Dropping the Ball: Disparities in Physical Education in New York City

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Consistent and meaningful physical education is known to bolster student academic achievement and engagement in school, as well as instill vital knowledge and healthy behaviors in children that can last a lifetime. As U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan declared when First Lady Michelle Obama launched the Let’s Move Active Schools initiative, “Good health is not an addon to a good education. Our children need to be healthy to be prepared to learn, and we know active students are better able to engage in the classroom and excel academically.”

Nowhere is this truer than in New York City, where more than 26 percent of students aged 5-14 years in Kindergarten through 8th grade (K-8) are obese or severely obese.2 This crisis not only threatens the health and academic achievement of our youth, but also carries significant costs for taxpayers and the City’s economic competitiveness.

Unfortunately, schools across the five boroughs are failing to meet even minimal physical education (“PE”) standards, as required by New York State Education Department (NYSED) regulations. These include mandates for instructional time and frequency, space and personnel. For example, children in grades K-12 must participate in regular physical education classes taught, in the case of all elementary schools, either by a certified physical education teacher, or a classroom teacher “under the direction and supervision of a certified physical education teacher” for grades K-6; or in the case of middle and high schools for grades 7-12, directly by a certified physical education teacher.

Providing robust physical education to some 1.1 million students in a city as dense as New York City is a significant challenge. Many schools lack physical fitness spaces, as will be documented in this report. But just as the First Lady has said about providing physical education in schools, “Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean we should stop trying – it means we should try harder.”

There is no question that New York City must try harder. This analysis by New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer of physical education data – as provided by the Department of Education – reveals a troubling picture of students’ disparate access to school-day physical education instruction. A digital, interactive map of these disparities can be found at http://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/droppingtheball/.

Findings include:

• 506 schools in New York City (over 32 percent) lack a full-time, certified physical education teacher, including 59 percent of elementary schools (375), 17 percent of middle schools (49) and 8 percent of high schools (33). While some of these schools may have access to a part-time, certified PE teacher, the DOE failed to provide data that would substantiate that possibility.

• 435 schools in New York City (28 percent) lack a dedicated “physical fitness space”– a problem that is most acute for high schools and middle schools:
  • Over 41 percent of high schools have no physical fitness space; and
  • More than 35 percent of middle schools have no physical fitness space.

• Nearly 80 percent of the 435 schools that have no physical fitness space are co-located. More than 46 percent of the 519 DOE buildings with co-locations have schools with no physical fitness space.

• 149 schools (or nearly 10 percent) lack both a full-time, certified physical education teacher and a physical fitness space.

• Nearly 10 percent of schools citywide do not have access to an outdoor school yard or nearby park.

• In total, over 400,000 students in New York City public schools lack one of the following three physical education attributes:
  • 230,000 students lack a full-time, certified PE teacher;
• 153,000 students attend a school without a physical fitness space; and
• 91,000 students attend a school that does not have access to an outdoor school yard or nearby park.

This information reinforces years of findings that the DOE has failed to provide appropriate physical education programing and instruction to all City students. Indeed, a 2011 audit by the New York City Comptroller’s Office revealed that 100 percent of 31 elementary schools examined were out of compliance with State PE regulations for elementary- and middle-school students. Additional analyses of physical education in City schools conducted in 2012 – by the American Heart Association, the New York City Independent Budget Office in conjunction with the Women’s City Club, and the Campaign for Educational Equity – further support the conclusion that shortfalls in physical education are longstanding and widespread.

Over the past decade the DOE has provided little data on the state of physical education in City schools, making it difficult to identify or assess ways to address the full scope of the problem. Indeed, given the poor quality of tracking data provided by the DOE, it was impossible to determine whether the DOE was meeting State requirements related to PE instructional time or class size mandates agreed to as part of collective bargaining between the City and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). While the DOE responded to the Comptroller’s request for information on physical education in City schools in good faith, the partial nature of information returned – including a District Physical Education Plan dated 2012 that is incomplete and labeled “DRAFT” – suggests that there continues to be room for improvement in how the DOE gathers, tracks and uses the data it collects to inform its work in delivering services to students.

To address these issues, the Comptroller’s Office recommends that the DOE:

• Comply with state regulations requiring that all children receive physical education instruction from, or under the supervision of, a certified physical education teacher.The DOE should immediately undertake a system-wide assessment of certified physical education teaching positions and fitness spaces, in order to comply with state law and to target investments toward neighborhoods of greatest need. Every school should provide access to at least one certified physical education teacher. And district superintendents should identify neighborhood spaces with excess capacity – including school gyms and 5 Dropping the Ball: Disparities in Physical Education in New York City Schools fitness areas, outdoor play spaces and local recreational facilities – as part of a broader plan to provide improved access to physical fitness activities to all children.

• Update the DOE’s District Physical Education Plan, submit it to NYSED as required and post a copy on the DOE website.Per NYCRR 135.4, every school district in New York State must regularly update and submit to NYSED a District Physical Education Plan, outlining how they will deliver mandated physical education instruction to students under their purview. The last known time that the City Education Department submitted a District Physical Education Plan to NYSED was 1982.10 Furthermore, the draft plan that the DOE shared with the Comptroller’s Office in December 2014 was dated October 16, 2012 and is missing information. The DOE should regularly update and submit this plan to NYSED, and make a copy available on its website that is easily accessible to parents and the public.
• Develop instruments for tracking and monitoring schools’ provision of physical education to all students

  The DOE’s partial response to the Comptroller’s request for information on schools’ provision of physical education to City students suggests that no centralized tracking or monitoring system exists to meaningfully assess whether schools are providing PE programming, as required by the State. For example, the DOE did not provide the Comptroller’s Office with information on PE instructional time for students in elementary grades because, it said, “elementary schools are not required to report this information.” Further, the DOE indicated that it could not provide information on how many general education schools – or which ones – might be sharing PE teachers because, “The DOE does not centrally track PE teacher-sharing.” The DOE should develop appropriate internal systems that allow the agency to track and monitor schools’ compliance with State PE regulations.

• Post physical education data for every City school in a single, clear location on the DOE website

  The Comptroller’s report provides a snapshot of the DOE’s uneven provision of physical education across City schools, based on a selection of data provided by the DOE that could be meaningfully analyzed. The DOE should make a comprehensive range of PE data available to the public on an annual basis so that City families can determine whether their child’s school is in compliance with State PE regulations. This information should be consolidated in a single place on the DOE’s website and include: numbers of full- and parttime certified PE teachers providing school-day physical education instruction directly to students; whether schools are meeting requirements related to instructional time and class size; numbers and types of indoor and outdoor spaces to which schools have access; and the percent of time each day and week that every school co-located with another school in a DOE building has access to shared PE space. Passage of a bill such as City Council Intro 644-2015, which requires the Department of Education to report physical education data, will help ensure that accurate, complete and timely information is made available to all stakeholders.