While running in his P.E. class in Florida last year, a young seventh grade boy, Nick Senske, halted in the middle of his tracks as asthma kicked in and he struggled to breathe, according to an article in jacksonville.com. Later, Senske, formerly an all-A student, found that he had received a 60 percent on the running assessment and was likely to receive a B in the class despite his usual 100 percent effort.

Like Senske, some students at SCHS give their full effort in physical education classes but perform poorly on skills assessments. It is not their choice to be unathletic; they were just born this way. Therefore, the grading standards for physical education should be replaced with ones based on effort, participation, and improvement of each individual.

According to the SCHS physical education department’s policies, participation, sportsmanship, attitude and behavior take up about 50 percent of a person’s grade. The other 50 percent is based on the skills, knowledge, and the approximately 2-mile Bruin Run.

The flaw with this system is that if a student consistently tries hard but is exceptionally unathletic, he or she could still flunk.

As a general evaluation, the current standards can be very unfair. For instance, SCHS students taking P.E. Core 9 are required to jump a certain distance in order to pass the long jump standards. The problem with this is that a student who is 5 feet tall has to jump the same distance as someone who is 6 feet tall in order to get the same grade. Obviously, the taller student has the advantage.

Each student has different limits, and no one knows what those specific limits are better than the students themselves. Therefore, instead of being graded based on how well they do compared to others, students should be graded solely on participation, sportsmanship, attitude, behavior, improvement, and effort. Although these qualities already account for 50 percent of P.E. grades, this percentage isn’t enough.

Some people might argue that there is not an accurate way of measuring qualities such as participation, but that simply is not the case, especially if students were trusted more.  

At the beginning of each quarter, students should have a pretest on the topic the class is going over that quarter. After they analyze their pretest scores, they should be able to set their own goals based on these scores. As the class progresses, the students would try to beat their initial scores and surpass their goals. If they improve significantly and achieve their goals, they definitely deserve a good grade.

In addition, self-evaluations can be used to determine how much effort is put in by the students. After all, they are already in high school so if they are expected to act like adults, shouldn’t they be treated as such?
Unjust physical education grading systems should not be the reason why hard-working students like Senske have their grades lowered. Grading systems for P.E. should be based on effort and improvement instead of athleticism.