Test performance improves when children can exercise briefly beforehand

 A new study from UNC Greensboro (UNCG) researchers suggests giving children just nine minutes to engage in high-intensity interval exercise can boost their academic performance.  

“In the classroom, you have teachers that say, ‘Let’s take a movement break to get you focused again,’” said lead author and UNCG Assistant Professor Eric Drollette, Ph.D.. “We know that’s the case anecdotally in the classroom, but we hadn’t put the science to it.”  

Investigating the science behind this classroom wisdom, the researchers created a short sequence of exercises that can be completed in one place, including high knees, jumping jacks, lunges and air squats. Children aged 9-12 years performed each exercise for 30 seconds followed by 30 seconds of rest.  

Their findings, published in Psychology of Sport & Exercise, indicate that when the same 25 students engaged in high-intensity interval exercise, they scored significantly higher on a standardized test measuring verbal comprehension compared to when they were seated before the test.  

“This research provides us with valuable insights into the potential for a single short period of exercise to benefit children's cognitive performance,” said co-author and Julia Taylor Morton Distinguished Professor Jennifer Etnier, Ph.D. “These findings may have important implications for teachers who are incorporating movement breaks into their classrooms and who might then see benefits to their students' academic performance.” 

This study is especially timely, as recess time is reported to have declined in schools. At the same time, teachers in about 10% of elementary schools are expected to give students regular, short movement breaks. This study provides a blueprint for how teachers can utilize these breaks to improve cognitive performance.  

Two unique aspects of this study are that UNCG researchers tested a shorter duration and more practical type of exercise for a classroom setting compared to past studies. 

“With earlier studies, we did 20 minutes of exercise on a treadmill – equipment not found in the classroom. A lot of studies have followed up like that,” Drollette said. “In this study, we wanted to replicate what could possibly be done in a classroom.” 

The researchers were interested in both children’s academic achievement and what was occurring in their brains after acute exercise. To this end, they examined a type of brain neuroelectrical activity, error-related negativity (ERN), that is observed when people make a mistake. Drollette said high ERN amplitude is associated with mental distraction with greater fixation on the error, reducing a child’s focus and performance. 

In addition to the high-intensity interval exercise and the seated rest, children also performed moderate-intensity cycling on a third day of testing. After each session, they completed a cognitive test while wearing an electroencephalogram, or EEG cap, that could measure the magnitude of their ERN response after a mistake.  

“With interval exercise, we actually see this decrease in this error-related response,” Drollette said. “This can be beneficial because it means that while a person made an error, the error itself is less salient thus they are able to effectively respond to the error or mistake in a mentally healthy way.” 

Drollette hopes to build on these findings in future studies to investigate how this error response could be connected to a child’s overall mental health and their behavior, including exercise.    

“Physical education and physical activity are good for our rising generation,” Drollette said. “It’s good for mental health. It’s good for brain health. It’s good for academic achievement.” 

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Journal

Psychology of Sport and Exercise

DOI

10.1016/j.psychsport.2025.102847 

Method of Research

Universities that eliminated admission test requirements saw gains in student body diversity

 Universities that have eliminated standardized test requirements for admissions in recent years generally experienced gains in diversity in their student bodies, according to research by the University of California, Davis. However, if the universities also faced recent financial shortfalls or enrollment declines, or continued to prioritize quantitative academic criteria such as test scores and class rank, these gains in diversity diminished or disappeared.

The paper, “Same Policy, No Standardized Outcome: How Admissions Values and Institutional Priorities Shape the Effect of Test-Optional Policies on Campus Diversity,” was published in the American Sociological Review on Aug. 11.

“Although test-optional admissions policies are often adopted with the assumption that they will broaden access to underrepresented minority groups, the effectiveness of these policies in increasing student diversity appears to depend on existing admissions values and institutional priorities at the university,” said Greta Hsu, co-author of the paper. Hsu is a UC Davis professor in the Graduate School of Management who studies organizational behavior.

This paper was co-authored with Amanda Sharkey of the University of Notre Dame.

Data from 16 years

Researchers analyzed a broad sample of data from more than 1,500 public and private four-year, degree-granting colleges and universities in the United States between 2003 and 2019. During that time, more than 200 of those universities eliminated standardized test requirements.

Some universities, such as University of California, are currently “test-blind” and do not consider test scores at all, while others make them optional. Students have control over whether tests are sent or not, and students must contemplate whether it helps or hurts them to include test scores in their application where tests are optional, Hsu said.

COVID years eliminated from study

The data does not include the period after the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, in which more colleges eliminated testing requirements and altered enrollment processes in myriad ways because of changes in high school educational attainment, lack of test centers and other issues.

Campus populations changed

During the years analyzed, demographics on college campuses changed. Students identifying as white decreased, overall, from 68% to 53% while those identifying as an underrepresented population (Black, Hispanic or Native American) increased from 19% to 28% percent of students attending college.  Those identifying as Asian or Asian American increased slightly from 6% to 8%.

Testing and inequities

Standardized tests have been broadly used to assess college readiness since the 1950s. But concerns have risen over the years — beginning in the 1980s and especially more recently — that the testing is flawed, exhibiting racial and income-based inequities. Further, critics argue that access to test preparation tutors and materials favors those who can afford and access those resources.

Colleges that give much weight to test scores — while not requiring them — show no significant increase in enrolling underrepresented students for three years following a change in testing policy. In contrast, colleges that give less weight to test scores show a slight 2% increase in enrollment of underrepresented students in the same period. Researchers said additional recruitment and individual university efforts to strengthen student body diversity could affect those numbers but were not studied.

In addition to examining the metrics colleges report valuing when making admissions decisions, the researchers looked at whether colleges were facing institutional pressures, such as from financial or enrollment shortfalls, when they went test optional.  They found that colleges facing financial or enrollment-related pressures were less likely to see a significant increase in minority student representation when they went test optional.

“It is important to recognize that college and university environments, like most complex organizations, face multiple competing pressures,” Hsu said.  “Actions and policies aimed at responding to each of these pressures can, at times, work at cross-purposes with one another."

 

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DOI

10.1177/00031224251352432 

Sequential College Admission Mechanisms

 The optimal functioning of centralized allocation systems is undermined by the presence of institutions operating off-platform—a feature common to virtually all real-world implementations. These off-platform options generate justified envy, as students may reject their centralized assignment in favor of an outside offer, leaving vacant seats in programs that others would have preferred to their current match. 

This study examines whether sequential assignment procedures can mitigate this inefficiency: they allow students to delay their enrollment decision to potentially receive a better offer later, at the cost of waiting before knowing their final admission outcome. 

To quantify this trade-off, a dynamic model of application and acceptance decisions using rich administrative data from the French college admission system is estimated , which include rank-ordered lists and waiting decisions. Waiting costs are large. 

Yet, by improving students’ assignment outcomes relative to a standard single-round system, the sequential mechanism decreases the share of students who leave the higher education system without a degree by 5.4% and leads to large welfare gains

Excessive screen time among youth may pose heart health risks

 Research Highlights:

• Increased time on electronic devices or watching TV among children and young adults was associated with higher cardiometabolic disease risk, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and insulin resistance, based on data from over 1,000 study participants in Denmark.
• The link between screen time and cardiometabolic risks was strongest among youth who slept fewer hours, suggesting that screen use may harm health by “stealing” time from sleep, researchers said.
• Researchers said the findings underscore the importance of addressing screen habits among young people as a potential way to protect long-term heart and metabolic health.

Children and young adults who spend excessive hours glued to screens and electronic devices may have higher risks for cardiometabolic diseases, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and insulin resistance, according to new research published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association, an open-access, peer-reviewed journal of the American Heart Association.

A 2023 scientific statement from the American Heart Association noted that “cardiometabolic risk is accruing at younger and younger ages,” and only 29% of American youth, ages 2 to 19 years, had favorable cardiometabolic health based on 2013-2018 data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

This analysis of more than 1,000 participants in two studies in Denmark found that increased recreational screen time was significantly associated with higher cardiovascular risks and cardiometabolic risks among children and adolescents.

“Limiting discretionary screen time in childhood and adolescence may protect long-term heart and metabolic health,” said study lead author David Horner, M.D., PhD., a researcher at the Copenhagen Prospective Studies on Asthma in Childhood (COPSAC) at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. “Our study provides evidence that this connection starts early and highlights the importance of having balanced daily routines.”

Using data from a group of 10-year-olds studied in 2010 and a group of 18-year-olds in 2000 that were part of the Copenhagen Prospective Studies on Asthma in Childhood cohorts, researchers examined the relationship between screen time and cardiometabolic risk factors. Screen time included time spent watching TV, movies, gaming or using phones, tablets or computers for leisure.

Researchers developed a composite score based on a cluster of metabolic syndrome components — waist size, blood pressure, high-density lipoprotein or HDL “good” cholesterol, triglycerides and blood sugar levels – and adjusted for sex and age. The cardiometabolic score reflected a participant’s overall risk relative to the study group average (measured in standard deviations): 0 means average risk, and 1 means one standard deviation above average.

The analysis found that each extra hour of screen time increased the cardiometabolic score by about 0.08 standard deviations in the 10-year-olds and 0.13 standard deviations in the 18-year-olds. “This means a child with three extra hours of screen time a day would have roughly a quarter to half a standard-deviation higher risk than their peers,” Horner said.

“It’s a small change per hour, but when screen time accumulates to three, five or even six hours a day, as we saw in many adolescents, that adds up,” he said. “Multiply that across a whole population of children, and you’re looking at a meaningful shift in early cardiometabolic risk that could carry into adulthood.”

The analysis also found that both sleep duration and sleep timing affected the relationship between screen time and cardiometabolic risk. Both shorter sleep duration and going to sleep later intensified the relationship between screen time and cardiometabolic risk. Children and adolescents who had less sleep showed significantly higher risk associated with the same amount of screen time.

“In childhood, sleep duration not only moderated this relationship but also partially explained it: about 12% of the association between screen time and cardiometabolic risk was mediated through shorter sleep duration,” Horner said. “These findings suggest that insufficient sleep may not only magnify the impact of screen time but could be a key pathway linking screen habits to early metabolic changes.”

In addition, a machine learning analysis identified a unique metabolic signature in the blood that appeared to be associated with screen time.

“We were able to detect a set of blood-metabolite changes, a ‘screen-time fingerprint,’ validating the potential biological impact of the screen time behavior,” he said. “Using the same metabolomics data, we also assessed whether screen time was linked to predicted cardiovascular risk in adulthood, finding a positive trend in childhood and a significant association in adolescence. This suggests that screen-related metabolic changes may carry early signals of long-term heart health risk.

“Recognizing and discussing screen habits during pediatric appointments could become part of broader lifestyle counseling, much like diet or physical activity,” he said. “These results also open the door to using metabolomic signatures as early objective markers of lifestyle risk.”

Amanda Marma Perak, M.D., M.S.CI., FAHA, chair of the American Heart Association’s Young Hearts Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Committee, who was not involved in this research, said focusing on sleep is a great starting point to change screen time patterns.

“If cutting back on screen time feels difficult, start by moving screentime earlier and focusing on getting into bed earlier and for longer,” said Perak, an assistant professor of pediatrics and preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

Adults can also set an example, she said. “All of us use screens, so it’s important to guide kids, teens and young adults to healthy screen use in a way that grows with them. As a parent, you can model healthy screen use – when to put it away, how to use it, how to avoid multitasking. And as kids get a little older, be more explicit, narrating why you put away your devices during dinner or other times together.

“Make sure they know how to entertain and soothe themselves without a screen and can handle being bored! Boredom breeds brilliance and creativity, so don’t be bothered when your kids complain they’re bored. Loneliness and discomfort will happen throughout life, so those are opportunities to support and mentor your kids in healthy ways to respond that don’t involve scrolling.”

As an observational study using prospectively collected data, the findings reflect associations rather than proving cause and effect. Moreover, parents of the 10-year-olds and the 18-year-olds reported screen time through questionnaires, which may not accurately reflect the actual time youth spent on screens.

Horner suggested that future research could explore whether limiting screen use in the hours before sleep, when light from screen exposure may disrupt circadian rhythms and disrupt sleep onset, may be an avenue to help reduce cardiometabolic risk.

Study details, background and design:

• The two prospective research groups at COPSAC in Denmark consisted of mother-child pairs, with analysis of data collected at planned clinical visits and study assessments from the birth of the children through age 10 in the 2010 study group and age 18 in the 2000 study group.
• Through questionnaires, parents of children in the 10-year-old group and 18-year-olds detailed the number of hours the young participants spent watching TV or movies, gaming on a console/TV and using phones, tablets or computers for leisure.
• For the 2010 group, the number of hours of screen time was available for 657 children at age 6 and 630 children at age 10. Average screen time was two hours per day at age 6, and 3.2 hours per day at age 10, representing a significant increase over time.
• For the 2000 group of 18-year-olds, screen time was available for 364 individuals. Screen time at 18 years was significantly higher at an average of 6.1 hours per day.
• Sleep was measured by sensors over a 14-day period.
• 
  

Hope among U.S. youth key to safer schools

 Given the current youth mental health crisis in the United States, many adolescents report experiencing low levels of hope – a longstanding concern that is even more pressing as the new school year begins. Substantial research over decades has established that higher levels of hope are linked with greater academic achievement, as well as improved emotional and physical health.

Now, a new study shows that hope does even more: it acts as a powerful protective force in the lives of children, helping to reduce both bullying and cyberbullying.

The study by Florida Atlantic University, in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, surveyed a nationally representative group of more than 5,500 students in the U.S. aged 12 to 17. A key group of 2,472 students completed the Children’s Hope Scale, a brief assessment that measures two core components of hope: agency and pathways.

Agency reflects a child’s belief in reaching goals, while pathways measures their ability to find ways to do so. Students rated statements like “I think I am doing pretty well” and “I can think of many ways to get the things important to me,” from “none of the time” to “all of the time.” Responses were combined into a hope score from 0 to 30, with higher scores showing greater levels of hope.

Results, published in the journal Frontiers in Sociology, show that students with less hope were 56% more likely to cyberbully others than their peers over their lifetime, and 57% more likely over the last 30 days. Those with more hope were 36% less likely to cyberbully others over their lifetime and over the last 30 days when compared to their peers with lower levels of hope. The key takeaway? Hope matters. It buffers against the urge to aggress against others online and off.

“Hope acts as a powerful protective factor against both school bullying and cyberbullying among youth,” said Sameer Hinduja, Ph.D., lead author, a professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice within FAU’s College of Social Work and Criminal Justice, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. “When young people believe in their ability to set meaningful goals and stay motivated to reach them, they are far less likely to lash out or harm others. Hope gives them a sense of direction – and that can make all the difference.”

Strengthening hope could therefore be a powerful strategy in preventing bullying, by helping young people build resilience, maintain self-control, and invest in their futures instead of harming others in the present. This insight opens important pathways for educators, parents and policymakers to support youth development in more hopeful, constructive ways.

“When youth struggle to imagine a positive future for themselves or lack confidence in their ability to achieve meaningful goals, they may become frustrated and more prone to acting out aggressively,” said Hinduja. “This lack of hope undermines their motivation to pursue positive outcomes and weakens the internal controls that usually guide behavior. Without these guiding forces, their willingness to harm others – whether face-to-face or online – increases.”

However, schools in the U.S. don’t often focus on teaching hope and similar “soft” skills, mostly because they lack the resources and know-how. Hinduja and co-author Justin Patchin, Ph.D., a professor of criminal justice, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, say that this is a missed opportunity because research shows that building social and emotional skills like hope can improve attendance, grades, wellbeing and more.

“Teaching hope isn’t just a feel-good initiative; it’s a practical, evidence-based way to help young people thrive,” said Hinduja. 

The researchers suggest hope can be meaningfully strengthened through brief, practical interventions – making it a realistic and powerful tool for educators and counselors. Even short sessions, such as one-on-one counseling, scenario-based activities, or small group work, can help students build hope by encouraging goal setting, problem-solving and motivation.

One effective method is hope therapy, a structured approach that guides youth to set meaningful goals, identify ways to reach them, and stay motivated along the way. Whether delivered individually or in group settings, this approach helps students develop a clearer sense of purpose and direction. Assigning students – especially those who have bullied others – positive, purposeful roles where they can contribute also can redirect their behavior in constructive ways.

“I have long believed in the power of positive youth development and our research reinforces that,” said Hinduja. “Hope doesn’t just make kids feel better – it can actually reduce the likelihood of them victimizing others. We need to prioritize hope-building whether through individual mentoring, group programs or school-wide initiatives. Intentionally fostering hope is incredibly important – not just to reducing bullying and cyberbullying, but also promoting healthier, happier and higher-achieving children.”

Revenues and Expenditures for Public School Districts in 2022-23

 

A new report from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) provides information about revenues and expenditures in the nation’s public school districts for school year 2022-23. The report uses provisional data from the School District Finance Survey (F-33), which state education agencies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia submit each year.  In FY 23, school districts received $126.4 billion from the federal government for public elementary and secondary education, which is a decrease of 5.5 percent from the federal revenue received in FY 22 after adjusting for inflation.   The national median of total revenues per pupil across all LEAs was $18,715 in FY 23, which represents an increase of 1.8 percent from FY 22, after adjusting for inflation (table 3). The national median of current expenditures per pupil among all LEAs was $15,684 in FY 23, an increase of 0.7 percent from FY 22.   On a national basis, in the absence of any geographic cost adjustment, in FY 23 median current expenditures per pupil were $16,181 for LEAs with schools in cities, $17,476 for LEAs with schools in the suburbs, $14,085 for LEAs with schools in towns, and $15,554 for LEAs with schools in rural areas.   In FY 23, current expenditures per pupil in the 100 largest public school districts by enrollment ranged from a low of $7,980 in State-Sponsored Charter Schools, Nevada to a high of $33,387 in New York City School District, New York.  The tables also provide information on a regional basis, although a geographic cost adjustment was not applied. In FY 23, the district with the highest per pupil current expenditure in each region out of the two largest enrollment school districts within each state were highest in:   Northeast: Boston City Schools, Massachusetts ($36,906); South: Christina School District, Delaware ($33,954); Midwest: Indianapolis Public Schools, Indiana ($23,197); and West: Los Angeles Unified School District, California ($22,606) The median current expenditures per pupil, on a national basis, were $15,050 for independent charter school districts and $15,772 for noncharter and mixed school districts. Median current expenditures per pupil in independent charter school districts were lower than median current expenditures per pupil in noncharter and mixed school districts in 23 out of the 32 state equivalents that met reporting standards for reporting finance data for independent charter school districts.   On a national basis, current expenditures per pupil were 4.7 percent lower in low-poverty districts than in high-poverty districts, based on poverty groups calculated by ranking LEAs by poverty rate (i.e., the percentage of children ages 5–17 in families living below the poverty level) weighted by the number of children in poverty (table 7). Total current expenditures per pupil in high-poverty districts were less than those in low-poverty districts in 4 states, with the percentage difference exceeding 5 percent in 2 states.   To view the full report, please visit https://ies.ed.gov/use-work/resource-library/report/first-look-ed-tab/revenues-and-expenditures-public-elementary-and-secondary-school-districts-school-year-2022-23.

The Changing Distribution of the Return to Higher Education

Since 1960, the wage premium from attending college for students from high- and low-income families has diverged.

Higher education has played a central role in reducing income inequality and the intergenerational persistence of socioeconomic status in the US during the twentieth century. However, the average return to attending college for students from families in different strata of the income distribution is not the same and has diverged in recent decades. Students from higher-income families receive greater wage benefits from college attendance than their lower-income peers.

In Changes in the College Mobility Pipeline Since 1900 (NBER Working Paper 33797), Zachary Bleemer and Sarah Quincy report that the average wage premium associated with college attendance by lower-income Americans has halved, relative to that for students from higher-income families, since 1960. The researchers analyze dozens of longitudinal surveys and administrative datasets spanning more than a century to measure wage premiums, defined as the difference in early-30s earnings between those who completed at least one year of college and high school graduates who did not attend college.

In the first half of the twentieth century, students from the bottom and top thirds of the parental income distribution received similar average wage premiums from college attendance. However, a divergence emerged beginning around 1960. By the end of the twentieth century, the college wage premium for students from the top income tercile was twice as large as that for bottom-tercile students. Between 1950 and 2000, the college-going premium for top-tercile students rose by about 0.14 log points relative to bottom-tercile students.

Three factors appear to explain about 80 percent of this growing disparity. First, the teaching-oriented public universities where lower-income students concentrate have experienced relative declines in quality indicators like funding, retention rates, and economic value since 1960. The gap in annual per-student revenue between institutions attended by lower- and higher-income students grew by $67 per year between the 1960s and the 1990s, then accelerated to $100 per year through the 2010s.

Second, lower-income students who attend college have increasingly attended community colleges (since about 1980) and for-profit institutions (since about 1990). The gap in two-year college enrollment between bottom- and top-tercile students was less than 10 percentage points before and through the 1970s, but it exceeded 20 percentage points after 1990. For-profit enrollment among bottom-tercile students rose from near zero to 20 percent between 1980 and the early 2000s before regulatory changes reduced the size of this sector.

Third, shifts in college major choices since 2000 have widened the earnings gap. Higher-income students have increasingly moved out of humanities fields and into computer science and economics/finance programs, while lower-income students have not. About 40 percent of the recent increase in major stratification across income groups is due to higher-income students' increased declaration of computer science majors while nearly 20 percent is due to lower-income students' growing concentration in lower-value humanities fields.

The researchers also explore several other potential explanations of the growing disparity in returns to college, including differential selection into college based on pre-college cognitive skills, changes in enrollment patterns across four-year universities resulting from rising selectivity or tuition, and shifts in the relative value of different majors over time, and conclude that they are at most modest contributors.

Disparities in the return to college attendance today can account for as much as 25 percent of the transmission of income from one generation to the next, up from virtually no effect in 1960.