At 10:30 a.m., the bell rings through the halls of William F. Prisk Elementary School in Long Beach, sending students racing onto the playground, throwing basketballs, doing cartwheels, gliding down slides.
Recess could very well be the most important 30 minutes of their school day for learning — and it has become a contested period for the nation’s youngest students. Teachers use it as a behavioral bargaining chip, administrators weigh playtime against sagging test scores and researchers argue over how best to structure the minutes.
The debate over recess has grown so confusing that recently the American Academy of Pediatrics stepped in and updated its policy statement. Play is not a reward, a privilege or wasted learning time. It is a developmental necessity.
California made recess the law beginning in the 2023-24 school year, requiring at least 30 minutes of playtime daily for K-6 students and banning teachers and staff from taking it away as punishment. However researchers say there is not a process to evaluate whether schools are fully adhering to the mandate.
Why has recess become such a point of debate?
Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, schools faced mounting pressure to raise test scores, creating a fundamental tension between learning time and and play time.
Up to 40% of U.S. school districts reduced or eliminated recess during that era to free up more time for core academics, according to a national studypublished by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the group Springboard to Active Schools.
On one side of that tension, educators say their job is to prepare students academically for a complex, technology-driven society, according to the pediatrics association. On the other, educators point out that schools are responsible for developing the whole child, and that recess is not a break from learning — it is an integral part of it.
“Having kids sit in their seats for six hours a day is not necessarily a recipe for success,” said Rebecca London, a sociologist at UC Santa Cruz who co-authored research that helped shape the legislation. “They need a brain break. Everybody needs a brain break.”
How important is recess?
The updated pediatrics statement draws on decades of work in several areas, including social and emotional development, physical health and cognitive and academic performance.
“For us, we want to know are the kids thriving during recess? Are they engaged? Are they actually being physically active? Are they benefiting from the play environment?” said Celeste Soto, executive director of Playworks in Southern California, which helps schools and youth organizations plan out beneficial recess strategies.
On the cognitive side, pediatricians focus on what researchers call “wakeful rest.”
When students learn new information, the memory is fragile and the brain needs a pause from additional cognitive demands, according to the pediatric association. Recess can provide a low-demand break so that new information can stabilize before the next lesson begins.
Physical activity during recess adds a second layer of benefit. Moderate exercise has been shown to improve learning among students from elementary school through young adulthood, and the effects on attention, memory and executive function are well-documented, pediatricians say.
Despite this, the association said recess remains at the discretion of individual teachers in many schools throughout the country.
“The students are definitely more focused when they’ve had that time to play — to put their energy out there,” said Katie Hickox, principal of Prisk Elementary. “But they also engage in important relationships with each other.”
Should teachers ever take away recess?
The legal ban against withholding recess as punishment has generated friction in California.
“Many teachers and other professionals in schools feel that in order to get kids to behave, you have to have a credible threat,” London said. “One of the easiest to implement: Kids care a lot about recess.”
In 2023, a Gallup Poll cited in an analysis of the California legislation found that 77% of principals nationwide reported taking recess away as punishment. Even in school districts with strong policies protecting recess, 60% of schools still withheld it for poor behavior and 69% withheld it for incomplete academic work.
“There is no study out there that I have found that says this is an effective way of disciplining elementary school students,” London said. “Yet it’s a very common practice, because it’s accessible.”
Soto also argues that the students most likely to have recess taken away are the ones who tend to benefit from playtime the most.
“You think about a kiddo that maybe is having a hard time moving through their emotions, these are the kiddos that need to move their bodies,” she said.
Free play, structured play, or somewhere in between — what works?
How a school organizes recess matters.
In structured play, adults lead the activity, versus free play, where the children figure out what to do with minimal adult direction.
At Prisk Elementary, students have four periods of play a day, varying between structured and unstructured play to prod early childhood development — how to take a turn, how to invite play, how to accept that invitation, Hickox said.
Do all schools have equal access to recess?
Researchby the American Academy of Pediatrics shows that students who live in low-income neighborhoods and attend schools with higher proportions of students of color receive less recess time and lower quality recess.
They are also more likely to have minimal or barren outdoor spaces, less equipment and adults who restrict access to what little equipment exists, according to the legislative analysis of the California law.
“The point of the bill was really to correct that and to make sure that every child had access,” London said, noting that the inequity was the primary motivation behind the law, SB-291.
London asserts that early investment in recess quality, particularly organized, inclusive recess for the youngest students could interrupt the disciplinary pipeline before it starts.
“Rather than pull them from the recess environment, which is not going to teach them how to be successful in life, we should be pushing in with more recesses,” she said.
What happens when its too hot to play outside?
The intense heat waves of recent years have raised a new recess issue: What happens when it’s too hot to play outside, where blacktops and equipment can be dangerously hot?
California law requires recess to be held outdoors whenever weather and air quality permit. But it does not define what conditions make outdoor play impermissible, leaving individual schools to make judgment calls.
“Maybe you can’t re-create the basketball court outside, but what could you do? Could you have games or arts or trivia or some interactive something that at least gets kids a real break?” London said.
At Los Angeles Unified, school board member Nick Melvoin said the district has been prioritizing shade structures.
This article is part of The Times’ early childhood education initiative, focusing on the learning and development of California children from birth to age 5. For more information about the initiative and its philanthropic funders, go to latimes.com/earlyed.
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