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Educating the Student Body
BOX 5-2 
Presidential Youth Fitness Program
The Presidential Youth Fitness Program, launched in September 2012, is a 
comprehensive program that provides training and resources to schools 
for assessing, tracking, and recognizing youth fitness. The program 
promotes fitness testing as one component of a comprehensive physi-
cal education curriculum that emphasizes regular physical activity. The 
program includes a health-related fitness assessment, professional devel-
opment, and motivational recognition. A key to the program’s success is 
helping educators facilitate a quality fitness assessment experience. The 
Presidential Youth Fitness Program was developed in partnership with 
the Cooper Institute; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the 
American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance; 
and the Amateur Athletic Union.
The implementation of the Presidential Youth Fitness Program aligns with 
the Institute of Medicine report 
Fitness Measures and Health Outcomes 
in Youth, 
the result of a study whose primary purpose was to evaluate 
the relationship between fitness components and health and develop 
recommendations for health-related fitness tests for a national youth sur-
vey (IOM, 2012b). The report includes guidance on fitness assessments in 
the school setting. It confirms that Fitnessgram, used in the Presidential 
Youth Fitness Program, is a valid, reliable, and feasible tool for use in 
schools to measure health-related fitness. Use of the Fitnessgram repre-
sents a transition from the current test, which focuses on performance 
rather than health and is based on normative rather than criterion-refer-
enced data, to a criterion-referenced, health-related fitness assessment 
instrument. Accompanying the assessment, as part of a comprehensive 
program, are education and training through professional development, 
awards, and recognition.
SOURCE: Presidential Youth Fitness Program, 2013.
guidelines, and teachers are not concerned about students’ accountability 
for learning. 
Although online courses differ from traditional in-school physical edu-
cation courses in the delivery of instruction, the standards and benchmarks 
for these courses must mirror those adopted by each individual state, espe-
cially when the course is taken to meet high school graduation requirements. 

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Educating the Student Body: Taking Physical Activity and Physical Education to School
Approaches to Physical Education in Schools
 
213
NASPE (2007a, p. 2) recommends that all physical education programs 
include “opportunity to learn, meaningful content, appropriate instruction, 
and student and program assessment.” If an online physical education pro-
gram meets these standards, it may be just as effective as a face-to-face pro-
gram. Online physical education can be tailored to each student’s needs, and it 
helps students learn how to exercise independently. The full NASPE position 
statement on online physical education can be found at http://www.ncpublic-
schools.org/docs/curriculum/healthfulliving/resources/onlinepeguidelines.
pdf (accessed February 1, 2013). The physical education policy of one online 
school, the Florida Virtual School, is presented in Box 5-3.