Title of Dissertation: A MULTILEVEL ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PHYSICAL EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS AND STUDENT ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN

Although national recommendations and guidelines have called for schools to play a greater role in enhancing physical activity through physical education to prevent sedentary lifestyles or physical inactivity of children and adolescents, many schools have reduced or eliminated physical education time or programs despite state or district mandates. These policies and practices are often part of schools ’ efforts to increase students ’ standardized test scores given the pressures of accountability reforms in education. Guided by Argyris and Schön’s (1974) theory of action, the effectiveness of schools ’ policies and practices of decreasing or eliminating physical education time or programs to improve students ’ academic achievement was tested in this study. In particular, this study aimed to examine the relationship between schools ’ physical education graduation requirements and students ’ academic achievement growth in reading, mathematics, and science in high school settings. To this end, the study used a multilevel analysis from a large, nationally representative sample of U.S. high schoolers from the NELS database