No response required
The memo says so explicitly. Nothing has to be signed, acknowledged or returned to the department, so a quiet inbox is not evidence that your district decided to skip it.
Arkansas · State guidance
What Arkansas Schools Are Asked to Do About the Presidential Fitness Test
Arkansas is bringing the restored program into schools through a short Department of Education memo rather than a mandate with reporting attached. Here is exactly what the memo asks, where its event list differs from the standards published in May 2026, and how to plan around both.
OrderExecutive Order 25-19
ADE memoLS-26-048
DatedApr 27, 2026
School year2026-27
Where things stand
Arkansas at a glance
Arkansas sits in an unusual middle position: the program is officially on the table for 2026-27, but the ask is soft and nothing is being collected. That combination changes what a PE department should spend its planning time on.
- Instrument
- Governor's Executive Order 25-19
- How it reaches schools
- Arkansas Department of Education memo LS-26-048, dated April 27, 2026
- What it asks
- That schools begin incorporating elements of the Presidential Fitness Test into physical education practices
- School year
- 2026-27
- District response
- None — the memo states that no response is required from school districts
- Reporting
- No reporting requirement stated
- Funding
- None attached
Last reviewed: August 13, 2026
The memo
What the ADE memo actually asks
Executive Order 25-19 reaches Arkansas schools through Department of Education memo LS-26-048, dated April 27, 2026. Its ask, in its own words, is that schools begin incorporating elements of the Presidential Fitness Test into physical education practices for the 2026-27 school year.
The phrase "elements of" is doing real work in that sentence. This is not an instruction to test every student on every event and submit the results; it is an instruction to start folding the program into what your department already does.
Three absences tell you as much as the ask does — and all three are worth knowing before you plan anything.
No reporting requirement
No student-level results are being asked for. That is the single biggest difference from a testing mandate, and it means your records exist to serve your students rather than a submission deadline.
No funding attached
Whatever you run has to work with the gym, the field and the stopwatches you already have. Fortunately both options in every category are low-equipment by design.
The published test
What the published 2026 standards contain
If you are deciding what "elements" means for your department, this is the safest place to start — it is the only description of the program that arrives with numbers attached. Three categories, two options in each, one event per student per category.
Core & Abdominal Strength
Curl-Ups or Plank
Cardiorespiratory Fitness
One Mile Run or 20m Beep Test
Upper Body Strength
Right-Angle Push-Ups or Pull-Ups
Scoring is criterion-referenced. Each age from 6 through 17 and older has a fixed published number for every event, separately for boys and girls, and a student either reaches it or does not. There is no percentile and no top-fifteen-percent cut, so no student's result depends on anyone else's.
The equipment burden is low, which matters when no funding came with the memo: the mile needs a measured course and a stopwatch, the beep test needs a 20-meter indoor lane and an audio track, push-ups need floor space, and only pull-ups need a bar. Pick the option in each category that matches what your building already has.
Practical steps
What to do now
A soft ask still deserves a plan — mostly because a plan is what protects you when the ask stops being soft.
Ask what your district added
The memo requires no response from districts, but a district is free to layer its own expectation on top — a common testing window, a shared spreadsheet, a report to a curriculum director. Ask before assuming there is nothing, and ask in a form you can keep.
Settle reporting before you collect
The state memo sets no reporting requirement. If anyone above you wants student-level numbers anyway, that is a local decision — get it in writing, and get an answer on how long results are kept and who can see them, before the first score is written down.
Write down what "elements" means for you
The memo leaves the interpretation to you, which is a gift until someone asks a question you have not answered. One page is enough: which three events, which grades, a fall baseline and a spring re-test, and what you do with a student who cannot perform an event.
Build from the published standards
The published 2026 standards are the only description of the program that comes with numbers attached, so they are what a station plan should be built from — even where they differ from the event list in the memo.
Requirements can change, and a memo that asks for nothing today can be followed by guidance that asks for something. Confirm current requirements with the Arkansas Department of Education and your district before scheduling, and keep whatever you are told in writing.
Take it further
The guide, the letter, and test day
Everything on this site about the 2026 program is free and needs no account — which is the right price for a memo that came with none.
The full 2026 guideThe published events, the benchmark tables by age, station plans and the legacy-versus-2026 comparison in full.Read the guideJaguar AthleticsThe ITS mobile app conducts the beep-test cadence, the core timers, and the scoring — then prints the certificates. One way to run test day if you would rather not keep the book by hand.See how test day runsParent letter templateUseful precisely because nothing is being reported: it lets you say plainly what is recorded, why, and where it stops.Use the template
The mile is the one event hardware can take off your hands. JagTrax times every finish automatically if you run it as a timed event. See JagTrax