Website Representations of Physical Education and Physical Activity: Comparison of Public Charter and Private Schools

Purpose: Health authorities recommend schools play a major role in providing and promoting physical activity (PA). School choice legislation has led to increases in both public charter schools and private schools, and these have greater flexibility in curriculum, staffing, and other practices than traditional public schools. Most schools have public websites for informing constituents about their goals, curricula, and programs. Little is known, however, about how they use websites to provide information about and advocate for PA programs. Thus, we compared how selected PA programs were represented on public charter and private elementary school websites. Methods: We conducted a systematic content analysis of the websites of 520 public charter and 990 private schools in California that included grades 1-5 and compared how they represented PE, interscholastic sport, and other PA opportunities. Results: Websites mentioned PA programs infrequently and provided little information about them. PE was the PA program mentioned most often on both charter (30.8%) and private (71.3%) school websites, but information about its frequency, duration, curricula, and who taught it was comparatively scarce (range: charter (4.8 - 22.5%); private (11.2 - 54.8%). More private than charter school websites mentioned interscholastic sport (45.6% vs. 16.5%, p <.001) and other extracurricular PA programs (26.8% vs. 20.4%, p =.006). Conclusion: Although available in nearly all schools, website content about PA/PE was limited. In this regard, however, private school websites were more fully developed than those in public charter schools.