1996 and reauthorized in 2004, each school district participating in federal income-based, “free lunch” programs, which the majority of districts have, must have an established “local wellness policy.” Are they being implemented?

Stevens said that anyone concerned about a local school’s compliance with the Learning Standards can call her office in Albany at 518-474-5915 for assistance. She also pointed out - rightly so - that “child obesity cannot wholly be addressed by schools - it is a family, community and societal issue,” along with other child-health problems like asthma and diabetes.

All such medical conditions, of course, fall to state and county departments of health, and the medical community, to tackle, too. Yet given the “captive audience” of public-school students, the resources that taxpayers already have given their schools and the Education Department’s excellent Learning Standards, the Board of Regents should play a more active leadership role in exercising them.