Energy Smart Schools: Opportunities to Save Money, Save Energy and Improve Student Performance A Congressional Briefing

Congressman Udall, members of the Committee on Science, members of the audience, ladies and gentlemen, I am glad to be here with you today. I am here to discuss the state of empirical research on the impact of educational facilities on student behavior, attitudes and performance. What we know comes from research from a broad array of disciplines ranging from social and environmental psychology, education, architecture and human-factors engineering. What is the connection between school buildings and education? Is it one of simply housing children and teachers who will get on with their work independent of the condition and character of the buildings they inhabit? Or is the connection more intimate in that sound sustainable buildings designed in particular ways will aid the goals of education ñ both student social development and academic achievement? I will argue that school buildings are of critical importance to the teaching and learning process. I will review a selected number of excellent empirical studies conducted over the past 30 years that have shown an explicit relationship between physical characteristics of school buildings and educational outcomes. Historically, the assumption has been that as long as the basic physical requirements of the school building are met -minimum standards for classroom size, acoustics, lighting, heating and air conditioning in the child's learning depends in large part on pedagogical, psychological and social variables. I will argue that buildings are much more than preliminary requirements for the learning process. I and others in the research community take the view that the factors responsible for student achievement are ecological in they act together as a whole in shaping the context within which learning takes place. The physical setting -the school building ñ is an undeniably integral part of this ecological context for learning. There is now considerable empirical support for the argument that a variety of sustainable design characteristics that can have a significant influence on student behavior and academic achievement. Physical and environmental conditions that I will discuss today include full-spectrum and natural lighting, the reduction of noise through proper location and siting of schools, optimal thermal conditions, sick buildings and indoor air quality, school size and class size and embedding schools within their communities.