Visit the National Academies Press online and register for

Educating the Student Body
activity throughout the day, including during physical education, 
recess, instructional classroom time, and before- and after-school 
opportunities. 
•
In addition to physical education, recess can provide an opportunity 
for students to engage in vigorous- or moderate-intensity physical 
activity and has been shown to improve classroom behavior. 
•
Disparities in access to quality physical education exist, particularly 
for Hispanic students and those of lower socioeconomic status.
•
Physical activity during classroom time or activity breaks during 
lessons may contribute to reduced sedentary time during the school 
day and increase the amount of light- and moderate-intensity 
activity among students.
•
Together, regular and quality physical education, recess, and physical 
activity in the classroom setting enable students to be more physi-
cally active during school hours and significantly contribute to recom-
mended levels of vigorous- or moderate-intensity physical activity.
•
Opportunities exist for increasing physical activity outside of normal 
school hours, including active transport to and from school and 
active after-school and sports programs. These programmatic efforts 
can further contribute to the daily recommended levels of vigorous- 
or moderate-intensity physical activity among students for whom 
such programs are available and accessible in the school setting.
•
Schools can be rich resources for joint-use agreements that facilitate 
physical activity programming for students in their community out-
side of school time. 
•
Research is limited on the effectiveness of physical education, recess, 
classroom physical activity, and before- and after-school programs 
across subgroups based on race/ethnicity and immigrant and socio-
economic status. Additional research is needed to document any 
differential effects of these approaches among these subgroups.
•
Even though sufficient evidence exists to support augmenting student 
physical activity during school hours and at school-related after-
school activities, important questions remain about tailoring interven-
tions to fit the wide social and physical variations among schools.

---

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
Educating the Student Body: Taking Physical Activity and Physical Education to School
The Effectiveness of Physical Activity and Physical Education Policies and Programs
 
313
A
n effective or promising approach for increasing physical activity in 
youth is one that both has theoretical underpinnings and has been 
investigated through methodologically sound qualitative or quantitative 
research. The type of research and evidence relating to strategies for increas-
ing physical activity in schools varies tremendously by program or policy 
components. As suggested by the L.E.A.D. (Locate Evidence, Evaluate It, 
Assemble It, and Inform Decisions) framework, developed to guide decision 
making on obesity prevention, evidence should be evaluated against criteria 
for assessing quality that are appropriate and established for this type of 
evidence (IOM, 2010). All research findings should be considered in light 
of their strengths and limitations, including internal and external validity, 
where appropriate and relevant. 
This chapter presents a summary of available evidence on and provides 
examples of effective and promising approaches for increasing physical 
activity in schools. It is important to note that a lack of favorable research 
findings concerning the influence of a program or policy must be interpret-
ed with caution but not altogether discounted. Definitive evidence on effec-
tiveness may be limited by the novelty of the approach, gaps in surveillance, 
or the lack of feasibility of using “gold standard” study designs to examine 
certain issues. For example, use of a randomized controlled design to study 
the effects of a new physical education policy at the state level may not be 
feasible. At the same time, however, the field of evidence-based policy mak-
ing, which involves drawing on existing research and surveillance systems, 
is growing and is especially relevant to the study of the impacts and out-
comes of the approaches presented in this chapter.