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Introduction

The manner in which a school building is designed, managed, and maintained sends a message to its occupants and the community beyond, speaking volumes about the value placed on activities transpiring within its walls. The physical properties of a school building are the tangible context within which teaching and learning take place (Willower, 1988). Students, teachers, parents, and community members come to understand the nature and importance of these primary school functions through their physical representations. When learning takes place in inadequate facilities, occupants fail to perceive a clear focus on academics. The learning environment is less likely to be conceived of as orderly and serious. Teachers are less likely to demonstrate enthusiasm for their jobs and desire to go the extra mile to support student learning. And where school buildings are shabby and poorly maintained, the community is less likely to derive satisfaction from engagement in support of the teaching and learning process (Uline & Tschannen-Moran, in press). As we work to influence the physical environment of a school practically and artfully on behalf of these primary functions, we increase the likelihood that occupants will derive meaning and purpose from the places where teaching and learning take place day to day.

A recent national report, chronicling a decade of public school construction in the United States (Building Education Success Together, 2006), described the scale, scope, and distribution of this recent school building investment. Over the past ten years, public school districts in the United States built more than 12, 000 new schools and completed more than 130,000 renovations and other improvement projects, spending more than $304 billion in capital expenditures (Building Education Success Together, 2006). Along with a lack of access to rigorous curriculum and highly-qualified teachers, students in poorly resourced districts received the smallest share of this investment in adequate facilities (Building Education Success Together, 2006).

Arsen and Davis (2006) confirmed these findings in a research study that calculated capital stock, and unmet capital investment need, of districts in Michigan. They applied new methods for measuring the existing capital stock of public schools, defining adequacy and estimating the cost of bringing existing school facilities up to an adequate standard. Michigan is one of the few states that provides no state aid to local districts for the construction of capital facilities. Findings indicate that under-resourced districts continue to have the greatest need, even as they pay the highest tax rates. Together these studies help to refine and target earlier estimates of need, confirming that many of the nation’s most challenged school districts continue to “making do” with poor quality buildings (Mead, 2005, p.1). Even as evidence mounts regarding the detrimental effects these poor conditions have on students and teachers, many school district leaders struggle to convince policy makers and of the need to invest resources in replacing and/or renovating inadequate school facilities. It appears many remain unconvinced about the seriousness of the problem.

As we confront the challenges of educational accountability and standards-based reform, assuming responsibility for educating all students to high levels of achievement, we face fundamental issues of equity across schools and school districts. In our efforts to ensure that all students have access to a rigorous curriculum and highly-qualified teachers, we must also face the condition of the physical environment within which teachers teach and students learn. A growing body of research provides evidence of a link between school building quality and student achievement.

The National Center for the Twenty-first Century Schoolhouse maintains the School Facility Planning Model as an online support to the planning, designing, and constructing of learner-centered school facilities. The model intends to inform the work of planners, designers, and educators as they seek to create school facilities that are:

• Learner-centered, thus, meeting the needs of all learners who will occupy the facility,
• Supportive of the educational plan and reflective of best practices in curriculum and instruction and thus capable of enhancing teaching and learning.
• Representative of and responsive to the communities where they are located.

* According to recent national estimates, twenty-one percent of U.S. schools are more than fifty years old and another fifty percent are at least thirty years old, requiring a total of $127 billion dollars in new construction and retro-fitting (Office of Education Research and Improvement, 2000). A National Education Association (NEA) study placed the need at more than double these estimates, bringing the cost of modernizing America’s schools to $268 billion. Add to this $52 billion for technology needs and the total surges to $322 billion (National Education Association, 2000).

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