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Letter Head: Jack O'Connell, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Phone number 916-319-0800

December 13, 2007

Dear County and District Superintendents of Schools, Charter School Administrators, and Physical Fitness Testing Coordinators:

Required Physical Fitness Testing for 2008
Preparing for Spring Testing and Reporting

Each spring, your school district is required to administer the state-designated Physical Fitness Test (PFT) to all students in grades five, seven, and nine during the annual assessment window beginning on February 1 and ending on May 31 of each year. The California Department of Education (CDE) collects and reports statewide results annually.

CDE suggests that the District Physical Fitness Test Coordinator determine the test administration and data reporting process for all of the schools in the school district. The district Physical Fitness Test Coordinator should contact school principals and physical education department chairs now, so they can start preparing for test administration in the spring. The attached manual, the Preparation Manual for Testing and Reporting, will assist with this planning process.

CDE will be working with Educational Data Systems (EDS), the state PFT contractor, to collect and report the PFT results for 2008. School districts must select only one of the available options for sending the data to EDS. Data from all of the schools within a district must be submitted in one file. School districts that contract with a vendor that offers data collection and reporting services on a fee-for-service basis should ensure that the vendor will send all needed information to EDS in the correct format, as required. The Preparation Manual for Testing and Reporting provides important information about the data collection process, including the required format. Some of the information in the manual applies only to those school districts that collect their own data and submit it directly to EDS.

What Is New or Should be Reviewed for 2008

2008 Reporting Date. School districts must report 2008 PFT results to the state by June 30, 2008. (See Appendix B in the Preparation Manual for Testing and Reporting for more information on collection and reporting options.)  

FITNESSGRAM® 8.3. Human Kinetics released an update to the FITNESSGRAM® software. The 8.3 version update makes the following enhancements and/or improvements to the software:

  1. Upgrades all existing versions of the program (i.e., 8.0, 8.0.1, and 8.2) to the 8.3 version.
  2. Fixes the problem of services stopping intermittently on the District install.
  3. Allows for reports to be generated using Adobe Reader 8.
  4. Allows for the ability to select student data (i.e., names and IDs) to be de-identified or not per needs of research partner.
  5. Allows for additional ethnicity codes to meet the State of California’s PFT reporting requirements.
  6. Makes enhancements to the generation of the FITNESSGRAM® Statistical and Achievement of Standards reports.

The FITNESSGRAM® 8.3 update is only available via the Web download at http://www.HumanKinetics.com/service/support/techsupport.cfm (Outside Source). Enter “FITNESSGRAM 8.3 Updater” in the search field. Click on the FITNESSGRAM 8.3 Updater link, and you will be taken to a page with an explanation of the update and the link for downloading.

If you have questions concerning the FITNESSGRAM® 8.3 update, contact Human Kinetics’ Technical Support staff by phone at 217-351-5076 Monday through Friday (excluding holidays) between 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. (central standard time) or by e-mail at support@hkusa.com.

School Demographic Information. The School Record Layout is included as in Appendix A in the Preparation Manual for Testing and Reporting. School records must be completed and submitted along with the student records for every school. This is a summary of the number of students tested, number of students not tested, and reasons why students were not tested. Data from a school will not be accepted without a completed School Record Layout accompanying each set of students’ records.

Designated District PFT Coordinator. Each school district and charter school must designate a district PFT coordinator who will be contacted by EDS or the CDE about updates to the PFT, timeline requirements, or problems with the data. Once completed, a contact survey form needs to be signed by the district superintendent and faxed to EDS at 408-776-7696. If there have been no changes in the district PFT coordinator, please do not submit another form. Beginning February 1, 2008, the contract form can be downloaded from the Web site at http://www.eddataonline.com/fitness/2008 (Web site available after February 1, 2008).

Your support in implementing physical fitness testing for California public schools is greatly appreciated. Updates regarding the 2008 test will be placed on the CDE PFT Web page at http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/pf/. If you have further questions regarding the Physical Fitness Testing and Reporting for 2008, please contact Carrie Strong-Thompson, Consultant, Standards and Assessment Division, at 916-319-0341 or by e-mail at pft@cde.ca.gov.

Sincerely,

/S/

Deb Sigman, Director
Standards and Assessment Division

DS:cst

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