NJCCCS Health and Physical Education

New Jersey Core Curriculum Standards for
Health and Physical Education

The New Jersey Comprehensive Health and Physical Education Standards is an educational reaction to critical public health issues. Poor health behaviors established in the school years, persisting into adulthood, lead to serious health problems for the entire nation. Numerous studies link a sedentary lifestyle to health problems, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and obesity. To ensure overall wellness, complex multidisciplinary interventions are needed.

The Standards for Health and Physical Education is designed to identify what students should know and be able to do as a result of instruction in school. The standards strive to provide the following essential elements of quality health and physical education programs: promotion of each student’s optimum physical, emotional, and social development; providing experiences that support a variety of physical activity areas; integration of health issues and problems that impact the quality of life; incorporation of technology for research and use of reliable sources of health information; and student-centered interactive learning with a focus on discussion, modeling, research, and skill practice.

The NJCCCS for Health and Physical Education is divided into five content standards and one integrated skills standard. The five standards include the following: wellness, drugs and medicine, human relationships and sexuality, motor skill development, and fitness. The integrated skills standard seeks to foster health behaviors through decision-making, communication, and active participation and is to be incorporated into each of the other Health and Physical Education Standards. A recent revision has led to the addition of strands such as character and leadership development, health advocacy, and health services and careers.

Strengths:
· Grounded in research (A Call to Action 2001, Healthy People 2010)
· Organization into strands makes it easy to develop objectives for planning
· Technology is integrated into several strands
· Addresses a multitude of areas of well-being: physical, emotional, psychological, and social
· Encourages student-centered active learning
· Stresses the direct link between being physically active and achieving academic success
· Helps students understand the link between physical activity and good health
· Addresses the need to have children to embrace lifetime physical activities
· Focuses on individual progress and performance monitoring
· Includes personal goal setting and character development
· Provides students with medically accurate information about abstinence and contraception
· Addresses a myriad of health topics

Weaknesses:
· Over 70% of CPI’s are in the bottom half of Bloom’s Taxonomy
· Weak in encouraging critical thinking skills
· Standards are written in “content” standard form instead of “performance” standard form; this leaves teachers wondering “how good is good enough?”
· Some CPI’s, such as “act as a leader and a follower,” are subjective and difficult to measure
· High demands on teacher to cover extensive health CPI’s in state mandated 2.5 hours per week of health, safety and physical education
· The CPI’s overlap and repeat within grade levels instead of building upon them
· No suggestions for meeting needs of students with physical disabilities in physical education strands
· Absolutely no recommendations for how to address needs of a diverse populationài.e. learning disabled, foreign born, ELL, etc.
· No evidence of multicultural or inclusive activities
· No website references or lesson ideas to assist with planning
· Does not mandate that students not be taken from PE for other activities
· Does not require the student-teacher ratio to be equal to other academic areas
· Nutrition is taught by PE teacher or elementary teacher; in best case, only required to take one semester of nutrition in college
· Does not specify which model of healthy eating should be used
· Does not specify minimum amount of time that students should spend in moderate to vigorous activity
· Need to address sexual behaviors and contraceptives earlier; they are addressed after many teens have already started becoming sexually active
· Nothing specific concerning cafeteria, etc.
· Does not encourage community involvement

Curriculum Development/Connections to Readings
· Supports the principle that an effective education program contributes to a child’s academic learning
· Promotes taking responsibility for one’s own health in relation to stress, eating, exposure to disease, and prevention of injury
· Integrates a full range of health issues that impact quality of life
· The overview addresses the idea of changing school policy to support the standards, but there is no recommendation on how to ensure that the standards are being supported through policy-i.e. playground and cafeteria
· Character development
· Tries to counter “hidden” curriculum by bringing it into the actual curriculumài.e. bullying
· Pushes for abstinence—morality

Improvements:
· Should mandate having a nutritionist on staff in each district to fully address the nutritional educational needs of the student population
· Should include suggestions for an interdisciplinary approach
· Should mandate community outreach
· Should include more multicultural topics and be inclusive of students with disabilities and other special needs
· Mandate some sort of support program that kids can go to safely (pos. anonymously or confidentially) to seek help/advice/discussion for many of the difficult topics brought up in class that they have to deal with that they might not feel comfortable discussing in class
· Schools, staff, and teachers should model fitness as well as nutritional and healthy habits

Resources:
American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance. (2002). Status of Physical Education in the USA: Shape of
the Nation Report, 2001. Oxon Hill, MD: AAHPERD Publications.
Agency of Agriculture- Food and Markets, Vermont Department of Education and Vermont Department of Health. (2005). Vermont
Nutrition and Fitness Policy Guidelines. Vermont: Agency of Agriculture- Food and Markets, Vermont Department of
Education and Vermont Department of Health.
Burger, M., Cardinal, B. & Cardinal, M. (2005). Lifetime Fitness for Health Course Assessment: Implications for Curriculum
Improvement. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation, & Dance, 76(8), 48-52.
Chen, A., & Ennis, C. (2004). Goals, Interests, and Learning in Physical Education. The Journal of Educational Research, 97(6), 329-
338.
Denny, G., & Young, M. (2006). An Evaluation of an Abstinence-only Sex Education Curriculum: An 18-month Follow-up. Journal of
School Health, 76(8), 414-425.
Gabbard, C. (2000). Physical Education: Should It Be in the Core Curriculum? Principal, 79(3), 29-31.
Green, G., Reese, S. (2006). Childhood Obesity: A Growing Phenomenon for Physical Educators. Education, 127(1), 121-124.
Macdonald, Doune and Lisa Hunter. (2005). Lessons Learned…About Curriculum: Five Years on and a Half a World Away. Journal
of Teaching in Physical Education, 24, 111-126.
Pateman, B. (2003). Linking National Subject Area Standards with Priority Health-Risk Issues in PK-12
Curricula and Teacher Education Programs. Washington, DC: AACTE Publications. (ED 474201)
South Dakota Department of Education. (2005). Model Wellness Policy. Pierre, South Dakota: Child and Adult Nutrition Services-
South Dakota Department of Education.
Weasmer, J. & Woods, A. (2006). More Than ‘An Apple a Day’: New Mandates for School Wellness. Kappa Delta Pi Record, 42(4),
166-169.

By: Corine Czepiel, Doreen Elborj & Jamie Zidle