If you've ever wondered why the amount of recess or PE your students get seems to depend entirely on which school, district, or state they happen to be in, two new studies from Dr. Chad Killian (University of New Hampshire) and his School Health Map collaborators put hard numbers behind that frustration. I talked with Chad on the podcast about both papers, and the findings should matter to anyone standing in a gym or a statehouse.
The recess numbers are stark
The first study, still under review, surveyed PE teachers across all 50 states to quantify scheduled daily recess — not lunch recess, which is too tangled up with eating time to measure cleanly, but protected minutes set aside purely for a physical activity break. The range is jarring: some states averaged essentially zero minutes of scheduled recess, while North Carolina topped 27 minutes. Only seven states hit the nationally recommended 20 minutes a day. That means the large majority of states fall short of a benchmark most of us would assume is standard practice.
Chad was quick to flag a limitation — the sample isn't nationally representative, so low-response states may look worse than they are. But the broader pattern holds: recess access is inconsistent, and inconsistency itself is the problem.
That's where the second, less obvious finding comes in: withholding. Even in schools that schedule recess, students can lose it as a consequence for unfinished work or behavior. Chad calls this the "myth of the minute" — a school can report 20 minutes of recess on the books while individual kids routinely don't get it. He spoke from experience; as a former student he lost recess constantly for being an "excited" kid, which didn't exactly help him settle down for his teacher. The research point is bigger than any one anecdote, though: codified minutes don't guarantee equitable access unless withholding, exemptions, and waivers are addressed too.
For practitioners, this reframes the recess conversation. It's not enough to have recess on the master schedule — it's worth asking whether policies (formal or informal) let that time get pulled away from the kids who may need movement the most.
Is the Presidential Fitness Test ready to come back?
The second paper, published in Preventing Chronic Disease, tackles a more urgent and current question: with a new executive order reviving the Presidential Fitness Test — and no federal guidance yet on implementation — are states actually positioned to do this well?
Killian and colleagues scored all 50 states across eight policy indicators: things like required PE instructional time, teacher licensure, fitness testing mandates, and reporting requirements. Their argument is straightforward — fitness testing only has educational and public health value if it happens inside a consistent, well-resourced PE program. Test kids without that foundation, and you're collecting numbers that don't mean much.
The state-level gaps are significant. Only five states require the recommended 150 minutes per week of elementary PE — and even that headline number can be misleading. Virginia, for example, mandates 150 minutes of physical activity, not physical education, a distinction that allows recess or after-school programs to count toward it. Twenty-four states have no fitness testing requirements at all. Without standardized implementation and reporting, a national test risks becoming 50 different local experiments, undermining the public health value it's meant to provide.
Where does this leave PE teachers and policymakers?
Chad's most practical advice was this: know your own state's policy, and recognize how much of it is guidance rather than enforceable mandate. That cuts both ways. It means a lot of states can weaken PE with no real consequence — but it also means teachers and schools that want to do more than the minimum usually aren't prohibited from doing so. Framed that way, weak policy is both the core problem and, in the meantime, room to build the case for something stronger — piloting more robust programming locally and using the results as evidence for policymakers.
For policymakers, the two papers point to genuinely low-hanging fruit: making PE a graduation requirement, closing loopholes around waivers and substitutions, and eliminating recess and PE withholding as a disciplinary or academic-catch-up tool. None of these require new buildings, smaller class sizes, or major new funding — they just require closing gaps in policy language that currently make "requirements" optional in practice.
The full citations for both papers, along with a link to the School Health Map, are in the episode show notes. If you work in a school, in a state education agency, or anywhere in between, this is exactly the kind of research meant to be used — not just read.
This blog post was written with the assistance of AI to support clarity and accessibility. It is intended to help disseminate and discuss research findings with a broader audience. However, for the most accurate and reliable information—including conclusions and practical applications—please refer to the original peer-reviewed publication on which this blog is based. The peer-reviewed article remains the most authoritative source.
Papers Featured in This Episode
Paper 1: Killian, C. M., D'Agostino, E. M., Kern, B. D., Kim, C. Y., King, D., Albeke, S. E., & Thompson, H. R. (2026). Revitalizing the US Youth Presidential Fitness Test: Are states prepared to support implementation? Preventing Chronic Disease, 23. https://doi.org/10.5888/pcd23.250456
Paper 2: Killian et al., (under review). State patterns and disparities in scheduled daily recess access and withholding in U.S. elementary schools.