Facility managers that lead an effort to upgrade their school’s HVAC system can help students miss less school, get into less trouble and perform better on standardized math tests, researchers at the State University of New York at Albany suggest.
Attendance improved by 2% and suspension rates dropped by 7% in K-12 schools after they improved their heating and ventilation systems, researchers say in a paper, “The Effects of School Building HVAC System Conditions on Student Academic and Behavioral Outcomes.”
Math outcomes improved, too, by 4% after the heating system was replaced and by 3% after the cooling system was replaced. There was a similar improvement in math scores when the heating system was improved.
“We conclude that investments made now to improve school HVAC systems can benefit not only student comfort and well-being, but also enhance educational opportunity,” say the researchers, Lucy Sorensen, Moontae Hwang and Marzuka Ahmad Radia of the State University of New York at Albany.
The researchers say the improvement in absentee levels likely stems from cleaner air flowing through the system. “Improvements in school ventilation system conditions could reduce the spread of infectious diseases … thereby decreasing missed days of school due to sickness,” they said.
The improvement in math performance likely stems from more comfortable room temperatures, which helps aid focus, but it also likely plays a role in fewer suspensions. The researchers cite other research that finds criminal behavior goes down as temperatures improve.
“More comfortable temperatures could help to prevent student misbehavior, given the well-known link between, for instance, heat and criminal behavior,” they said.
For their findings, the researchers looked at data over multiple years from a building condition survey conducted by the New York State Education Department. The percentage changes in performance are to a standard deviation. The findings were published in November and are available from Brown University’s Annenberg Institute.
