I remember standing on my high school track, clutching my inhaler, knowing I was about to fail. Officially, the Obama administration had phased out the Presidential Fitness Test, but my district hadn’t gotten the memo. So, once a year, my Rhode Island classmates and I still lined up for the evaluation.
When I finally crossed the finish line, wheezing and ready to collapse, my more athletic classmates were waiting on the turf. I was the only thing standing between them and heading back to the locker room, and the judgment on their faces told me everything I needed to know. Following the test, there was no feedback, no support, no plan for improvement—just a score that told everyone I wasn’t fit enough. My teachers insisted that my test score was based on effort, but the grading rubric said otherwise, and my GPA paid the price. My experience wasn’t unique. As I gathered research for this piece, I also came across countless articles where people shared their own negative experiences with fitness testing.
Now, more than a decade after the Presidential Fitness Test ended, the Trump administration has announced its return, citing concerns over public health and national security. But the program’s origins reveal how out of touch the test is with modern fitness goals. In 1956, amid Cold War fears about military readiness, President Eisenhower established the President’s Council on Youth Fitness, and the original version of the test included pull ups, sit-ups, a shuttle run, a standing broad jump, a 50-yard dash, and a softball throw (which was apparently supposed to mimic throwing a grenade). By the 1960s, the test had become a competitive national ritual
By 2012, when the Obama team ended it, the test included a one-mile run, sit-ups, push-ups or pull-ups, sit-and-reach flexibility, and a shuttle run (but no real or imagined hand grenades). To replace the test, the administration created the Presidential Fitness Youth Program to focus on “assessing health versus athleticism for America’s youth.” It also discouraged grades based on performance (though many states kept some form of annual fitness testing in place). The Trump administration brought back the test to “promote the physical, mental, and civic benefits of daily movement, exercise, and good nutrition.”
There are three problems with this approach to measuring fitness.
First, the tests themselves are unscientific. As noted, they are loosely modeled on military readiness benchmarks, not on child development or health outcomes. Decades of research show that fitness scores are influenced by countless external factors including test conditions, motivation, and differences in body type. The tests also misrepresent what it means to be fit: A marathoner may struggle with pull-ups and an Olympic powerlifter may never run like Usain Bolt, but both are still unquestionably fit.
Second, there is no evidence that fitness testing promotes a healthier lifestyle, despite that being the intent. A 2009 review found that fitness tests have unclear links to healthy lifestyles and do little to motivate young people or develop the knowledge and skills that are important to sustained engagement in an active lifestyle. And the best predictor of whether young people stay active isn’t their mile time, but their attitude toward exercise (i.e., whether exercise is evaluated as pleasant versus unpleasant). As one veteran PE teacher explains, “I can say with complete confidence that it will not promote a healthy, physically active lifestyle. It will do one thing: single out and label children as either capable or incapable of passing the test.”
Finally, the tests can inflict lasting damage on kids’ self-esteem. In a study of over 1,000 adults, 34 percent cited embarrassment, 18 percent lack of enjoyment of activities like fitness testing, 17 percent bullying, and 14 percent social-physique anxiety as their worst PE memories, with these negative memories linked to adult sedentary behavior. As one former student recalled, “The Presidential Fitness Test scarred me for years and made me think I was physically incapable of doing anything exercise related. I’m 68 now, but I will never forget the humiliation.”
So what might we do instead of simply testing one’s fitness in these ways?
First, evaluate students based on effort and improvement. Instead of penalizing a student’s PE grade because they can’t run the mile in a set amount of time, schools should focus on year-to-year progress, cumulative effort, or achieving meaningful personal benchmarks (e.g., do five more sit-ups than at the beginning of the school year, cut 30 seconds off one’s mile-time, take 10,000 steps every day). That should matter more than an arbitrary national cutoff that ignores differences in characteristics like body types, baseline fitness levels, nutrition, disabilities, chronic conditions, and countless others.
Second, give PE teachers the support they need. Right now, they are asked to administer fitness tests without the resources, training, or time to do so. A (small) study of ten middle and high school PE teachers in California revealed that many teachers receive little to no training for administering these evaluations, and those who did relied on outdated or self-sought workshops. Rethinking high-stakes fitness tests means providing teachers with standardized guidance and tools to implement multicomponent curricula to foster lifelong fitness, otherwise both teachers and students are set up to fail.
Third, provide real, comprehensive support—especially for students who struggle the most. If a student bombs an important math test, we don’t just slap on a failing grade and move on, but we reteach, support, and give them multiple opportunities to demonstrate improvement. Fitness should be no different, yet the Presidential Fitness Test only gives students one or two chances a year with no system to track growth. Instead of labeling kids as “unfit” and stopping there, schools that use fitness testing should follow up with individualized guidance, focus on growth, and encourage a variety of fitness activities so students can explore exercises they may enjoy more than running, and get credit for improvement.
Yes, declining physical fitness is a problem. So is humiliation. But we don’t have to choose either one.
