chool
districts across the nation have scrambled to find a solution to dismal
student performance on standardized tests, trying alternative curriculums,
different teaching methods, new textbooks, better trained teachers,
smaller classes, after-school tutors, Saturday sessions, even longer
school years.
But for the most part, school officials have yet to take a close look
at the physical space where learning takes place - the classroom. Could a
partial solution to the problem be to improve the lighting there?
A California architecture consulting firm thinks so, based on its study
on the effect of classroom lighting on achievement levels. The study by
the Heschong Mahone Group based near Sacramento found that students who
took their lessons in classrooms with more natural light scored up to 25
percent higher on standardized tests than other students in the same
school district.
The study, billed as the first rigorous one of its kind, appears to
confirm what some school designers have asserted based on anecdotal
evidence: children learn better under illumination from skylights or
windows, rather than light bulbs.
The main theories for why this might be the case are that
''daylighting'' enhances learning by boosting the eyesight, mood and/or
health of students and their teachers.
John B. Lyons, an Education Department official who monitors school
construction, was briefed on the study last month and came away impressed.
''It's one of the first studies that shows a clear correlation'' between
daylight and achievement, Lyons said.
Joseph Villani, associate director of the National School Boards
Association, whose membership controls school construction, said the study
focused on the kind of ''human engineering'' issues that school boards
should consider in awarding design contracts. ''It's almost common sense
if you look at what people prefer,'' Villani said. ''Most people prefer to
have some daylight.''
While the Heschong Mahone study is the first to evaluate daylight's
impact on learning, earlier research in Canada found student achievement
gains were ''significantly greater'' in classrooms where artificial
lighting most closely approximated sunlight. The 1991 study conducted for
Alberta's Education Department, subtitled ''A Case of Daylight Robbery,''
examined the impact of different artificial lighting systems on elementary
school pupils' test scores, health and attendance.
The new daylight study, commissioned by the Pacific Gas and Electric
Co., occurs amid a nationwide school building spree to accommodate record
enrollments. School construction spending has reached $20.5 billion this
year.
The study's central finding runs counter to a theory of school design
popular in the 1970s - eliminating classroom windows so that students
would not be distracted.
Test results were analyzed for 21,000 students in Seattle, Fort
Collins, Colo., and Orange County, Calif., areas with divergent weather
patterns. Within each of the three districts, the results of students in
classrooms that let in varying amounts of daylight were compared.
More daylight appeared to have the greatest effect in the Capistrano
district in Orange County. ''We found that students with the most
daylighting in their classrooms progressed 20 percent faster on math tests
and 26 percent [faster] on reading tests in one year than those with the
least,'' the researchers concluded. ''Similarly, students in classrooms
with the largest window areas were found to progress 15 percent faster in
math and 23 percent faster in reading.''
In Seattle and Fort Collins, the impact of daylight was smaller,
raising scores from 7 percent to 18 percent. The study used a
sophisticated statistical method called regression analysis to control for
the social characteristics of students, variations in class size and other
factors known to effect learning.
''We were completely taken aback at the magnitude of these findings ...
I would have been delighted to find a 5 percent effect,'' said Lisa
Heschong, one of the study's authors.
