Harley Brooks

Comprehensive School Assessment

PPE 310
September 13, 2015

Assessment of School
I visited the website for the Active and Healthy Schools Program
School Assessment Tool and filled out the information about my
placement school.
The assessment of my school is as follows:
During School: 20%
Curriculum: 0%
Recess/ Lunch: 75%
After School: 20%

Strengths and Weaknesses

The school that I am placed at has some strengths in its inclusion of physical
activity, as well as weaknesses. I have noticed that they have included some time for
physical activity through a morning, lunch, and afternoon recess. These are all about 1020 minutes from my observations. The recesses are not long periods of time, but they are
part of the students day. The school also has one day of PE each week. In addition, they
try to have some healthy choices in eating. While there is room for improvement within
this category, this is strongest in this assessment.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of things for the school to work on in its inclusion of
health education. One area of refinement would be an addition into the curriculum of
more physical activities. My teacher also tries to include some time for student activities
that involve movement, but I believe this could be stronger. She has some poster walks
and group work that get the kids up and moving occasionally in their school days. There
also are no brain breaks ever added in the classroom. In addition to classroom activity,
my school should begin to work on more after-school opportunities. Currently the only
after-school activity that I am aware of is running club offered during one quarter of the
year.
Ways to Improve
The main weaknesses that my placement school has are curriculum and during
school health education opportunities. To improve the curriculum, I would suggest that
we begin to find ways to add in health education into the subjects already taught, such as
reading. We could read about the importance of health lifestyles and find the main idea,
supporting details, and other literacy prompts. Starting in small ways through reading and

writing could lead to a large change in the way students begin to see health.
Curriculum is not the only thing that needs improvement, activity during class is
also important. I think this could begin with implementing brain breaks for students when
they begin to lose interest or get fidgety. Also, working movement into activities that are
already planned would be a great way to increase student movement in the classroom.
Administrative Promotion
Advocating for change begins with awareness. The first step of implementing
these changes would be to let the administration see the results of this assessment tool. If
the administration is aware of its lack in some areas, they could begin to support changes.
Another thing that would also help promote change would be to let the administration
know the simple and free/ inexpensive ways that these categories can be improved. It is
also important for the administrators to know the positives that come from health
education from improved academic performance, to the future lives of the students.
Signature Assignment
This information supports the Signature Assignment because it allows me to focus
on the areas where my school could use refinement. It also helps me determine where I
will simply be reinforcing certain aspects in my school. For my signature assignment I
would like to incorporate ways to specifically hit curriculum and during school categories
in health education. Those two categories need the most focus from the assessment tool
and I would like to work on improving these in my school through my Signature
Assignment.
School Information
The name of my school is Power Ranch Elementary in the Higley School district.

It is a public elementary school. There are 664 students enrolled currently according to
schooldigger.com. The school is located in a suburban community. The grades it serves
are Kindergarten through 6th. The percentage of student eligible for free/reduced lunch is
25.3% and Power Ranch receives Title 1 funding for curriculum (SchoolDigger). The
average teacher to student ratio in Power Ranch is 21.8 in 2014 (SchoolDigger). Also
according to schooldigger.com, the 2014 demographics of the school were 67.6% White,
3.8% Asian, 20.3% Hispanic, .6% Pacific Islander, and 5% two or more races. In the
surrounding community the demographics are 81.8% White, 3.5% Black/ African
American, .9% American Indian or Alaskan Native, 5.5% Asian, .2% Native Hawaiian &
Other Pacific Islander, 4.4% Other Race, and 3.8% 2 or More Races (United States Zip
Codes). I could not find the ELL or letter grade of Power Ranch from the Internet
resources, as they were not available.

References
SchoolDigger,. (2015). SchoolDigger.com. Retrieved 11 September 2015, from
http://www.schooldigger.com
UnitedStatesZipCodes,. (2015). U.S. ZIP Codes: Free ZIP code map and zip code lookup.
Retrieved 11 September 2015, from http://www.unitedstateszipcodes.org