Sapna Cheryan was quoted in this CityLab article about the effects poor building facilities on the education of students.
When It's Too Cold For School
MIMI KIRK
This week’s cold snap revealed the sorry state of infrastructure in many urban schools on the East Coast. But there’s no quick fix.
As temperatures dropped into the teens in Baltimore this week, the city’s public schools became the focus of national outrage: Images of kids in parkas huddled together for warmth in city classrooms quickly went viral. Sixty public schools—about a third of Baltimore’s system—reported problems with heating, prompting the city to close all schools on Thursday and Friday.
Baltimore has a reputation for poor infrastructure and deprivation when it comes to K-12 education. A 2016 study, for instance, showed that the city would need an extra $358 million annually to adequately fund its schools. Yet the city’s hardly alone in its resource woes: Tax cuts and relentless efforts to reduce costs have left urban public schools across the country strapped for cash, with similarly decrepit infrastructure as a result.
Students at low-income schools also often lag behind their higher-income counterparts in achievement, and research demonstrates that a school building’s facilities contribute to this gap. “Studies show that students in schools with classrooms with overly warm or cool temperatures and noise pollution, such as airplane noise, perform worse than students in schools with better structural conditions,” said Sapna Cheryan , a University of Washington professor who has researched the issue.
Read the entire article here .