Standards-Based Physical Education

Standards-based physical education is a carefully designed instructional program that provides all students with opportunities to acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to engage in a lifetime of meaningful and healthful physical activity. The State standards and grade-level outcomes for physical education are based on the four learning domains:

Psychomotor

Cognitive

Affective

Social

Under regulations adopted by the State Board of Education (COMAR 13A.04.13.01), local education agencies are required to:

• Provide an instructional program in physical education yearly for all students in Prekindergarten through 8th grade that meets the requirements of the State Framework.

• Offer a physical education program for students in grades 9 through 12 to enable them to meet graduation requirements and select physical education electives.

• Ensure students with disabilities are provided with reasonable accommodations and have an equal opportunity to participate to the fullest extent possible in the standards-based physical education program.

• Develop an individualized action plan that provides students with appropriate learning experiences aligned to the State Framework when they are temporarily unable to participate in the standards-based PE program.

• Administer standards-based assessments that:

  • Periodically evaluate achievement;

  • Align to outcomes in the State Framework;

  • Monitor a student’s cognitive, affective, and psychomotor progress;

  • Include all students;

  • Do not evaluate student dress or attendance; and

  • Are not based on the results of a health-related fitness test.

• Additionally, a local education agency may not:

  • Authorize a student to substitute other activities such as, but not limited to, interscholastic sports, community-based sports, physical therapy, Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC), or marching band for a standards-based physical education program;

  • Waive the standards-based physical education requirement;

  • Excuse students from the standards-based physical education program to participate in other content area classes or to complete classwork assignments from other content areas; or

  • Withhold students from the standards-based physical education program as punishment unless the student is also removed from the regular classroom setting as part of an in-school suspension or similar disciplinary intervention.