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As another school year gets underway, several states are considering whether to give students more time for recess, and some have already expanded the role of unstructured play in a child’s school day. 

The momentum around recess has been building for years, with experts raising awareness about the importance of preserving time for daily play as well as grassroots efforts from parents across the country. 

Earlier this year, the American Academy of Pediatrics added to the chorus by publishing an updated policy statement about the “crucial role” of recess. 

“Our recommendation is whatever time you have allocated in the day for recess occurs rain or shine, snow or no snow, heatwave or not,” said Cathy Ramstetter, co-author of the AAP policy statement and author of the book “Why Recess Matters: The Importance of Unstructured Play and How to Fight For it,” which came out in August. 

“This is time that should not be taken away for academics or for behavioral problems,” she added, and occurs “preferably more than once per day.”

In other words, the AAP is advising that schools hold recess almost without exception — and repeatedly throughout the day, if possible. It sounds like a proposal written by kids themselves, but in fact it is supported by peer-reviewed research studies. 

And many states are taking notice. Tennessee, California, Pennsylvania and Washington are among the states that have set higher minimum requirements for recess in the last few years. Advocates in a slew of other states are working toward joining them soon. 

Recess was once an integral part of the American school experience, as it was and remains in most every other country in the world, said Ramstetter. However, in recent decades, as the United States became more focused on standardized test scores, recess was sidelined in favor of more instructional time, noted Debbie Rhea, a professor in kinesiology at Texas Christian University and director of the LiiNK project, a researched-based intervention for schools characterized by four 15-minute recess breaks and a character development lesson daily.

Rhea took a sabbatical in Finland in 2012, where she spent time trying to understand why their education system was superior. One thing she noticed was that they were giving kids recess after every hour of academic learning. As she dug in deeper, Rhea learned the Finns actually borrowed this strategy from an approach they had observed in American schools in the 1960s. 

“We quit doing what we were doing because testing became so important,” she said. “We are now sitting [children] down for hours at a time. We’re killing the spirit of our kids.”

“It is the child’s place to play,” she added. “That’s what children are supposed to do.”

What Rhea and other children’s health experts have found is that recess is not a distraction or a break from learning. During periods of unstructured play, children are learning plenty — developing critical social and emotional skills, fine-tuning the connection between their brains and bodies, and engaging with their peers. 

Moreover, research has found that those “breaks” for self-directed play give children more capacity to return to academic instruction and better absorb it. 

“It’s rebooting their brain so they can come back to content and get back on task quickly,” Rhea said of the unstructured play time that defines recess. 

It may also be incredibly motivating for children. Erin Birkam, the parent of two children in Clarksville, Tennessee, said her younger son, now in first grade, views each of his two daily recess breaks as a reward for focusing during academic learning. 

“If he knows he has two 20-minute blocks, he can get through the academic part because he has that to look forward to,” Birkam said, noting it helps that one break is in the morning and the other in the afternoon. 

Birkam’s older son, now in middle school, didn’t get as much time for recess when he was in elementary school, and he only got one period per day. 

The change came only last year, after a band of parents united to change Tennessee state law around recess. 

Kathryn Truman, a mom of four in Clarksville, Tennessee, led the effort. 

Truman’s first child had spent his years leading up to kindergarten playing outside “all day,” she said. She was stunned when she got his schedule for kindergarten and it listed only 20 minutes of daily recess. “I thought, ‘This had to be a mistake. It had to be a joke,’” she said. 

When she realized it was neither, she began going through the traditional channels, trying to spark a change. She talked to the principal. She found other parents who were similarly alarmed by the fact that kindergarteners got just 20 minutes of recess but 120 minutes of reading instruction, as she recalled. (State law, at the time, required a minimum of 15 minutes per day.) They spoke at a school board meeting and met with the superintendent. The district’s solution was to increase elementary school recess allotment to 30 minutes for the next school year. Truman and her counterparts were not satisfied. 

She remembers someone on district staff telling her, “If you want any more, you’d have to change the state law,” then laughing openly at the idea. But it galvanized Truman and other parents in the district. They found like-minded parents across Tennessee, including one mom on the eastern end of the state who said her children were getting only 15 minutes of recess three days a week — and it was right before the buses came for pickup at 3 p.m.

“We didn’t want to just be whiny parents forcing our way on educators and the law,” Truman said. “We wanted it to be a collaborative movement.”

Truman can remember sitting around her kitchen table with other parents, hoping aloud that they could change state law in the next three to five years. But the bill — which initially included 60 minutes of daily recess but was later amended to 40 minutes — got the governor’s signature in May 2025, less than a year later. 

The law, in addition to increasing minimum daily recess time from 15 to 40 minutes, requires that recess be unstructured outdoor play except for cases of extreme weather. Physical education classes don’t count toward recess time, and screen time is not permitted during it. The law also prohibits withholding recess from a child as a form of punishment or discipline. 

Truman achieved much of what she’d set out to do but said she’s “coming back” to push for the full 60 minutes of daily recess, noting it should become the “national standard.”

Once the bill passed in Tennessee, word got around to other states, and parents began getting in touch with Say Yes to Recess, a nonprofit advocacy organization that Truman founded in early 2025 and leads. 

“We didn’t want those parents to have to start at square one like we did,” Truman said. 

A Texas chapter came first, but others quickly followed. Now the group has scaled to more than 20 states across the country.

During the past legislative session, Say Yes to Recess led bills in New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Michigan, Truman said. Only the one in Michigan remains active, but Truman said the other two chapters will “absolutely try again.” 

The 2025-26 school year was the first time Tennessee schools offered students at least 40 minutes of daily recess. It was a big win when, this summer, the state released the results of its standardized test, showing academic gains statewide the same year. 

“I don’t think recess hurt anything,” Truman said. “It didn’t negatively impact anything.”

That’s what children’s health experts like Ramstetter and Rhea have been saying for years: Recess doesn’t come at the expense of academic outcomes. In fact, recess may actually bolster student performance.

“Recess is content,” Rhea said. “They’re learning how to play, how to adapt. [They’re learning] each other’s languages. They do a lot of learning on the playground.”

Ramstetter, the book author who helped write the AAP policy statement, offered a comparison to adults. When adults are learning something new and get stuck, they take a break. “That’s because our brains need that time to consolidate memory and information,” she said, adding that the same thing happens at night when we sleep. This is true for kids and adolescents as well.

Even though plenty of school districts today only provide recess in elementary school, Ramstetter noted that the process she described of memory consolidation “doesn’t stop when you’re 12 or when you’re 10” years old. Again, even adults continue to do it. The AAP supports recess — or unstructured free play of some kind — for all school-aged students, not just the young ones.  

In Tennessee, where the new law only applies to elementary school students, teachers and parents say it’s made a difference. For Birkam’s first grader, recess is the highlight of his day. 

“What he wants to talk about, after school, is recess,” she said. “He wants to talk about the friends he made and what he played.”

If Truman and her allies have their way, more students across the United States will soon be able to return home from school each day saying the same. 

“There’s great movement across the country,” Rhea said, “for more recess.”

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