By Nicole Lee & Jamie Wong, Staff Writers
From freezing cold winter mornings to scorching hot sunny days, P.E. students must persevere through any condition to run their mile. All students enrolled at schools under the San Mateo High School District are required to take two years of physical education, typically during their freshman and sophomore years. Every few weeks, a new sport is introduced whether it be soccer, softball, or even swim! However, one thing always remains constant. Students are still required to run one mile every week. When the new week begins, most dread the grueling task of running four consecutive laps around the track.
Unlike Burlingame High School, who uses a rigid rubric to assess timed miles, Mills utilizes a system based on gradual improvement. The current P.E. mile grading rubric, used to assess all Mills P.E. students, requires students to beat their best mile time in order to earn full credit (10 points) on their mile. Students earn 9 out of 10 points if their time for a certain week is less than 5 seconds slower than their best mile time, 8 out of 10 points if their time is 5-10 seconds slower than their best time, and so on.
Although the intent of the system is to push students to run their hardest every week, it is actually pushing students to do the opposite out of concern for their grade. For their first mile of the school year, many students will purposely run times that are much slower than they are truly capable of. Former P.E. student, Nicole Lee (12), shares her experience, “During middle school my P.E. classes used the same grading rubric so I knew exactly how to cheat the system.” Lee continued to elaborate her scheme for perfect timed mile grades, explaining how in the beginning of the year she’d run fourteen minute miles in order to meet the teachers expectations of gradual improvement. Lee’s strategy perfectly encapsulates the mindset of many Mills students: by running a slow time, students won’t have to push themselves to the limit every week just to receive full credit on their mile.
On the other hand, some students aren’t aware of the criteria they are being graded by, so they will push themselves to the max for their first mile. Of course, this leaves little to no room for improvement, and their grades often suffer. “I would have better grades than the boys who ran six minute miles every week,” which Lee admitted was unfair. In short, Mills’ mile rubric punishes students who go all out early in the year and leaves many others feeling that they have no choice but to go extremely slow in order to maintain a decent P.E. grade.
It is evident that the Mills mile system is in need of an update, though not everyone sees the need for change. For instance, some trace the benefits of the mile system to the benefits of P.E. in general: developing physical fitness and creating healthy habits for life. While this may sound nice, it’s hard to see how the current system would have either of these effects. Right now, most students are too concerned about their grade to actually run their best. The mile is a weekly chore that students are all too happy to leave behind once they are finished with P.E. Of course it isn’t realistic to expect that all students will love running if the mile system is revised, but hopefully a change in the system would contribute to a shift in students’ mindset about the mile.
Additionally, there is no leniency for someone who is having a bad day or isn’t feeling well. Unless a student was absent for the mile, there are no opportunities for a “redo”. Samuel Lam (12), the Mills cross country and track captain says, “It’s not a fairly graded system because running is very finicky.”
At Burlingame High School, a gender based rubric determines a student’s grade. Female students have eight minutes to earn an ‘A’ grade while if male students were to perform the same way they’d receive a ‘B’. In order to ace the course, male students are expected to complete the mile in less than seven minutes even despite different body compositions and abilities. This harsh way of grading rewards students of physical skill and puts those who are less proficient at a disadvantage.
The school’s newspaper, The Burlingame B, wrote an article of the unfair gender based grading, stating that it’s time to adopt a new physical education system. Daria Burnasova, a former student and author of the article, broke down the state’s physical fitness testing formula that dictates mile times. The gender factor for girls being zero and one for boys. The strict rubric being unfair and unattainable.
Kristie Kim (12), a former Burlingame High School P.E. student and Social Coordinator of The Burlingame B, explained her experience freshman year with the mile. She elaborated as to how her grade was greatly impacted when she missed the mile time limit by little to three seconds. Kim was discouraged that the effort she put in was not considered and that people who were just naturally faster excelled in the class.
Though the system does force students to push themselves to their absolute best it is hard for students to always meet these requirements. Through illness or injury these timed requirements do not change and ultimately impact students’ grades. Burlingame students strive for a rubric that is improvement based which Mills students have explained is not exactly ideal. So what is the solution?
Students should be able to have more flexibility and breathing room when it comes to their times. For example, instead of having to beat your best mile time in order to receive full credit, perhaps the rubric could be changed to so that mile times that come within 15 seconds of a student’s personal record. Also, there should be more understanding for students who aren’t feeling well or simply didn’t have a great running day. Those students should be allowed to redo their miles during flex or explain the situation to their teacher, instead of being stuck with a lousy grade. By implementing these fairly simple changes to the mile grading system, P.E. students will not be so hyper fixated on their grades and instead feel more incentivized to run their best every week.
