Physical education as a school subject can be characterized as largely void of both consensus and accountability. Until the publication of the national content standards (NASPE, 1995) there was no explicit, shared vision regarding what is important to teach in school programs. There has been a sense that this lack of consensus somehow preserves the right of every teacher in every school to teach what they want to students--a right not granted to teachers in the core academic areas of the school curriculum. The rationale for this approach is that it provides opportunities for good teachers to be creative and to design appropriate curriculum. Instead, it could be argued that the lack of defined outcomes and accountability for their achievement has done nothing but ensure that many school programs accomplish very little. Now, evidence-based educational policy has been embraced in South Carolina and stands as a prime example of what Kohn (2000) identified as "legislature centered" education. The purpose of this study is to report the results of the first statewide data collection on the effectiveness of physical education programs in the high schools of South Carolina. A related purpose is to investigate the relationships among the data that were collected and relationships among school and teacher performance and school and teacher characteristics. (Contains 6 tables.)