Good News about jocks

From Foxnews.com
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,587462,00.html?test=latestnews


'Dumb Jock' Just a Myth: Physically Fit Students Do Better Academically

NEW YORK — Getting students to exercise more might not just address obesity issues but also improve their grades with a U.S. study finding physically fit students tend to score higher in tests than their less fit peers.

The good news:

Test scores dropped more than one point for each extra minute it took middle and high school students to complete a one mile run/walk fitness test, according to Dr. William J. McCarthy and colleagues at the University of California in Los Angeles.

Schools and parents seeking to optimize their students' academic performance should take heed, McCarthy noted in an email to Reuters Health.

For optimal brain function "it's good to be both aerobically fit and to have a healthy body shape."

The conclusions:

These findings, McCarthy's team notes, confirm and extend those of previous investigations. They say further studies are needed to figure out why aerobic fitness may play a role in academic performance.

If future studies confirm a cause-and-effect link between lower fitness and reduced academic performance, "schools will have to reverse their recent disinvestment in physical educationostensibly for the purposes of boosting student achievement," they concluded.

Correct, we never should have let our physical education programs lag nationally. They provide a positive contribution to the academic mission of the schools. When you remove one the other is bound to suffer.

We thought we could get away with scrimping on our kids education. We were wrong.

The NCAA recognizes this and it need to filter back down to the lower grade levels of education. Across the board, in virtually every ethnic and gender classification, graduation rates are higher among athletes than among non-student athlete populations. In many cases this is before accounting for the NCAA's flawed graduatin rate accounting system.

The federal rates do not account fairly for transfer students and actually penalize schools when students transfer by counting them as academic failures. According to the federal government, more than half of all college students will transfer at least once. So this is a large accounting error.

Maybe the next time there is a referendum on school funding in this area, the schools should try to promote passage of the tax increases by holding overpaid government workers hostage rather holding a gun to the head of the kids athletic and / or extra-curricular programs, as they so commonly do.

Can you imagine?

"If this property tax increase doesn't pass, we're gong to have to let go of all our mid to high level administrators." Those "reports to nowhere" to the federal government will never get their on time.

That would be pretty cool. The increased numbers of people performing their civic duty by voting might make it worthwhile, right?

I ask for too much.