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Educating the Student Body
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Recess is a complement to but not a replacement for physical educa-
tion. Physical education is an academic discipline. 
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Recess can serve as a counterbalance to sedentary time and con-
tribute to the recommended 60 minutes or more of vigorous- or 
moderate-intensity physical activity per day.
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Peer interactions during recess are a unique complement to the 
classroom. The lifelong skills acquired for communication, negotia-
tion, cooperation, sharing, problem solving, and coping are not only 
foundations for healthy development but also fundamental measures 
of the school experience. 
The Decline of Recess
Since passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, several studies 
and reports across the literature have pointed to a decline in recess to make 
more time for academic subjects. Approximately 40 percent of schools in 
the United States have either eliminated or reduced recess in order to free 
up more time for academics (RWJF, 2010). See Table 6-1 for a summary of 
changes in recess time between 2001 and 2007; see also the detailed discus-
sion of time shifting in Chapter 5.
The Recess Gap
In addition to the general decline in recess time, the Center for Public 
Education (2008) has identified a “recess gap” across school settings. 
This finding is supported by the results of a survey sponsored by the U.S. 
Department of Education and the National Center for Education Statistics 
(Parsad and Lewis, 2006), which collected information from a representa-
tive sample of 1,198 U.S. elementary schools on whether they scheduled 
any recess for each grade, typically grades 1 through 5 or 6. Respondents 
reported the number of days per week of scheduled recess, the number of 
times per day, and the total minutes per day for each elementary grade in