Your child’s school fitness test.
Texas measures every child’s fitness once a year and sends the results home. Almost nothing happens next. Here is how to read it — and how to use it.
Every year, grades 3 through 12.
Under Texas Education Code Section 38.101 — created by Senate Bill 530 in 2007 — a school district must annually assess the physical fitness of students in grades 3 through 12 enrolled in a course that satisfies the physical education requirement. The state adopted FitnessGram as the assessment instrument, and districts have used it since the 2007–08 school year.
So your child is already being measured. What is usually missing is the ten weeks of training between one test and the next. That gap is why Ignite Fit exists.
Sources: Texas Education Code §38.101; Texas Senate Bill 530, 80th Legislature (2007).
Six areas, and what each one is really telling you.
| Area | Typical test | What it reflects |
|---|---|---|
| Aerobic capacity | PACER shuttle run or one-mile run/walk | Heart and lung fitness. The single strongest health indicator on the report. |
| Body composition | BMI from height and weight | A screening number, not a diagnosis. Interpreted by age and sex percentile. |
| Muscular strength | 90° push-up | Upper-body strength and endurance. |
| Abdominal strength | Curl-up | Core endurance, which protects the low back. |
| Trunk extension | Trunk lift | Back strength and posture. |
| Flexibility | Back-saver sit and reach | Hamstring and low-back range of motion. |
FitnessGram scores each area against a Healthy Fitness Zone for the child’s age and sex, rather than ranking children against each other. “Needs Improvement” is information, not a grade.
The last published local results were not good.
In 2013, 53.4 percent of Corpus Christi ISD elementary students assessed with FitnessGram measured overweight or obese. A peer-reviewed study of 492 local kindergarten-through-fifth-grade students found an average obesity rate of 31.6 percent, against a national rate of 17.7 percent for the same ages — and in that sample, higher weight status tracked with weaker musculoskeletal fitness scores.
Those are the most recent locally published measurements we can find. They are more than a decade old, and statewide surveillance since COVID has shown obesity rising among Texas secondary students — not falling. We are working to obtain current district-level results.
Sources: Frontiers in Public Health (2018), reporting CCISD FitnessGram data from 2013; Texas SPAN 2021–2023, UTHealth Houston Dell Center.
What the Presidential Fitness Award is now.
Many parents remember earning a Presidential Physical Fitness Award in the 1980s or 1990s. That test was phased out in 2012 and replaced by the Presidential Youth Fitness Program, which emphasized personal health-fitness zones over athletic achievement awards. In July 2025 an executive order amended Executive Order 13265 to re-establish the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition and to reestablish the Presidential Fitness Test and its award, with implementation rolling out through schools and states.
Ignite Fit trains toward that standard on purpose. The events are the same events the school measures, and the patch is earned rather than handed out: Bronze, Silver and Gold, at levels a child can see coming and work toward across a ten-week season.
Sources: President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition (ODPHP); Federal Register, August 6, 2025, reestablishing the Presidential Fitness Test. Award specifics are still being implemented nationally; we will keep this page current.
Four steps when it comes home.
- Look at aerobic capacity first. It responds fastest to training and matters most for long-term health.
- Do not lead with the BMI line. Talk about what your child can do — laps, push-ups, minutes — not what they weigh. Performance goals build children up; weight goals often do the opposite.
- Pick one area and one ten-week goal. Five more push-ups. Four more PACER laps. Measurable, and reachable.
- Retest at home. Same test, same day of the week, ten weeks later. Children work hard for a number they can watch move.
Not medical advice. Ignite His Glory is a community and faith organization, not a healthcare provider. This page explains publicly available guidance so families can have better conversations with a doctor. Always talk with your child’s clinician before changing diet, exercise or any medication.
Bring the report to us.
Ignite Fit turns that sheet of paper into a coached ten-week season — free to your family, with the parent learning the clinical half alongside the child.