School-level associations between health-related fitness, school characteristics, and academic performance among U.S. youth: an observational study.

OBJECTIVE

Examine school-level associations between school characteristics, health-related fitness, and academics.

METHODS

This observational study included schools in the NFL PLAY60 FitnessGram® project. We used 2022-2023 school year school-level data from three sources: 1) school characteristics data from the National Center for Education Statistics website; 2) cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) and body mass index (BMI) data; and 3) academic data (students at or above grade-level for math and English Language Arts (ELA)) from state department of education websites. We used mixed effects linear regression models to examine aims.

RESULTS

One-hundred-sixty-six schools had CRF data and 67 had BMI data. Economic disadvantage was inversely associated with students meeting Healthy Fitness Zone (HFZ) BMI standards (β = -0.10, p < 0.001, R2 = 0.60), and academic performance (math, β = -0.38, p < 0.001, R2 = 0.52; ELA, β = -0.42, p < 0.001, R2 = 0.59). There were differences in the percentage of students meeting HFZ standards and academic performance across schools with different racial/ethnic compositions. School-level CRF was directly associated with academic performance (math, β = 0.10, p = 0.04, R2 = 0.52; ELA, β = 0.13, p = 0.006, R2 = 0.59), and there were no significant relations between BMI and academic performance (math, β = 0.26, p = 0.25, R2 = 0.54; ELA, β = 0.18, p = 0.47, R2 = 0.71).

CONCLUSIONS

Findings highlight fitness and academic disparities related to economic disadvantage and race/ethnicity, and relations between fitness and academics.