In Philadelphia, news headlines are riddled with school disruptions from aging infrastructure – asbestos, mold abatement and ineffective heating and cooling systems. These issues are rife in many urban districts. A team of researchers from Drexel University and the global design firm Perkins Eastman worked together to uncover the benefits of school modernization in a new study they hope will help educators and administrations build a stronger case for the importance of funding school modernization.
The report, “Addressing a Multi-Billion Dollar Challenge” evaluated more than two dozen schools — both modernized and non-modernized — across the District of Columbia and Baltimore City. The findings suggest that school modernization has a significant positive impact on key educational indicators, including test scores, graduation rates and enrollment over time.
The report also provides design guidelines for how best to spend modernization dollars, as well as tools and guidance for designers and school districts who might want to replicate the research group’s methods. Bruce Levine, JD,clinical professor and director of the Educational Policy Program in Drexel’s School of Education and co-principal investigator, shared some key insights from the data and why the built environment matters when it comes to education.
Why is it important for students to have modernized spaces?
Research has shown that the built environment matters to cognitive, social-emotional and physical development and when we subject our young people to school buildings that are in poor condition and/or lacking assets we know contribute to a better learning environment, we have a negative impact on education outcomes for them and for our education enterprise. Our research provided evidence that modernized schools have significant impacts on Indoor Environmental Quality and Educational Adequacy, both of which relate to the student experience.
Which modernized school factors had the greatest impact on education outcomes?
In our work to identify the impact of modernization on Educational Adequacy, we found that the factors most affected were school presence, building organization, the sense of community in a building, ambiance, and the perceived safety of the building and campus. In addition, our research into the archival data of the two school districts revealed a statistically significant relationship between modernization and school enrollment—a particularly important finding at a time when we are seeing shrinking enrollments and absenteeism across the U.S. and with lower standardized test scores in math and English Language arts over time. We also detected an upward trend in high school graduation rates among students who attended modernized schools, although we could not establish a statistically significant relationship.
Why is it difficult for schools to justify modernization costs and find funding?
One of the reasons we undertook the study is because we knew that advocates for school construction and modernization can use more and better data to support their well-founded arguments for greater school infrastructure investment. In a nation that supposedly views our young people as among our greatest assets, it shouldn’t be as difficult as it evidently is to convince all relevant stakeholders of the value of high-quality school buildings.
What should administrators know about modernization benefits before they pursue updates?
They need to understand that some of the benefits are intangible or indirect—immediate improvements in the usual indicators like standardized test scores and graduation rates may not occur but that doesn’t mean the school’s staff and students, and other stakeholders like parents and community members, aren’t having improved experiences that do have tangible results like greater support for the school, better parent engagement, and fewer issues with teacher retention.
Does the quality of a school’s facilities and design affect the surrounding community?
Yes, although due to Covid’s impact on our data-gathering, our ability to show significant impacts on what we call “community connectivity” was severely constrained. Property values can be affected in a positive way, but a modernized, well-designed school building can also provide facilities for use by community members, provide opportunities for engagement between students, teachers, and community members and, in times of crisis – as we saw during Covid – help provide essential services and be a community anchor.
Having completed this study, what do you see as opportunities for future research?
Our research team would love to have the opportunity to enhance the data by doing a similar study in other urban areas. We’d like to pursue the ambitious idea of developing a “community connectivity” metric to evaluate the impact of a modernized schools outside the four walls, and to see if we can solidify the relationship between modernization and Educational Adequacy.
Personally, one of the most satisfying aspects of this project was the ability to incorporate the talent of faculty and graduate students in the School of Education, the Dornsife School of Public Health, and the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design’s Architecture, Design and Urbanism program into this interdisciplinary project under the banner of the Consortium for Design and Education Outcomes (CDEO) that our late Dean Hammrich agreed to establish. As the lead for CDEO, I am eager to identify more projects that can have real-world implications.
This research was supported by the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows Latrobe Prize and J+J Flooring. Katrina Strulieff, PhD, John Gould, PhD, and Todd Brown, in the School of Education; Felice Le-Scherban, PhD, and Zach Fusfeld, PhD, in the Dornsife School of Public Health and Ulrike Altenmuller-Lewis, in the Westphal College of Media Arts and Design, contributed to this body of research.
Media interested in speaking with Levine should contact Associate Director of News & Media Relations, Emily Storz at els332@drexel.edu or 215.895.2705.
