Green urban landscapes and school-level academic performance

Abstract

The growing disconnect between humans and nature has implications for human well-being. Research has linked exposure to nature with various benefits including improved focus, vitality, productivity, and reduced stress, factors that may enhance the academic performance of individual students. In intensively-urbanized landscapes with few natural elements this effect could, via aggregated population-level impacts, influence the academic performance of entire populations, negatively affecting educational attainment and propagating urban poverty. Designing urban environments to provide increased interaction with natural landscape elements such as vegetation could mitigate this effect, benefiting the academic growth and future success of urban students. Recent studies support this idea; however, this effect is poorly understood, hindering the management of urban environments to improve educational outcomes. This study explores relationships between urban nature and the academic performance of urban schools using the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area of Minnesota, USA as a case study area. We used regression analysis to identify relationships among environmental variables on and around school campuses (i.e., tree cover, vegetated land covers, water) and four measures of population-level third-grade reading and mathematics success, accounting for school socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. Contrary to expectations, we found a positive relationship between impervious surfaces and reading performance, while relationships between two vegetated land covers (grass, shrub) and water bodies and both mathematics and reading academic success were non-significant. We found a significant, positive relationship between tree cover and reading performance, suggesting that initiatives aimed at increasing tree cover in student environments could support academic success.