In our system of government, the responsibility for education is delegated to the states. Thus, laws governing the degree to which any subject matter is included within schools are primarily determined by state legislation.
Because states differ dramatically in terms of their views on education and the degree to which they Eire willing to devote resources to support education, we should not be surprised that laws governing the amount and kind of physical education within the K-12 system differ markedly.
The laws supporting physical education in the elementary school are typically weak, often allowing “recess” to count, and more often than not making physical education the responsibility of an already overburdened classroom teacher.
Fewer than on half of the children get physical education from a specialist physical educator, and many of those who do see their specialist teacher only once or twice per week. The ideal of a daily period of physical education is met only in rare instances.
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More than one-half of the states have either no requirement for physical education in the high school or require only 1 semester or 1 year for graduation.
States that once had stronger laws supporting physical education have tended over the past several decades to reduce their legal requirements.
State physical-education associations have sometimes been successful in postponing or preventing the passage of legislation to reduce requirements: In many other cases, however, they have been unsuccessful.
Physical education green tremendously in the United States during that time when professional groups and associations convinced state legislators to pass laws in support of required physical education.
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The current era can be characterized as a fight to maintain those gains. Any honest appraisal of the past several decades, however, leads to the conclusion that the fight is gradually being lost.
Recent efforts at the federal level to promote quality daily physical education might mark the beginning of a new era.
Some federal reports on education have strongly supported the improvement of physical education. The suggested improvements, however, would require stronger state legislation to implement.
On the other hand, if state and local economies weaken, or if schools are required to take on other burdens for which resources are needed, or if local communities are unable to convince voters to support local schools, then physical education is typically one of the subject areas to suffer most quickly and most dramatically.