U.S. Department of Education

Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development

Policy and Program Studies Service

Results in Brief:

Evaluation of the Carol M. White 

Physical Education Program 

February 2015

The Carol M. White Physical Education Program (PEP) provides grants to districts and community-based organizations (CBOs) to 

initiate, expand, and improve physical education for students in kindergarten through grade 12. In 2010, the U.S. Department of 

Education issued new regulations for PEP that included the following: (1) requiring grantees to give attention to healthy eating 

habits and nutrition; (2) requiring grantees to conduct a needs assessment, with districts and CBOs partnering with a district or 

school required to use four designated modules of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s School Health Index (SHI); 

(3) using this assessment to develop project goals and plans to address identified weaknesses; (4) encouraging grantees to establish 

partnerships with community entities; (5) encouraging grantees to collect and use body mass index (BMI) data; and (6) establishing

new performance measures and standard data collection methods. This report provides the results of the implementation study of 

the 76 projects (64 district-led and 12 CBO-led) funded by fiscal year (FY) 2010 PEP grant awards—the first cohort of grantees under 

the revised PEP.

Study Questions 

1. What were the results of PEP grantees’ selfassessments of their physical activity, health, and 

nutrition policies and practices?

2. What physical activity and nutrition policy efforts did 

PEP grantees report?

3. What physical fitness, physical education, and nutrition 

activities did PEP grantees report?

4. What role did community partnerships play in PEP 

projects?

5. What were PEP grantees’ experiences with collecting 

and using BMI data? 

6. What implementation challenges and lessons learned 

did PEP grantees report?

Study Design and Limitations

This study used a mixed-methods research design that 

included surveys and a case study. Surveys of project 

directors were conducted in 2011 and 2013, during the first 

and third years of the grant period. A case study of five PEP 

projects (three districts and two CBOs) gathered more indepth information from 59 interviewees regarding 

grantees’ experiences with community partners and BMI 

data collection. 

Although the surveys allowed for uniform data collection, 

no additional documentation or data collection exists to 

support the information reported by survey respondents. 

Although the case study data provide rich information 

about a sample of grantees’ experiences with BMI data and 

partnerships, this information is not generalizable to the 

population of FY 2010 grantees.

Highlights

• Grantees most often reported weaknesses in their 

policies and programs related to the Health Education 

(43 percent) and Physical Education (32 percent) SHI 

modules.

• The greatest percentage of grantees made significant 

changes to physical activity policies concerning the use of 

a standards-based sequential physical education

curriculum (59 percent) and policies involving 

recommendations or offers of physical activity through 

before- or after-school programs (55 percent).

• About one-third of grantees made significant changes to 

nutrition policies aimed at reducing the availability of 

foods of minimal nutritional value, restricting the 

marketing of unhealthy foods at school, and requiring the 

adoption and implementation of strong nutritional 

standards for all foods sold and served in schools.

• Grantees implemented more physical fitness, physical 

education, and nutrition-related activities during the PEP 

grant compared with before receipt of the grant, 

particularly in the areas of improving instruction, staff 

professional development, student engagement in 

physical activity, and curricula revisions.

• The most frequently reported benefits of PEP 

partnerships were access to additional resources 

(reported by 90 percent of grantees with partnerships) 

and the ability to build on grantees’ own knowledge 

bases (86 percent).

• Sixty-one percent of grantees that collected BMI data 

provided or planned to provide parents with information 

about their children’s BMI scores to help them take 

appropriate action.

• The most common implementation challenge reported 

was executing the revised requirements for collecting 

data on the performance measures (83 percent).
Assessing PEP Project Needs

Grantees most often reported weaknesses in their policies 

and programs related to the Health Education and the 

Physical Education modules of the SHI (43 percent and 

32 percent, respectively). 

Fewer respondents reported weaknesses in their policies 

and practices that addressed the Nutrition Services 

(19 percent) or the School Health and Safety Policies and 

Environment (19 percent) SHI modules. 

Approximately half of the grantees (51 percent) reported 

medium to high scores across all four SHI areas.

Physical Activity and Nutrition Policy 

Efforts 

Grantees more often reported implementing policy actions 

involving physical activity policies than nutrition policies. 

More than half of grantees reported making significant 

changes to physical activity policies concerning the use of a 

standards-based sequential physical education curriculum 

(59 percent) and policies involving recommendations or 

offers of physical activity through before- or after-school 

programs (55 percent). 

About one-third of grantees made significant changes to 

nutrition policies aimed at reducing the availability of foods 

of minimal nutritional value, restricting the marketing of 

unhealthy foods on school campuses, and requiring the 

adoption and implementation of strong nutritional 

standards for all foods sold and served in schools.

Implementing Physical Fitness, 

Physical Education, and Nutrition 

Activities

Grantees implemented more physical fitness, physical 

education, and nutrition-related activities during the PEP 

grant compared with before receipt of the grant, 

particularly in the areas of improving instruction and 

student engagement in physical activity, staff professional 

development, and curricula revisions. 

The greatest increase occurred for activities designed to 

improve physical education instruction related to cognitive 

concepts (92 percent by Year 3, up from 21 percent prior to 

PEP). By Year 3, almost all grantees reported mostly or fully 

implementing activities to improve student engagement in 

physical activities external to the school-based curricula 

(96 percent, up from 29 percent prior to PEP) and to 

improve personnel/staff capacity to provide physical 

education instruction (92 percent, up from 30 percent). 

By Year 3, the majority of grantees reported mostly or 

fully implementing activities to improve instruction on 

nutrition education (83 percent, up from 22 percent prior to 

the PEP grant) and to revise or expand existing curricula 

for nutrition education (76 percent, up from 20 percent). 

Community Partnerships

The most commonly reported benefits of PEP community 

partnerships were access to additional (nonmonetary) 

resources (90 percent of grantees that formed 

partnerships) and the ability to build on the PEP grantees’ 

own knowledge bases (86 percent).

In addition, 75 percent of grantees reported that engaging 

with partners allowed them to reach more of their targeted 

population. Partners were most significantly involved in 

providing nutrition-related support.

Experiences With BMI Data

Collection and Use

Sixty-one percent of grantees that collected BMI

data provided or planned to provide parents with 

information about their children’s BMI to help them take 

appropriate action.

Case study respondents sent home letters with reports that 

provided BMI data along with other physical fitness data 

and provided opportunities for parents to obtain 

information through schools’ online systems. Respondents 

also followed up with parents of students whose BMI 

scores indicated that they were at risk of developing 

weight-related health problems. 

Case study respondents reported challenges in 

communicating with families about students’ BMI data. 

Challenges were attributed to parents’ lack of 

understanding about BMI, concerns about confidentiality, 

and a general discomfort with the district or CBO having a 

role in identifying potential health issues among their 

children. 

Challenges and Lessons Learned

The most common implementation challenge reported by

grantees was executing the revised requirements for 

collecting data on the performance measures 

(83 percent). 

Grantees experienced the greatest challenges with the 

physical activity performance measures, with the majority 

reporting moderate or extreme difficulty collecting

pedometer data (75 percent) and gathering self-report 

data from students using the 3-Day Physical Activity 

Recall measure (49 percent). The most commonly reported 

challenges in collecting the performance measures 

were the lack of proper data collection or reporting by 

students (59 percent), malfunctioning/faulty equipment 

(56 percent), and loss or theft of equipment (56 percent). 

Grantees described strategies to address challenges related 

to data collection, including limiting the use of pedometers 

to school instead of allowing students to take them home, 

developing clear data collection protocols and time lines, 

and involving other staff members to facilitate data 

collection.