Highlight
IGERT Trainee Shows that Improvement in School Indoor Environmental Quality Enhances Attendance Rates
Achievement/Results
Tess Stafford, a doctoral candidate funded through the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program in Indoor Environmental Science and Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin (UT), is studying the effects of school renovations to improve indoor air quality on student attendance rates and test scores. Her efforts are drawing attention since they show a positive association between renovations and attendance rates in public schools.
The Austin Independent School District (AISD) obtained funding through a $50 million bond initiative to improve indoor environmental conditions in public schools through a combination of mold remediation, reductions in water leaks that lead to biological growth in schools, improved classroom ventilation, and more. Stafford worked with AISD to obtain detailed information about the nature of renovations in a large number of schools, timing of renovations, grade-specific attendance rates prior to and after renovations, and grade-specific standardized test scores before and after renovations. She developed a large and novel data base and spent a summer internship working at Resources For the Future (RFF) in Washington, D.C., completing statistical analyses of the data.
Stafford has shown a positive association between attendance rates and school renovations. The association is affected by gender, stronger amongst females than males. To date, no association has been observed between renovations and standardized test scores.
Stafford, a Ph.D. student in Economics, has worked closely on this effort with IGERT faculty participant Richard Corsi, a professor of Environmental Engineering and member of Stafford’s Ph.D. committee. Her work related to school renovations is novel, entirely funded through our IGERT program, and has facilitated interdisciplinary research between the Departments of Economics and Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering.
Address Goals
To our knowledge, Stafford is the first to show an association between building-related renovation for indoor air quality and a performance metric (attendance) for students in public schools (discovery). Her efforts have lead to two very well-received presentations at conferences on environmental economics: (1) National Bureau of Economic Research Summer Institute 2007 in Environmental Economics, Cambridge, MA (July 2007), and (2) the 10th Occasional Workshop on Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, Santa Barbara, CA (March 2008).
Because Stafford is not an engineer, she has worked closely with IGERT faculty participant Richard Corsi to learn about the nuances of building renovations, and Corsi has learned a lot about economic approaches to exploring the effects of renovation activities. In addition, Stafford will present her findings to officials of the Austin Independent School District in the summer of 2008. These collective activities relate to the goal of learning that is fostered by interdisciplinary collaboration, and also to the societal benefits that come from educating school districts on the net values of their activities.
