Carlsbad students excel on fitness tests

CARLSBAD — Carlsbad Unified School District students achieved high scores on the 2009 California Physical Fitness Test that is given annually to students in the fifth, seventh and ninth grades. Statewide, more than half of the fifth-grade and seventh-grade students successfully met five of six targets, as did two-thirds of those in grade nine.
Carlsbad Unified surpassed those statistics; 69.4 percent of students in grade five, 81 percent in grade seven and 84.7 percent in grade nine met five of six targets. Only five of all 2,410 district test-takers failed all six tests. Throughout San Diego County, nearly 4,000 of 11,800 students failed all six tests.
Since 1996, the Fitnessgram has been the designated test administered to students throughout California. The goal is to facilitate learning about physical activity and fitness concepts in order to increase the likelihood that students will adopt lifetime patterns of physical activity.
One Fitnessgram measurement is the Health Fitness Zone, a standard applied to several categories. Statewide, approximately 63 to 65 percent students at the three grade levels scored in the HFZ for aerobic capacity, singled out by state officials as perhaps the most important indicator of physical fitness. At Carlsbad Unified, 83 percent of students in grade five, 84.3 percent in grade seven and 74.4 percent in grade nine scored well in this category.