Culturally Inclusive and Responsive Curricular Environments (CIRCLE scale)
Category: Student Well-Being
There is growing awareness of the importance of school building environments for student health, well-being, and even educational outcomes. We ask in this study what role school building heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems play in shaping student attendance, behavior, and learning. In particular, we extract information from school building inspection reports and link them to education records for public K-12 schools in New York State, excluding New York City schools, between the 2005-06 and 2018-19 academic years. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that improvements in school HVAC system conditions over time reduce student absences and suspensions and modestly increase student math and reading scores, with achievement effects particularly pronounced in schools serving high proportions of low-income students and students of color and in areas with higher air pollution. Heating and cooling system reconstructions and replacements increase student math achievement but have no effect on other outcomes, a pattern consistent with the fact that most replacements involve already-functioning systems rather than remediating unsatisfactory conditions. We conclude that targeting HVAC investments toward the schools with the greatest need has the potential to benefit not only student comfort and health, but also reduce educational inequality.
Keywords
School buildings, capital, HVAC systems
Education level
Topics
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/8a9q-ec02
