“
“Children and youth receive numerous physical health benefits from physical activity (PA), including improved fitness, cardiovascular function, metabolic function, and bone health.1 Despite these health benefits, many children continually fail to meet PA recommendations.2 To increase PA in a large number of children, experts have targeted schools as a setting in which to promote PA.3 and 4 Most efforts to sell PA to school administrators and policymakers have emphasized its health benefits, with little success. Therefore, advocates have searched

for an alternative approach to persuade decision selleck products makers to include PA in the school day. One approach has been to associate PA with academic achievement. Because the primary goal of schools is student

academic achievement, the key to increasing PA in schools would be to show that PA improves academics. Academic outcomes have become even more important since 2001, when the No Child CH5424802 mouse Left Behind legislation raised the stakes of standardized academic achievement tests in the United States. As administrators have increased the focus on academic achievement since then, schools increasingly have eliminated PA opportunities.5 In response, public health researchers have searched for the “holy grail” of PA in schools: a positive connection between PA and academic achievement. If scientific evidence verifies and supports a positive connection between PA and academics, administrators may be more through likely to increase PA opportunities during the school day. Researchers have been studying PA and academic achievement for over half a century. Now, many researchers contend that sufficient evidence exists to institute school PA policies that will improve (or at least not detract from) academic achievement. If this conclusion is promoted before definitive data are available, however, negative consequences may result. If

researchers promote PA as a way to improve academics, and administrators later fail to see this association, promotion of PA in schools could fall several steps backwards. Government agencies have conducted reviews on PA and academic achievement that have potential policy implications. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reviewed the literature through 2008 on PA during the school day and academic achievement.6 The CDC review concluded that PA may have a positive effect or no effect on academic performance. Additionally, the PA Guidelines Advisory Committee reviewed literature through 2007 on the health benefits of PA for children and youth, including the mental health benefits.1 In its report, the Committee concluded, “Although observational studies have found relationships between physical fitness and grades and test scores, those between PA and direct measures of academic achievement often have had null findings.