High School Student Obesity and Fitnessgram Assessments Essay

High School Student Obesity and Fitnessgram Assessments - Essay Example 6). At present, one in six children in America between 6 and 17 years of age are obese because of lack of sufficient amount of physical exercise (American Psychological Association, 2011). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2011), 33.8 percent of the American population is obese while the number of obese children between 2 to 19 years old is 12.5 million which shows that 17 percent of the total population of children in United States is obese. According to Miller (2004), childhood obesity is a very serious medical disease that decreases the life of its victims by 5 to 20 years. It is due to this reason that childhood obesity has become a serious issue for almost every country just like the issues of sustainable economic development and global warming. A decrease of 5 to 20 years in the life of a person is something that should be taken seriously. â€Å"In older adults, obesity exacerbates declines in physical performance, leads to frailty, impaired quality of life, and increases the nursing home admissions† (Villareal as cited in Dryden, 2011, para. 4). An important fact to consider is that childhood obesity also affects emotions of children along with physical health (Marcus & Baron, n.d.). For example, overweight children are often made fun of by their peers. Overweight children remain behind in competitions because they do not feel comfortable facing their peers who make fun of them. Moreover, they also get comparatively poor grades in exams because of less interaction with peers and teachers. Some children even become socially excluded. These negative marks on the psychology of a child become more alarming as time passes, and the child becomes completely unable to interact properly with the society as a responsible adult. Lack of physical exercises significantly contributes to obesity in children. Obesity is a problem that occurs because of excessive amount of fat stored in the body.

Educational effectiveness - International Comparison Essay

Educational effectiveness - International Comparison - Essay Example All these aspects should go hand in hand in establishing an effective educational system. But there is also one new yet already proven method of assessing the effectiveness of the educational system, and this is through international comparison. Comparisons of various schools’ students’ learning across countries are already being done 50 years ago. And recently, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) realized that this will be a good method of analyzing the level of efficacy of the educational system of the major schools around the world (Department of Education, Science and Training, 2005). Initially, IEA though of comparing the educational system of the schools so as have a clear and unbiased comparative data about the schools’ educational performances. Thus, all levels in an educational system, the teachers, the school administrators, the policymakers and even the educational facilities are being assessed and compared. As the time goes by, IEA realized that comparing the educations’ effectiveness of schools around the world can also give tremendous benefits to schools being compared and even to students and teachers themselves (Department of Education, Science and Training, 2005). The series of tests or exams for the students, the demo and several teacher valuations are known to be the proven ways of knowing if the students are learning or not or if the teachers are capable of teaching or not. But, the efficacy and efficiency of education per country as a whole cannot be assessed by those two methods. Thus, understanding and analyzing all the concepts and issues behind cross-country comparison of educational effectiveness is a good approach of appreciating education. The results of this paper can provide unlimited benefits to the students, teachers and the schools. They will be provided with ample