He Ain't Heavy, He's My Student

I think sending home this information could be useful. Our school sends it home as part of a health screening done by nurses and nursing assistants with several of the grades in our school. However, the Health Fair Report also includes an eye exam, hearing test, dental screening, height and weight measurement, and a few other things.

I guess my main problem with this isn't whether or not it would cause bullying, but why teachers are the ones who are expected to remedy the situation. We can advocate for our students and try to get healthier lunches for our cafeterias, set a good example with exercise and eating habits, teach them about the food pyramid, and fight for recess time.

HOWEVER, in the end, it is a parents' responsibility to make sure their children are eating what they should be eating, controlling time in front of a screen, and ensuring a proper amount of exercise. I can only do what I can do at school. I am glad to help guide parents to good resources and help however I can, but this is one of those areas that the school cannot fix on their own!

If the soda and candy machines were taken out of the schools and the lunch programs had better food choices this would not be such a problem, but because the school gets money(from the soda companys) for having the vending machines in their school, this will not happen. Parents need to spend more time directing the children how to eat properly, not just "hurry up and grab something, we are late" feeding. Put PE in and take junkfood out.I see overweight(obese) College Freshmens all day, and it all starts in Jr. High/ High school because the child is not taught proper diet early in life. P.S. Wearing Walmart flipflops may be easier/ comfortable but it DESTROYS the arch in the foot. Combine this with overweight at 14 and you have a problem in the amount of Physical activity that the child can do w/out pain.Easier is NOT always BETTER.

The information can be helpful if the people determining BMI are certified to do so, but it definitely should not be a part of the child's report card. Information about the child's health should be sent home separately.

My largest issue (pun entirely intended) with including BMI on the report card is the potential for misunderstanding - for parents who see a BMI that is considered normal, despite having a child with low muscle but still too much fat, thus in even more need of exercise than someone with a higher BMI, and for parents (and children) who see a higher BMI and begin to react when their child is normal body fat.

I speak from experience. I grew up as a serious competitive swimmer. I developed, and still have, a lot of muscle. I know how to test my body fat - not just BMI - and when my body fat is at the bottom of the healthy range, my BMI is barely in the normal range. Muscle weighs more than fat - we know that BMI will mislead.

Do I think information to parents is important? Absolutely! Do I think that schools can be a vehicle for that information, as all children are required to go to school (though doctor's appointments are harder to mandate)? Most definitely.

But then it is imperative that schools give accurate, helpful information rather than potentially very misleading information. And the idea that a grade may be based on that measurement is absolutely abhorrent.

Go ahead and communicate about healthy eating, healthy exercise, and have some method for alerting parents if there is a need for change.

Just don't do it with BMI.

BMI Is Just Fake Science...

I am totally opposed to listing BMI's anywhere, least of all on report cards. My response to this madness is a repost of an open letter I wrote to Michelle Obama when it was announced that she was taking on childhood obesity as her mission. I wrote this before Mrs. O. started telling the world her children were obese (how horrible for those girls). I originally posted this on my WordPress blog. But since that's down indefinitely, here is the letter:

January 29, 2010

Dear Mrs. Obama,

Congratulations on your new position. I know you have already done much to improve the overall health of our nation's children. For instance, the White House garden you spearheaded is a great way to promote community gardening. I applaud you for the healthy example you've set thus far.

I don’t mean to detract from my praise, because I offer it sincerely. But I really hope you’ll rethink calling your latest initiative one on “childhood obesity.”

Mrs. Obama, you may or may not be aware that research does not support the idea that obesity per se is a health problem. What any physician worth her or his salt knows is that the top health problems in the U.S. are caused by folks leading sedentary lifestyles and eating non-nutritive foods.

Focusing on body-size can lead to disordered eating. As a child who suffered with eating disorders—bulimia and anorexia—and as the mother of two daughters and a son—two preteens and one teen--who have always been thin, but who have nonetheless voiced the concern from time to tome that they are "fat," I urge you to not give national sanction to the destructive hype that saturates every aspect of our society vis a vis body-size.

I urge you to not perpetuate the destructive falsehood that body-size matters when it comes to fitness. Please take the emphasis off the size of children—who are already vulnerable due to their age and social and emotional development—and place it, instead, on fitness and nutrition.

With an emphasis on fitness and nutrition, perhaps we can ensure that recess and some form of physical activity take place in every school every day, and that all schools, regardless of the mean income of the community in which they are located, are places where fresh fruits and vegetables are part of every lunch and breakfast, and where candy and chip vending machines, corporate-backed hallway posters featuring candy bars, fast food restaurant coupons, and fundraisers that promote processed foods do not exist.

With an emphasis on fitness—not body-size—perhaps every community will have well-maintained sidewalks, bicycle paths, and at least one functioning swimming pool. Perhaps every community will provide safe green parks where children can freely play without fear.

This would be costly, I know. Creating the kind of environments I’ve described requires more than pointing a finger at a child of a certain body-size with a tisk tisk and the shake of a head. The reform I’m talking about would require a long-range plan and community effort.

Based on what you've done so far, I'm certain you are already thinking along the lines of some the proposals I mention here. All I'm asking, as you go forward, is that you remove the term "obesity" from whatever plans you have in mind.

If long life and good health are the goal, identifying a person as obese won’t get us there. If it did, we’d all be healthy, because the obesity alarm has been sounding loud and clear for decades.

But the truth is, labeling someone as obese creates zero positive value. On the other hand, helping a person become physically active and a healthy eater creates immeasurable benefit, regardless of how much that person weighs.

Science shows that a typical thin person who does not exercise and who eats non-nutritive foods is no healthier than a typical heavier person with a similar lifestyle. Similarly, the typical plus-size person who is physically active and eats nutritiously is a healthy person.

Look around you. Except for on television, in movies, and in magazines, people come in all shapes and sizes. And so does good health.

Before you start traveling around the country helping to create a generation of kids who are bullied for being fat “because Mrs. Obama said you are”, or dying from purposely starving themselves “because Mrs. Obama says fat is bad”, please read The Obesity Myth—Why America’s Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to Your Health by Paul Campos.

You have an enormously powerful platform, Mrs. Obama. Please do more with it than repeat and amplify a message that has destroyed the psyches of far too many young people—young people who, if they don’t totally succumb to despair, grow into adults who are deeply, deeply wounded.

Submitted with much respect and admiration.
M. LaVora Perry,
Author of Middle Grade Novel, Taneesha Never Disparaging

P.S. I still admire and respect Michelle Obama. But I am saddened that she, like so many, has obviously been brainwashed by Obesity-mania and has, probably uncontrollably, dragged her own daughters into the crazy fray by repeatedly publicly broadcasting her fears about their body sizes. -MLP, April 26, 2011

Obesity, like alcholism tends to be cyclical. There are parents (for many reasons) that do not have the means to teach thier children about health and nutrtion. The world would be a lot different if all parents were capable, well functioning people. But they're not. And beacause of this children will have all kinds of different issues, including obesity. In my opinion, it is ridiculous to include this on a report card. Why do you think obesity is such a problem?? The parents already know their kids are obese, they are the primiary contributors to this!! And Low self esteem will directly affect how well students do in school. How humiliating for kids!

Not just no, but, HELL NO! Overweight children are already teased and bullied mercilessly, in school. The fact that educators already ignore these abuses, isn't bad enough, no, now they want to, "officially" take part in it!
Any, "action" or, "advocacy" from schools on this issue, should be in the form of a form letter from the school nurse to the parents (and hopefully mailed), suggesting solutions. Any weighing of clearly obese kids, should take place privately.
Size discrimination is one of the forms of bigotry that's just accepted, across the board.
We need much advocacy and sensitivity on this issue.
How about placing notes on the bullies' report cards, for every time a teacher observes a student taking part in bullying of another student.
- Rainjustice

NO, adding a BMI to a child's report card is not necessary. Trust me, as someone who has been large all of my life, the child and the parents are well aware of the child's size and issues.
Simply adding a BMI to the report card is an oversimplification of the healthy weight issue. It will only promote further discrimination and the systemic destruction of childrens' self-worth based on physical appearance.
Growth and development during the school age years will go through several different periods. It is not unusual for children to put on weight prior to skeletal height change. Development is from top down and from the center outward so as children grow their height and weight will continue to change from year to year. If the schools begin to hyperfocus on weight as an issue then we will see larger numbers of middle school children and high school children with eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia.
Watch children's television and see the messages children are receiving about food from the culture they live in. To continue to promote high sugar, high carbohydrate cereals as "part" of a healthy breakfast as the television commercials do is part of the socio-cultural lying that so dominates our "free market" economy. Check out the shelves of your local convenience store and try to find something that is "healthy" to eat. Water, raw unsalted almonds and some sad looking fruit at the check out counter is about all there is. Everything else is filled with sugar or salt or some chemical substitute for a "sweetner".
School lunch programs are also a huge problem. While one part of the USDA promotes the "healthy food pyramid" the other part is selling cheap deep fried frozen meats to the schools. These items are filled with salt, fat, and suspicious protein. Snacks and breakfast items are empty carbohydrates with flavoring and sugar. The schools need to do some serious examination of their school lunch programs before they even think about including BMI's on report cards.

How horrible! I truly hope that teachers will not allow this. When I was in 2nd - 4th grade I was a chubby child and kids made fun of me at school. My class visited a television station and they were doing a promo commercial for a segment on "Chubby Children" on the local morning show. Everyone in my 4th grade class started chanting my name. Our teacher called us (a few heavy kids) up to be in the commercial. It was horrifying. My teenage brothers and his friends saw the commercial. I remembering them saying, "Hey, Ellen, I saw you on the fat kids commerical". I was healthy and I swam and played soccer. Shortly after this experience I began dieting. I also started growing, and by 5th grade I was 5'7" and no longer chubby, but I still dieted. However, I thought of myself as chubby and started excersizing for hours on end. Then, in high school I developed an eating disorder. My eating disorder consummed my high school life.

My son is in 3rd grade now. I would hate to see his BMI on his report card. He controls his weight to the best of his ability, but it is not something he can learn or unlearn, it is a health issue. He is active and goes to swim practice for an hour and a half, four days a week, in addition to other "play" time. He is aware that he is bigger than other kids, and so are we. We don't need a number on his report card to tell us that we should feed him more veggies and less junk food. The BMI would be very embarrasing to him.

In California the BMI is one of the criteria for the California Fitness Test and the results of all criteria are sent to the home by the District. The results for each child, school, and and district are sent to the district from the CA Department of Education. The CA dept. of Ed. then publishes the results by grade level for each school, grade level (5,7,9) and district.
I feel that the test is not a true vision of what each child"s level of fitness is since they are compared to a "norm". Children may also be affected by environment or other factors on the day of the test item and there are no "do overs". Once again it is a one day only view of the child. Very unrealistic.
However, no child may be graded on the results of the test.

As a retired principal, I can just see what adding the BMI to a report card would do. Kids and parents would compare, then the district would start writing standards, and there would be regular testing to see which students and teachers have shown gains in improvement. Then new curriculum would be written or bought, finger pointing would ensue, principals would be told we need to check the teachers' BMI's as well because they should be role models. Then it could be suggested that we let go those without tenure if they haven't improved their own BMI's within the time to get tenure. I hate to use the logical fallacy of "Thin-entering Wedge," but after my experiences in a low-performing district, I can see these things happening. Why not educate the kids in why we no longer fry their food in the cafeteria or have soft drinks. Nutrition education, physical activities are all fine. Publishing BMI's on a report card is not.

I would seriously consider quitting before sending home this information with my students:

BMI isn't intended to make individual diagnoses - it's appropriate for measuring populations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index#Usage

BMI is also not accurate for children -- it compares children by height and weight to other children their age. We've all seen children who are, say, age 10, whose body types vary HUGELY.

BMI is also completely irrelevant to health measures that may be taken in schools. For example, I would love for my students to stop showing up at school with bags of chips and sodas that they buy at the corner store before school starts (or scarfing them down before entering the building). I would love this outcome equally for my thin students as well as my heavy students. Because honestly, a breakfast of Doritos is not healthy or conductive to learning all morning for ANY kid. And sitting around playing video games all day/night is not a good move for ANY kid. Since it's hugely irresponsible to suggest to a growing child to "go on a diet", parents/adults in a child's life should be encouraging activity and healthy choices...and a lack of activity/healthy food is EQUALLY DETRIMENTAL to the health of ALL KIDS.

In addition to the many issues pointed out above. :)

This is perhaps the worst idea in education that I've heard in a long time.

Isn't BMI a health issue? Shouldn't it fall under the HIPAA and FERPA laws that we have to follow? I do not want anyone besides a trained health professional in the privacy of my doctor's office to weigh and calculate my child's BMI. When Big Brother sits down at our table and joins us in the family room, we need to reconsider what is most important to us-more labelling of innocent children, or another way to impose on the teacher's already overloaded position, which is probably causing his or her BMI to rise, or some government official being able to brag about his or her acheivements.

While BMI information is helpful to individuals, I do not think it should be indiscriminately sent home in a report card, but rather personally shared with a parent who requests it, after having been informed that it exists. A school nurse is the person most qualified in the school to explain the information represented by the Index and, since it is medical information, should not be shared by teachers.

We have to agree that we are very inconsistant about assigning which parental rights and responsibility we "leave" to parents. The issue is not BMI or not; the issue is the health of children. The need is to communicate helpful information to parents. Giving resource information to the parents about what to do next regarding overweight children is as important as vision and hearing screening! We have gone to the extreme that weighing students is not allowed as part of a health unit in some schools. I don't consider it tolerant to passively condone health habits that are dangerous to children. The example of an athlete having a high BMI should be used as a signal to pursue other explanations: cholesteral, carbohydrate versus fat intake. The question is not whether the BMI should be shared; the issue is we have a problem with our children's health habits!

There are many different reasons for a child to be overweight. Yes, parents need to be responsible for what their children eat at home, and the schools need to be responsible for what the children eat when in their care. Food is not always the reason for obesity. My son was was very active, he played ice hockey and he was always on the go. When he turned twelve he really packed on the weight even though he was still physically active. I was a little worried, but by the next summer he grew over six inches and he was no longer overweight, but rather, underweight. His body put those extra pounds on in preparation for a growth spurt, by the time he was 14 he was 6'4". How horrible would he have felt if he received a poor BMI score on his report card? He had no control over what his body was doing, nor did I. He wasn't eating poorly and he was exercising. I think this is a horrible idea and seriously needs to be reconsidered.

I think it is cruel to put a child's BMI on his/her report card. The child already knows they are bigger than they would like to be, and it is most likely already an area of low self-esteem and emotional pain.

Since report cards are part of a students cumulative folder, it goes with them from year to year. It may be that the information is contained in that folder when you receive a letter from the school with the information on it. This is why it is a good idea to examine your child's file annually and request that things be removed.

My son had a BMI in the high range year after year but I never worried about it. My brother was "chunky" as well in his childhood but in the teens he grew taller and lost weight. Last summer Nate grew 6 inches and 25 pounds and BMI is not a problem anymore.

The other side of this is that this is something that when a child looks at their report card and it makes them humiliated and is a form of harassment.