HISD school cancels recess to boost test scores, kids say

KPRC reports today on something we'd heard about in other parts of the country, and now it's happening in our own back yard — or close to it, anyway: Recess seems to have been canceled at one Houston elementary school. Oh, the humanity.

At Stevens Elementary School, teachers reportedly were told that there would be no recess starting Monday because of falling results on standardized tests. "I questioned why they don't have it and she said unfortunately it's a regional decision because the testing scores are not as high as they would like them to be," parent Kelly Spivey told Channel 2. "They feel the kids need to concentrate more on their school." The state mandated that students should have 135 minutes of physical activity a week; officials at Stevens said students there get 150 minutes a week in two daily recess periods and two PE classes a week, but Spivey said the school only has one PE class a week. That's a bad move, she said, because students need the physical activity to help build their social skills.

Stevens Principal Cynthia Ventress and HISD officials declined to comment, and a staff member at the school denied that recess and PE had been cut back. But the students say it has:

"P.E. is only one day a week," student Drew Lochridge-Fletcher said. "Recess, they canceled it."

"They told us we can't have recess because our scores are going low and we need higher scores to get our recess back," student Brianna Lambert said.

Spivey said that, if the school is really concerned about getting its test scores up, it should offer Saturday tutoring rather than cutting recess.