High School Health and Physical Education: Reinforcing the 3 Rs: The First Step in Bringing about Education Reform Is to Provide Academic Rigor, Vocational Relevance and Curricula Relationships in Programs That Students See as Real

Beginning of article

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

SURVEY AFTER SURVEY SHOWS THAT EDUCATION IS A HIGH PRIORITY WITH THE AMERICAN PUBLIC. Quality education also has bipartisan support with our local, state and nationally elected officials. The challenge is to blend the art and science of teaching into a meaningful educational experience for our students. The ultimate goal of the education process should be to improve instruction and increase student learning. To effectively accomplish this would truly result in education reform. Therefore, the first step in bringing about education reform is to provide academic rigor, vocational relevance and curricula relationships in programs that students see as real.

A health and physical education program is uniquely positioned to be both the change agent and the catalyst for education reform at the secondary level because healthy students make better students Symons, 1997). The health and physical education program at the Digital Arts and Technology Academy (DATA) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, utilizes the 3 Rs of rigor, relevance and relationships, which provide the philosophical underpinnings and the educational foundation of the program (Miles, 2005). This pragmatic approach has …