obesity – ��

Jumping Jacks, Lunges and Squats — and Better Test Scores

Lauren Camera — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 12:30:00 +0000

When Kusum Sinha, the superintendent of Garden City Public Schools in New York, took a trip this summer to Finland, Estonia and Sweden with other district leaders, she came back wishing she could build out more time in the school day for physical activity.

What she saw in Finland was especially “eye opening” — a recognition of the value of play in a child’s educational journey. The schools she visited enjoyed a 15-minute break for exercise or physical play for every 45 minutes of instruction time.

“I thought, how can I replicate that here? We don’t do enough of it.”

“We’ve really worked hard, especially at the K-5 level, to bring kids outdoors as much as possible,” said Sinha, who in years past has directed funding to develop multiple outdoor classroom spaces across the district’s five elementary school buildings. Educators are encouraged to incorporate movement breaks into snacktime, and they recently fenced the schoolyard around the middle school so that older students can enjoy a recess and be more active.

Garden City Public Schools in New York prioritizes outdoor learning spaces at their elementary schools. (Garden City Public Schools)

But when it comes to boosting physical activity, any significant alteration to the daily schedule comes with a cost: precious lost minutes required for core academic classes.

“I do think if kids had that extra physical activity, we’d need to teach less,” Sinha said. “It’s weird to say, but I think they retain more when they have more opportunities to be active.”

She’s not wrong.

New from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, shows that when students engage in high-intensity interval exercises, they score significantly higher on standardized tests measuring verbal comprehension. In a study of elementary school children aged 9 to 12, researchers examined a type of brain neuroelectrical activity called “error-related negativity,” which occurs when people make a mistake and is associated with reduced focus and performance. What they found is that after acute exercise, the error-related activity decreased significantly.

“We have to be aware of our child’s health, and if we want them to succeed academically and mental health-wise, exercise is something that needs to be in the forefront,” says Eric Drollette, the study’s lead author and a professor at UNC. “Yes, it helps with their physical health, but we can’t forget the brain part of it. The benefits of exercise can be influential in an [educational] environment .”

Drollette had a pretty good idea that the experiment would reveal some type of positive relationship between exercise and academics. After all, research has long borne out the benefits of physical exercise on the mental health and general wellness of adults and children alike. One of Drollette’s own previous involving college students who underwent high-intensity interval training showed improved brain function and cognition.

Eric Drollette, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, was the lead author of a study showing that high-intensity interval training led to better student performance on standardized tests that measure verbal comprehension. (University of North Carolina at Greensboro)

But having three children of his own, he knew anecdotally that any type of prolonged high-intensity activity, like running on a treadmill or using other types of exercise equipment, just wasn’t feasible for younger children. Not only, he suspected, would they get bored or lack motivation to complete the exercise, but it also wasn’t a scenario that educators could easily replicate in their own classrooms.

The goal instead was to design a fitness regimen that would hold student interest and could be performed in the classroom without taking up too much time. What he came up with was a series of stationary exercises – think high knees, jumping jacks, lunges and squats — performed one after another, alternating between 30 seconds on and 30 seconds off for nine minutes total.

“This is more natural for a kid’s type of exercise,” he said. “I wanted to make sure that if a teacher reads this, or if the public reads this, they can say, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s something that’s possible to do in the classroom.’”

What ended up surprising Drollette, he said, was how selective the benefits were for certain academic achievements — most notably, for word recognition and fluency, which include reading and word processing — and much less for math. Another surprising result? The children didn’t realize they were exercising as hard as they actually were, suggesting, Drollette said, that they truly enjoyed the movement break.

The study comes against the backdrop of schools recess and physical education classes in order to prioritize instructional time and boost academic achievement — especially in the wake of the pandemic, which wrought steep learning loss. According to the , children should get four 15-minute recesses every day. While more than of the country’s elementary schools incorporate regularly scheduled recess into each school day, on average students receive just 27 minutes.

As it stands, only require schools to offer a daily recess, and most districts don’t have a formal recess policy. Since the mid-2000s, up to 40 percent of school districts have reduced or cut recess. Moreover, some districts still allow educators to take away recess as a punishment, which experts say does more harm than good.

While Drollette acknowledges that the main focus of schools is academics — not movement — the practice of shortening recess and physical education, he says, is short sighted.

“As a nation, we’ve really struggled to recover loss in physical activity since the pandemic,” he says. “If we keep removing physical activity, we may be hampering mental health as well as cognitive function. And then if kids are performing poorly cognitively, they’re not doing well with academics, causing schools to keep pushing academics. And so my approach is that we may need to flip the other direction. We need to focus on physical movement for a better healthy mind in order for kids to do well in school.”

This summer, the Trump administration appeared to recognize as much, issuing an establishing a President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, as well as reinstating the Presidential Fitness Test — the latter of which harkens back to back to the 1950s under President Dwight D. Eisenhower but was phased out in 2013.

“For far too long, the physical and mental health of the American people has been neglected. Rates of obesity, chronic disease, inactivity, and poor nutrition are at crisis levels, particularly among our children,” the order reads. “These trends weaken our economy, military readiness, academic performance, and national morale.”

Researchers at University of North Carolina, Greensboro examine the neuroelectrical activity in children after they engage in high-intensity interval exercises. (University of North Carolina at Greensboro)

It’s unclear what the new regimen will look like, but the original test required students to compete in their schools and nationally by completing circuits of pushups, pullups, situps and the mile run, among other exercises. Notably, the test was retired under the Obama administration in exchange for the “Presidential Youth Fitness Program,” which focused more holistically on student health and less on the competitive test.

Starting this school year, one thing is certain: School district leaders like Sinha and classroom educators will continue to be hard-pressed to inject more time for physical activity into the day due to time requirements for core academic subjects.

“Physical activity is more important than ever before for our students,” she says, noting that students in Finland traditionally score at the top on the international benchmark assessments known as — far above students in the U.S. “It’s always been important, but kids are different today, and they need to be moving their little bodies around.”

Majority of Ohioans in Favor of Universal Free School Meal Program, According to Poll

Megan Henry — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 19:30:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

Two-thirds of Ohioans support a universal free school breakfast and lunch program for all public school children, according to a Republican research firm.

“This is extremely rare in a time where voters are really reluctant to support further spending, either at the state or federal level,” Alexi Donovan, vice president of Tarrance Group Polling, said Monday during the monthly meeting.

This month’s meeting heard testimony on the importance of universal school meals and Tarrance Group Polling surveyed 600 Ohio voters about this topic in May.

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“It is clear from the research and the data over the years, universal school meals help students thrive, physically, mentally, socially and educationally,” said John Stanford, director of Children’s Defense Fund–Ohio.

In Ohio, 1 in 6 children, or about 413,000 kids, live in a household that experiences hunger. Despite that, more than 1 in 3 children who live in a food insecure household do not qualify for school meals, according to a from Children’s Defense Fund-Ohio.

“We believe that in a country as wealthy as we are, we should not have hungry children,” said Lisa Quigley, director of .

Exposing students to various fruits and vegetables through school meals helps them get a taste for “food that’s far more nutritious than what a lot of them are bringing to school,” she said.

“What we’re finding in the schools that are doing universal school meals, the food is getting better,” Quigley said.

National security

Children’s hunger is a national security issue, said Cynthia Rees, Ohio’s director for the Council for a Strong America.

The that found 77% of young people between the ages of 17 and 24 are ineligible for military service without a waiver. The most prevalent disqualification rate was for being overweight at 11%, above drug and alcohol abuse (8%) and medical/physical health (7%).

“It is critical to recognize that overweight and obesity can often be manifestations of malnutrition, food insecurity or the lack of access to affordable healthy foods often result in consuming cheaper and more accessible food, which often lack nutritional value,” Rees said.

The food insecurity rate for Ohio children is 15%, with some counties having rates up to 24%, Rees said.

“Increasing children’s access to fresh and nutritious food now, including through free school meals for all students, could help America recover from the present challenges and bolster national security in the future,” she said. “The military has a long standing interest in the health and nutrition of our nation’s youth.”

Universal school meals would eliminate the stigma of categorizing students who receive free and reduced meals and those that don’t, Rees said.

“Instead, all students can just have a meal together,” she said. “When we make school meals accessible to all, we remove that stigma.”

Ohio legislation

Last year’s budget bill allowed any student who qualified for free or reduced school breakfast or lunch got those meals for free during the 2023-24 school year.

Currently in Ohio, children are eligible for free or reduced school meals if their household income is up to 185% of the federal poverty line, which is $57,720 for a family of four, according to the .

State Reps. Darnell Brewer, D-Cleveland, and Ismail Mohamed, D-Columbus, introduced a bill earlier this year that would require public schools to provide a meal to any student that asks.

would also ban a district from throwing away a meal after it was served “because of a student’s inability to pay for the meal or because money is owed for previously provided meals.” The has only had sponsor testimony so far in the House Primary and Secondary Education Committee.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on and .

Fat Shaming’s Devastating Toll on Students

Mark Keierleber — Sat, 02 Nov 2024 12:30:00 +0000

School (in)Security is our biweekly briefing on the latest school safety news, vetted by Mark Keierleber. Subscribe here.

While fat-shaming may be among the last forms of discrimination, a new story in The Hechinger Report highlights the children who endure weight stigma at school — and its on their well-being and academic performance.

“Do you want a cupcake?” one fifth grader recalled being asked by one of her classmates who routinely called her “fatty.” Teachers routinely fail to confront students who fat-shame their classmates — and play their own role in anti-obesity bias.

The 15 million U.S. children who are considered obese are more likely than other kids to have poor academic performance — a reality dubbed the obesity achievement gap. Now, new research suggests bias among teachers could be part of the problem.

“Teachers often perceive children with obesity as emotional, unmotivated, less competent and noncompliant,” journalist Kavitha Cardoza wrote. “That can lead to teachers giving these students fewer opportunities to participate in class, less positive feedback and lower grades.”

Schools nationwide have policies that prohibit bullying on the basis of race, gender and religion. Few mention body weight.

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In the news

Can’t stop reading about the election. Won’t stop reading about the election: Survivors of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which resulted in the deaths of 20 children and six adults, are now old enough to vote. Six explain how the shooting continues to influence their lives — and their picks for president. |

These are the states where youth voters have the most potential to affect the presidential election results. |
Donald Trump has vowed to carry out mass deportations if elected. It could separate millions of families — and leave schools to pick up the pieces. |
Inside school shooting survivor David Hogg’s multimillion-dollar bid to elect young progressives. | ��

About two-thirds of teachers use tools designed to catch students who use artificial intelligence to cheat on homework, but an investigation into the leading services found error rates “can quickly add up” and can carry “devastating consequences for students who are falsely flagged.” |

Lawsuit alert: Parents are suing their son’s Massachusetts high school in federal court, arguing he was wrongly penalized for using AI to research and write a history paper. At the time of the incident, the district lacked a policy on the acceptable uses of AI. | ��

School security vendor faces new scrutiny: Evolv, a publicly traded security company that sells “weapons detection” metal detectors to schools, warned shareholders last week not to rely on its most recent financial statements as an independent investigation dissects its sales practices. |

For more than a year, industry insiders have scrutinized the claims Evolv makes in its sales pitches — and its detectors’ high rate of false alarms. Last year, the Federal Trade Commission opened an inquiry into the company’s marketing practices following allegations Evolv overstates the capabilities of its technology. | ��
A year after Virginia’s Prince William County Public Schools entered into a $10.7 million deal to install Evolv scanners, educators reported a decline in weapons confiscations. School safety officials found zero firearms, three knives, two box cutters and a “pneumatic” paintball or airsoft gun. The results, one school board member said, present “a pretty good ROI [return on investment] on these Evolv scanners.” |

What teachers need to know about the rise of AI-generated deepfakes — including computer-generated and nonconsensual nude images that students have created to harass their peers. |

The spy and the school board: Atlanta’s Cobb County school district hired a private security company purportedly led by anonymous former U.S. intelligence agents to analyze students’ social media accounts and identify potential online threats. The public learned about the unnamed company that is being paid an undisclosed amount during a school board meeting presentation by a man “only identified as Rob.” |

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments Dec. 4 in a case that challenges Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, which could have implications for transgender youth nationally. |

Day in the life: A Minnesota-based journalist walked the halls with a school resource officer. Here’s what he learned about school-based policing. |

ICYMI @The74

Native American Leaders Call Again for Action After Boarding Schools Apology

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Emotional support

Matilda doesn’t need a costume. She’s a monster every day.

(Can we see your pet costumes!?)

‘Staggering’: New Research Shows that Child Obesity Has Soared During Pandemic

Kevin Mahnken — Mon, 20 Sep 2021 19:01:00 +0000

Since COVID-19 first shuttered schools last spring, American children have been subjected to a kind of natural experiment in inactivity. The last 18 months have seen three school years interrupted sporadically by closures, quarantines, and virtual instruction, during which time children have spent more time in front of screens than ever before. And the physical effects are now becoming clear.

According to by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, body mass index (a common measure of weight relative to height) in a sample of 430,000 children increased between March and November 2020 at nearly double the rate that it did before the pandemic began. The changes were especially prevalent among elementary-aged children, as well as those who were already overweight or obese.

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Dietician Michelle Demeule-Hayes, the director of at Baltimore’s Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital, called the trends “staggering.”

“It’s never been this bad,” she added. “So the research is definitely accurate.”

The CDC’s findings echo those of other research released in the past few months. by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) showed that rates of overweight and obesity have soared among children measured in California between the ages of 5 and 17. Two others — one and appearing in the journal Pediatrics — found that the weight gain was greater for certain demographic subgroups, including Hispanic, African American, publicly insured, and low-income children.

The spate of publications suggests a national spike in pediatric weight gain as kids have been restricted in their movements outside the home.

Corinna Koebnick, a nutrition scientist at Kaiser Permanente Southern California and a co-author of the JAMA paper, wrote in an email that it was “safe to say” that children have gained weight during the pandemic, and that it was unclear whether opening schools to in-person learning will be enough to reverse the trends that have taken hold.

“The increase in obesity over the 11 months [we] analyzed compares to the increase seen in national data over almost the last two decades,” Koebnick said. “Children who have social and financial disadvantages, who live in school districts with less money or…less access to parks and meal programs may have additional challenges returning to healthy weights.”

Koebnick’s study used Kaiser Permanente electronic health records for over 190,000 children whose body-mass index (BMI) was measured during a medical visit both before and during the pandemic. Researchers divided patients into three age groups (those between the ages of 5 and 11, 12 and 15, and 16 and 17) and studied their tendency to be overweight (at or above the 85th percentile of BMI for age) or obese (at or above the 95th percentile.)

Children in all three age groups gained more weight during the pandemic than they did before. But elementary-aged kids saw the biggest relative gains, with an average increase of BMI of 1.57, compared with an increase of 0.91 for the next-youngest group and 0.48 for the oldest. Adjusted for height and translated into actual weight, those figures indicate average gains of 5.07 pounds, 5.09 pounds, and 2.27 pounds for the respective groups.

Overall, the portion of 5-11-year-olds who are classified as overweight or obese is now 45.7 percent, up from 36.2 percent before the pandemic. The same figures rose by 5.2 percent among 12-15-year olds and 3.1 percent among 16- and 17-year-olds.

Demeule-Hayes, said that the wave of research on pandemic-related weight gain reflected the reality she and her colleagues face every day. Some patients referred to her, none older than 17, weigh as much as 400 pounds, and it has become typical to treat children diagnosed with what are typically seen as adult ailments, such as hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, and osteoarthritis.

Several papers already showcased the rising prevalence of type-2 diabetes. In both Washington, D.C., and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, researchers discovered that pediatric diagnoses of the dangerous and chronic condition approximately doubled in the year after school closures began. Among children diagnosed during that period, one study found that 60 percent required hospitalization for complications like severe hyperglycemia, compared with just 36 percent in the year before COVID emerged.

But Demeule-Hayes said that another common health complication of obesity, obstructive sleep apnea, poses particular risks for K-12 students.

“There are a whole lot of sleep disturbances with these kids because they’re tired, they’re not getting good-quality REM sleep,” Demeule-Hayes said. “So they’re coming home and taking naps, which just perpetuates that sleep-disturbance cycle — they can’t get to sleep later because they’ve taken a three-hour nap after school.”

Experts are still investigating how the coronavirus changed the lifestyles of both children and adults. have shown that sales of packaged and processed foods shot up in the early months of the pandemic, and suggests that consumption of fresh foods declined. Demeule-Hayes pointed to the monthslong stillness that followed school closures, during which she watched her own young children learn from inside the house.

“Having them be on a computer literally all day, not having any of the recess or the steps outside or even just walking up and down the halls — they’ve been so, so sedentary,” she lamented. “Pre-pandemic, even if they were getting driven to school, they were still at least walking around the school and walking up one or two flights of stairs to classrooms.

According to tech firm SuperAwesome, the time children spent on screens each day after COVID-related closures began; 40 percent of kids aged 3-9 said they spent “much more” time on screens. Respondents to of Canadian youth reported lower levels of physical activity, less time spent outside, more sedentary behaviors, and more sleep than before the pandemic.

As school districts around the country reopened for full-time, in-person learning, educators have welcomed back students whose lives were meaningfully — and perhaps permanently — altered by COVID. The extent of the academic damage is thought to be extensive, and hospital records suggest that many children may have suffered prolonged abuse while separated from their schools. On top of those severe setbacks, the bodily changes that some have undergone may prove long-lasting: Obese children and adolescents are as adults.

Koebnick recommended that parents limit screen time and encourage their kids to exercise and drink lots of water. Demeule-Hayes said that she recognized that some parents might still be leery of outdoor play given the dangers of the Delta variant. Still, she said, there was much that families and educators could do to combat further weight gain.

“As much as teachers and administrators can work [movement] into school time, they should. For parents, it’s taking walks as a family, after dinner, whenever you can work it in. Our message is always to make changes as a family so there’s not a stigma around a child’s ‘weight issue’; it’s really about making healthy changes for the family.”