Jan 29, 2020

How to Design Learning Spaces

It will come as no surprise that we are not effectively educating our K-12 students to be successful in post-secondary education and beyond. It is devastating to report that the first students to spend their entire elementary and secondary schooling engaged with Common Core are the worst prepared for college in 15 years†. The argument can and should be made that the reason students are not finding success beyond high school is that they are not prepared with the skills necessary to thrive in the world outside of school: Enterprise Skills.

Enterprise skills have been identified and called many names: soft skills, transversal skills, career readiness skills, power skills, employability competencies, market value assets, and much more. These are skills that are transferrable across multiple industries, and across multiple “career stops” that the common graduate is likely to experience in the 21st century.

Missouri Innovation Campus, Gould Evans, DLR Group, McCown Gordon Construction, Lee’s Summit MO

Think of your day-to-day life as an adult in the workforce. Did you have to take a spelling test or did you have to carry yourself in a confident manner as you spoke in front of a group for a presentation? Schools have the unenviable task of meeting accreditation standards, mandated heavily by policy makers, state education officials, and union leaders. As a result, schools are caught up in priming students for academic standards, while disregarding mastery of the skills that employers are placing as top priority in their hiring and advancement efforts.
Beginning in 2014, Gould Evans Architecture began compiling data from multiple research projects from the world of work — surveys of thousands of companies around the globe — scanning for similarities among the findings to create a comprehensive visual representation of what students need according to employers. This research is used to emphasize the importance of change and to influence minds of education stakeholders to design spaces that support success beyond increasing test scores. Imagine a world where all schools prioritize complex problem solving, creativity, grit, cognitive flexibility, and expert communications. That is the world Gould Evans envisions, and shares their work freely to support others to move forward, disrupt the status quo, and advance our outdated educational system.†

But how do you design educational spaces that align with these competencies? First, we have to understand who we’re educating now and who is to come. Millennials have come and gone. We now have schools filled with Gen Z. A very different generation, they are pragmatic, social justice-minded, independent, entrepreneurial, and ready to put in the effort to gain success. True digital natives, these students (currently aged 9-22) were born during the digital revolution and new technology comes naturally to them. Children of Gen X, they are passionate about preserving the environment and self-motivated.

Michael Robinson Photography Lawrence High School, Lawrence, KS

Next on deck is Gen Alpha (aged not yet born-8). A lot of conjecture is necessary to describe a generation before they are even with us, but we do know that these people will be competing directly with Artificial Intelligence for jobs. Careers with anything considered rote, repetitive, or memorized will be passed along to a non-human workforce. What will be necessary to compete is creativity, strategy, and innovation.
Neuroscientist and A.I. expert, Dr. Vivienne Ming, argued in her keynote at the RethinkED conference, “If it’s something we have already done, we will be able to teach a robot how to do it in the next 30-40 years. But what robots cannot do is come up with something that has never been done before. That’s what we need to be teaching children to do.” Cultivating and cherishing that inventiveness we lose in childhood will be imperative for individuals to succeed in the future economy.
To support the development of enterprise skills, learning spaces need to be intentionally designed to put students into the types of roles and experiences that naturally foster these skills. They need to look and operate more like the creative workplaces of today. They need to include meeting spaces for small groups, large groups, collaborative spaces, individual workspaces, and learning neighborhoods. They need to allow students to self-direct, work at variable paces, and experience authentic projects, presented to authentic audiences. They need to expose students to what work really looks like through experiential learning opportunities. They need to support the natural variabilities among learners where each student can flourish and bloom in their own strengths, just like employees do in a business. And they must offer choice and student agency, shifting away from one-directional learning, to fostering intrinsic motivation, curiosity, and creativity.
Our students today are vastly underprepared for the world beyond 12th grade†. By prioritizing enterprise skills, students stand a much higher likelihood of finding success in post-secondary education and the world of work, whether working for a company, or growing into successful entrepreneurs in the Gig Economy. It’s time to take a hard look at what today’s companies in the global economy are demanding of its workforce, and put a full-court press on designing the learning environments that will help students and educators keep these critical skills at the forefront of every day learning.
For more information on current research, case studies, and school design, please visit www.gouldevanseducation.com or contact laine.eichenalub@gouldevans.com

EDspaces 2019 Breaks Attendance Records

Attendee registration at EDspaces 2019 in Milwaukee, WI, was up 16% over the prior year as school and college decision makers and influencers gathered to collaborate on building the best learning environments. Attendees dove deeply into current challenges as they worked to transform education giving all students the chance to succeed through a variety of educational offerings including plenary sessions, interactive classroom designs, and tours.

A total of 168 exhibitors in 603 10′ x 10′ spaces with many of them donating thousands of pounds and a wide variety of classroom items. Donated goods were collected by representatives from the Brown Deer School District and distributed to schools in Milwaukee.

“For 24 years, EDspaces exhibitors have contributed truck-loads of innovative classroom to local communities. This year it will be one of the largest due to major growth in the past four years of the event. We’re looking forward to an even greater contribution in 2020, when we take EDspaces to Charlotte, North Carolina,” says Jim McGarry, EDmarket President and CEO.

Participating exhibitors donated items to ensure local schools are outfitted with brand new products including furniture, seating, desks, USB embedded furniture, and more, giving the donated product(s) from their booths, interactive classrooms, and displays at the conference’s conclusion.

EDspaces classrooms serve as vehicles for experimentation, with sessions taking place in classrooms designed by top architects, designers, and space planners. This provides attendees first-hand experience of modern pedagogical approaches in planning, design, and products and are a unique extension of learning for participants. It is the only event featuring six innovative classroom designs, inspiring attendees and exemplifying the future of educational facilities. Each is developed to accommodate a wide variety of presentations, demonstrating learning areas for students of various ages, as well as a comfortable space for adult learners.

Other program elements included a pre-conference Learning Lab, STEM Innovation Tour on Tuesday that kicked off the event. The lab explored how school districts of diverse backgrounds promote STEM and STEAM learner-centered education in spaces where students experiment, make, hack, and learn as they transform ideas into products and solutions.

Visionary keynoter Tony Wagner, a globally-recognized voice in education and author of Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for The Innovation Era presented at the plenary session. He discussed why innovation is today’s most essential real-world skill, and one that can ensure this generation’s economic future.

Expeditionary learning occurred on three distinct tours, two focused on the K-12 environment and one showcasing higher education spaces, with educationally-rich site visits featuring sustainability, creative design, and innovative interiors. Local sites included the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Sciences and the Kenwood Interdisciplinary Research Complex (KIRC), as well as Brown Deer Middle/High School, Franklin High School, and more. Every tour included an educational component in a variety of learning environments, and each qualifies for AIA LU/HSW credit.

Mark your calendars for EDspaces 2020: November 11-13 in Charlotte, NC. www.ed-spaces.com

How Buildings Teach Kindness

Neuroscience data shows that social emotional learning and relationship building is the core to healthy and happy learning for all generations. Research from the neurosciences has greatly improved our understanding of how architecture shapes behavior, how multisensory experiences create meaning essential for learning, and how architectural space and form express emotions that can enhance or impede social interaction.

Connor Steinkamp Photography Laraway School by Legat Architects

Educator and author Patricia Wolfe discusses how the brain encodes and stores information and why meaning is essential for social emotional learning. Because a building is multi-sensory in its perception, involving all of our senses over a temporal span through our movements within and around three-dimensional space, scholar and architect Harry Mallgrave describes architecture as an embodied experience in which we perceive, feel and sense. This experience engages neural mechanisms creating the embodied simulation of materials, forms, spatial relationships, sounds, smells, tactile qualities, scales, textures, patterns, and atmosphere that impact social emotional learning.

Linking neuroscience and architecture, we will identify the precepts of social emotional learning in and explore how early learners and elderly interactions benefit both age groups promoting brain growth. Experiential learning and environmental education examples that have the potential to engage neural mechanisms to create architectural embodiment will be considered in ways to demonstrate how buildings can teach kindness. Essential to this social emotional learning is that we “feel” or project ourselves emotionally into the actions of other people and empathize with the forms of our built environment.

District 59 Early Learning Center by Legat Architects

As architects, we observe that buildings can teach and be part of the curriculum inspiring learning across generations, that the environment can influence the way we feel, think, and learn. So how do buildings teach kindness? What does kindness look like in architectural space?

The built environment embodies the connection between space, time, and pedagogy. We will present a consideration of five attributes of an architecture that teaches:

Implications of architecture and neuroscience for design include opportunities to create and evoke the following five topics:

1. Embodied Simulation Neuroscientific evidence supports the relationship between the motor system, the body, and the perception of space, objects, and the actions of others. Architecture of embodied simulation constitutes a basic characteristic or our brain and makes possible our rich and diversified experiences of space, objects, other individuals, and our capacity to empathize with them.

2. Multisensory Experiences Memory is what enables us to learn by experience and our starting point in understanding learning and memory is sensory perception. Everything in our memory begins as a sensory input from the environment. All sensory input arrives simultaneously! Perception is the meaning we attach to information as it is received through the senses. Architecture that engages multi-sensory experiences will be most embedded and therefore most remembered.

3. Spatial Ambiguity Perceptual richness can be produced by a continually changing sensory experience created in architecture. Spatial conditions in design with varying levels of ambiguity and tension create a neurological event open to multiple interpretations. Spaces that bleed into one another, forming a public and private overlap, or half-inside, half-outside interstitial space, are examples of spatial conditions that invite an ambiguity of relationships. (Image 8)

4. Movement and Form The fact that architecture requires movement around and through combinations of form presents a very different experience of form than other arts as we do not perceive a building in static manner. Through eye-tracking devices, we learn that most people look at the same formal features of a building or street scene, often in the same sequence. Repeating lines in collinear, curvilinear, parallel and radial patterns in human-made designs benefit detection facilitated by tapping into the highly organized neuronal system.

5. Biophilia and Atmosphere The qualities that are embedded within a space and the sensorial qualities that a space emits are referred to as “atmosphere.” Atmospheric attributes in architectural design, such as light, sound, color, wind, water, matter, vegetation, and landscapes constitute ways we can better create the human-nature connection. There have been measured physiological and neurological effects of nature and “atmosphere” on the human body and the brain. Biophilia is a term used to explain how humans are innately drawn and biologically encoded to be attracted to natural settings and elements (be it direct, indirect, or symbolic). This has proven instrumental in enhancing human physical, emotional, and intellectual well-being.
Our authors are open to discussing further the intersections of Neuroscience and Architecture and are currently working on refining pre and post occupancy studies to understand success and failure in architecture design related to social emotional learning. If you have comments and examples that you would like to contribute to this study, please contact Robin Randall at rrandall@legat.com. We recognize that we are only touching the tip of the iceberg of this topic and are encouraged with our research. We hope to rationalize the value of design to improve learning and prove it!

Dec 11, 2019

Meeting the Needs of All Students Through Smart Learning Space Design

By Christina Counts and Cecilia Cruse

Educators know their students have very diverse needs, and most are well versed in designing learning experiences that are universally inclusive. But while schools have become fairly adept at differentiating instruction to meet all students’ needs, the critical role that learning space design plays is often overlooked.

Why is this important? Data suggest that a significant number of students have special learning needs that must be addressed for them to thrive in the classroom. During the 2017-18 school year, 14 percent of students— or 7 million—had special needs, federal data show, and one in nine children under the age of 18 received special education services. The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control show that one in 59 children has been identified with autism spectrum disorder—a number that continues to rise.

Many students on the autism spectrum have sensory processing issues and are overly sensitive to touch, lights, and sounds. Sensory processing challenges may coexist in students with other special needs such as those with ADHD who tend towards sensory seeking behaviors. These conditions make it all the more challenging for students to find their place in the physical classroom.

More than half of students with disabilities spend the majority of their days in general education classrooms. With the increase in students who have special needs comes the imperative for schools to meet these unique needs — not just academically but also physically, through smart learning space design.

How a classroom is designed can have a big effect on how well all students — but especially those with special needs—are able to focus and learn in that environment. Here are five elements of learning space design that teachers and administrators should pay attention to as they seek to meet the needs of all learners.

Choice

Choice is important in the classroom, because it gives students ownership of their learning. Though it seems mundane, something as simple as choice in seating style accommodates different learning preferences for all students — not just those with special needs — and makes classrooms more inclusive.

Classrooms and other learning spaces that include multiple seating options, such as standing desks, clusters for small-group learning, soft seating, and traditional desks and chairs, help students make choices to support how they learn best.

Offering a variety of easily moveable seating choices also ensures that students with different preferences can still work together: A student who prefers a standing desk can work in a group with a student who learns best sitting in a beanbag chair, for instance.

These flexible, collaborative learning spaces promote responsible decision-making and build confidence in students. When students have the freedom to make learning decisions for themselves, they feel less isolated.

Movement

All students need to move throughout the school day, and those with sensory processing challenges or difficulty self-regulating are apt to move more frequently. Physical spaces designed for all learners should accommodate the need to move, and research supports the idea that frequent movement and fidgeting might actually help students with ADHD learn better.

“Fidget” seating and “wobble” stools allow for movement by letting students twist, rock, or move in other ways without disrupting the physical flow of a classroom. Students who habitually tip their chairs back may be seeking extra vestibular or movement input for self-regulation to help maintain focus and attention. Seating that rocks and allows for movement addresses this need, while also keeping students safe and preventing falls.

Quiet, calming spaces

More and more school leaders recognize the importance of offering quiet spaces or “chill zones” —separate areas of the classroom that are available to students who need private moments. These spaces allow teachers to give students a “time in” to calm down without excluding them from the classroom.

These quiet spaces, which can also be located in a separate room, offer gentle lighting and sound-absorbing or sound-blocking qualities, along with furniture that helps define spatial boundaries (such as chairs with higher backs and sides) to help children feel secure in their physical space. Sensory solutions that offer deep touch pressure input such as a weighted lap pad or bean bag chair may help promote self- regulation for calming and organizing.

Visual or auditory input for calming is another common “chill zone” feature. Nature sounds, including water-related noises such as ocean waves or a babbling brook, work well in these spaces. Sensory supports such as bubble tubes are great for quiet spaces because they give students something soothing to watch, which may help promote a more calming, positive vibe.

Lighting

Because students with sensory challenges or other special needs are often sensitive to lighting, fluorescent lights can inhibit their ability to focus and present a huge challenge. Classroom lighting should come equipped with a dimmer switch and the ability for teachers to darken the room, and specially designed lights can help educators accommodate sensitivity to fluorescent lighting. Green Furniture Concept’s Leaf Lamp series is one such light, pulling double duty to offer ambient lighting along with sound-absorbing qualities found in the materials and shape of the leaves.

In one school, a nonverbal student on the autism spectrum had trouble reading his visual input communication device because fluorescent lighting in the classroom cast a glare on the laminated page of images. Teachers thought the student had cognitive issues that prevented him from using the device, until one observed the student blinking very quickly as he tried to get a good look. His special education team realized the classroom’s fluorescent lighting made it difficult for him to see the laminated page.

This student began wearing a visor to counteract the glare from the lights, and educators printed images on a blue sheet of paper instead of a white sheet to help with visibility. He was actively using the communication device within a few weeks after those changes occurred.

Acoustics

Most new schools or schools undergoing extensive renovations include built-in auditory amplification, but acoustics can present a challenge in many older buildings. Classroom amplification systems are helpful for students with auditory processing disorders, such as those who have trouble filtering out background noise from computers, the hallway, or even other students.

Large open spaces, such as those found in cafeterias or gymnasiums, are noisier — but some manufacturers are designing aesthetically pleasing, sound-absorbing panels, often in the shape of school mascots, to quell raucous noise. Classrooms, sensory rooms, and media centers can offer “noise pods,” such as this sensory pod from Nook, which helps block noise and prevent a sensory overload. These pods give students with sensory issues a quiet and calm space in which they can feel secure.

Thinking beyond curriculum

Educators receive extensive training in how to differentiate instruction for students. But what’s often overlooked is training in how to differentiate the physical space for students, including those with special needs. We must ensure there are enough choices in educational spaces to help us meet the needs of every learner. We can do this by extending those same thoughts about pedagogy and curriculum to the physical spaces where students learn each day.

Dr. Christina Counts is Director of Design and Development for School Specialty, and Cecilia Cruse, MS, OTR/L, is an OT and Subject Matter Expert in Abilitations for the Special Needs Division of the company. Together, they have more than four decades of experience in designing learning spaces that meet the needs of all learners.

Planning the Heart of a Community: The City of Falls Church, Virginia’s New Public High School

Photo credit: Stantec

by Deisy Brangman, Senior Project Manager, Brailsford & Dunlavey and Dr. Peter Noonan, Superintendent, Falls Church City Public Schools

“The Little City” of Falls Church, Virginia, is currently making a once-in-a-lifetime investment: It is building a new high school that will meet the current and future vision for its top-performing school and district. That vision includes flexibility for current and future educational programming, enrollment growth, and continued extensive use by the community.

With any major capital improvement, a district has to find just the right balance of community engagement. The City of Falls Church, with a very civically involved population of over 14,000 residents in just 2.2 square miles, stepped up to the challenge. A process involving transparent and collaborative community engagement, as well as creative financing and real estate transactions, has resulted in the new Heart of the Community.

The City of Falls Church, Virginia, with history dating back to the 1600s, is known for its urban village community, nationally ranked K–12 International Baccalaureate (IB) public school system, environmental activism, endless community activities, and close proximity to Washington, DC (9 miles from City Hall to the White House).

As one of the top-ranked high schools in Virginia (#12) and nationally (#515) by U.S News & World Report, George Mason High School has experienced steady enrollment growth since its opening in 1952, now serving over 800 students and with projections estimating up to 1,500 students in the next 20–30 years. The aging facility, and city’s only high school, no longer met the needs of the school’s progressive and advanced academic program — the way students today learn and work together, appropriate security features to ensure the safety of the students, and efficient use by community groups. Falls Church City Public Schools (FCCPS) needed a contemporary, appropriately sized high school. But how could this little city afford such a major investment, in an area where new high school construction costs were averaging over $100M?

In 2013, with extensive community engagement and support, the city took the first step toward the construction of a new, larger high school by negotiating full ownership and control of the land from adjacent Fairfax County.

From 2014–2016, to facilitate financial and master planning of the campus, FCCPS and the city’s General Government established a Joint Campus Process Planning Group, Campus Joint Steering Committee, and communications plan. Keeping the school and broader city community informed was a priority. With the support of multiple partners — Urban Land Institute, LINK Strategic Partners, and Perkins Eastman — the city explored various options to achieve a modern, larger high school. That included jointly developing the property — the private development of 10 acres and the construction of a new high school building on the remaining 24 acres, with the existing middle school. In 2014, the Urban Land Institute Technical Assistance Panel (ULI TAP) analyzed and presented development options. This led to FCCPS engagement to develop the new Shared Vision for the Schools, with one of the largest community audiences to date.

In late 2016, it was determined that joint development would not provide the results the community desired, and the two projects were decoupled. FCCPS initiated design and economic feasibility efforts, leading to the identification of three options by early 2017: partial new, renovation/addition, and build new.

Continuing with the success of the established communications plan, and with the goal of defining the concept vision and financial plan, FCCPS and the General Government conducted regular meetings, surveys, and Q&A sessions to obtain input from the community, responding publicly to all inquiries. Utilizing the listserv born from these engagements and the PTA’s support in spreading the word, the broad community was kept informed. Through this effort, the city secured community support for the “build new” option that led to an overwhelming approval in late 2017 of a $120M Bond Referendum for the construction of the future high school.

This was just the beginning. Immediately following the Bond Referendum approval, FCCPS issued an RFP for Design-Build Concept Proposals. In alignment with the transparent community engagement effort, Evaluation Committees representing various community stakeholder groups were established. FCCPS leadership knew how important the community was, and was going to be, in the process of developing the site for the new high school. A broad group of engaged and thoughtful community members was key to ensuring deep ownership of the project going forward.

During this process, FCCPS recognized that the school project was a bigger effort than it had the in-house capacity or expertise to manage, so in early 2018 it issued an RFP for an Owner’s Representative. Through the established selection committee process, it ultimately hired Brailsford & Dunlavey (B&D) (supported by Hanscomb Consulting) to advise and manage the high school project’s procurement, programming, design, construction, and community engagement.

With B&D on board, FCCPS was now full steam ahead. The new owner team collaborated to confirm the vision, refine the project’s communications plan, and keep the community up to date during the Request for Detailed Proposals process. Within just a few months, the Design-Build team of Gilbane / Stantec / Quinn Evans Architects was selected.

With the goal of breaking ground by summer 2019, FCCPS and B&D communications teams used various platforms to reach out to the school and broader city community to recruit participation for Design Advisory Subcommittees for the new high school’s initial design phase. The project team engaged in open discussions with school administration/teachers, the community, and newly formed subcommittees, utilizing idea/comment “parking lots” and rubrics. The team created a project email address, where any projected-related inquiries could also be submitted. All feedback, questions, and work session work-products were posted to the project website. Every item was addressed and responded to. One of the key elements of success for the effort was being responsive and adjusting to what worked and what didn’t.

Throughout the design phase, FCCPS and the city’s General Government continued monthly Sunday Series community meetings that provided updates on the school and economic development projects. Concurrently, B&D’s communications team held student focus group sessions, and the entire project team met regularly with school staff and city agencies. This ensured all end users provided insight and that the design met the vision and requirements of FCCPS, city building agencies, and the community.

After over 200 meetings (and counting), the regular, collaborative, and transparent communications process led to a forward-looking design for the new school. It would be a sustainable campus with contemporary educational concepts, including collaboration areas in a variety of sizes, maker spaces, fabrication labs, variable intensity learning labs, flexible-use learning studios, appropriately sized performing arts and athletic facilities, provisions for use of the school by community groups (e.g., band, theatre, recreation, civic meetings, weekend school), sustainability, and a way to recognize the history, alumni, and supporters of the school.

Additionally, the incorporation of system and building zones will allow for the shared or partial use of the facility while maintaining safety, security, and energy efficiency. Another feature: an innovative structural grid accommodates future changes in programming and enrollment and provides an open and visibly connected learning environment that encourages collaboration among all of its users. Finally, the building is designed to achieve LEED® Gold certification and Net Zero Energy through the use of geothermal wells, photovoltaic panels, and energy-efficient MEP systems. Truly the new Heart of the Community.

The story of the new George Mason High School is a complex, but carefully planned puzzle. Ultimately, though, establishing and following through with a clear, transparent community engagement plan has been and continues to be the key to a successful project. Stay tuned for updates when we open in 2021!

Dr. Peter Noonan serves as the Superintendent of Falls Church City Public Schools. He began his career as a special education teacher in New Mexico, and previously worked with Fairfax City and Fairfax County Public School systems as Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent, principal, and assistant principal.

Ms. Deisy Brangman serves as a Senior Project Manager for Brailsford & Dunlavey. In this role, she has led multiple project and program management teams overseeing public school district capital project portfolios totaling over $4B in Washington, DC; Alexandria City, VA; Falls Church City, VA; and Prince George’s County, MD.

Dec 10, 2019

New Schools, Student Achievement, and Neighborhood Improvements: Los Angeles Unified’s $10 Billion Investment

Carlos Santana Charter Arts School, North Hills, CA. Photo courtesy of HED.

By Julien Lafortune

Since 1997, voters in Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) have approved a series of bonds dedicating over $27 billion in local and state funding to the construction, expansion, and renovation of hundreds of school facilities. This was one of largest public infrastructure programs in the United States since the construction of the interstate highway system. Through this bond program, LAUSD constructed 131 new schools at a cost of over $10 billion. My colleague, David Schönholzer, and I study these new school openings in Los Angeles to provide new evidence on the effects of improving school infrastructure on students and neighborhoods (Disclaimer: this research is from an unpublished working paper that is currently going through the peer review process).[1]

These new school facilities served a dual purpose. LAUSD schools were notoriously overcrowded prior to the new constructions. Over half of students attended school on a year-round, multi-track calendar meant to allow existing facilities to reach 133% or even 150% of intended capacity. Remarkably, by 2016-17 after the completion of the construction program, there was only one school remaining on such a calendar.

Many schools in LAUSD were also in exceptionally poor condition after decades of neglect and overcrowding. Stories of broken and missing equipment, non-functioning restrooms, and inadequate climate control were common. A 1999 review of facilities practices in LAUSD and other California districts noted that the district’s school buildings were “overcrowded, uninspiring, and unhealthy”.[2] New school constructions alleviated these issues for many students, and additional funding for school modernization generated improvements in the school environment for many students attending school in existing facilities.

Despite the importance of school spaces to learning, there is little agreement in the academic literature over the link between spending on school infrastructure and improvements in student outcomes. Some studies have found positive associations while many others have failed to find such connections. Constructing new school buildings is often a multi-year project, affects only a subset of students in a district, and leads to changes in the school environments that affect students in ways that may not be immediately measurable. For these reasons, much of the prior work is very limited in its ability to determine the causal effects of new school buildings.

In contrast, the enormous scale of the LAUSD program allows us to use the new school openings as a “natural experiment” to tease out the effects of new school openings on students, schools, and neighborhoods. We use the records for millions of students who attended school in LAUSD between 2002 and 2012 and study how test scores, course grades, and attendance rates changed after students switched into newly constructed schools in their neighborhoods. We also use real estate sales records from hundreds of thousands of properties to examine how neighborhood house prices respond to nearby new school openings.

Test scores improve after multiple years of exposure to new school facilities

We find that students who attended new school buildings saw notable improvements in math test scores and modest improvements in English test scores. These improvements were gradual, and accumulated with each additional year a student spent in a new school building. In 2002, just as the first new schools were beginning to open, students in LAUSD were far below their grade-level peers in California in both English and Math. Our findings imply that attending a newly constructed school for four or more years closes 45% of the math achievement gap and 18% of the English achievement gap between LAUSD students and the California average.

Average annual attendance is higher at new school facilities

In addition, students at new schools attended an average of four more days per academic year than they had been previously. Elementary school teachers at new schools also reported slightly higher levels of student effort on student report cards. This suggests that improved student motivation is behind at least some of the positive effects we find.

We rule out that these improvements are coming from better teachers, principals, or peers. We also find students who switched from older buildings or ones with a greater reliance on portables saw larger gains than those students whose prior schools were in better physical condition. Overall, we conclude that the improvements are primarily the result of better school buildings, with reductions in overcrowding also an important factor. We unfortunately lacked consistent data on the features of these schools, meaning we could not conclusively determine which specific features of the new buildings were most effective at improving student learning.

Turning to the housing market, we find that neighborhood house prices increase by around 6% following a new school opening. Prices only increase after the new school is completed – and only in the new school catchment areas – providing compelling evidence that the new schools are highly valued by parents and other local residents. Not all improvements from new school buildings translate into changes in test scores or attendance, but the increases in house prices reflect some of these more general improvements in the school environment and in the broader neighborhood. We estimate that the valuation of these improvements was so large that for each dollar of expenditures the district undertook it generated around 1.6 dollars in return – a more than worthwhile investment.

Our hope is that future research is able to build off these findings to study exactly why better school buildings lead to student success – and what specific aspects of school buildings are most effective at delivering these. Nationally, millions of students attend schools that are in “poor” condition, and estimates of the funding required to address these deficiencies are often in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The improvements generated from LAUSD’s school infrastructure program provide powerful new evidence that addressing these deficiencies in our school infrastructure could lead to worthwhile improvements in student learning, even taking into account the large upfront costs of these investments.

Julien Lafortune is a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, where he specializes in K–12 education. His primary areas of focus include education finance, school capital funding policy, and educational tracking and stratification. He has published research on the impacts of school finance reforms on student achievement in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

[1] Lafortune, Julien M., and David Schönholzer. “Measuring the Efficacy and Efficiency of School Facility Expenditures”. Working paper, 2019.

[2] Terzian, Richard R. “Recommendations for Improving the School Facility Program in Los Angeles”. Little Hoover Commission, 1999.

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