Might School Performance Grow on Trees? Examining the Link Between "Greenness" and Academic Achievement in Urban, High-Poverty Schools.

Ming Kuo,Matthew H E M Browning,Lynne Westphal,Kangjae Lee,Sonya Sachdeva

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01669

Abstract

In the United States, schools serving urban, low-income students are among the lowest-performing academically. Previous research in relatively well-off populations has linked vegetation in schoolyards and surrounding neighborhoods to better school performance even after controlling for important confounding factors, raising the tantalizing possibility that greening might boost academic achievement. This study extended previous cross-sectional research on the “greenness”-academic achievement link to a public school district in which nine out of ten children were eligible for free lunch. In generalized linear mixed models, Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR)-based measurements of green cover for 318 Chicago public schools predicted statistically significantly better school performance on standardized tests of math, with marginally statistically significant results for reading—even after controlling for disadvantage, an index combining poverty and minority status. Pupil/teacher ratio %bilingual, school size, and %female could not account for the greenness-performance link. Interactions between greenness and Disadvantage suggest that the greenness-academic achievement link is different for student bodies with different levels of disadvantage. To determine what forms of green cover were most strongly tied to academic achievement, tree cover was examined separately from grass and shrub cover; only tree cover predicted school performance. Further analyses examined the unique contributions of “school tree cover” (tree cover for the schoolyard and a 25 m buffer) and “neighborhood tree cover” (tree cover for the remainder of a school’s attendance catchment area). School greenness predicted math achievement when neighborhood greenness was controlled for, but neighborhood greenness did not significantly predict either reading or math achievement when school greenness was taken into account. Future research should assess whether greening schoolyards boost school performance.

Highlights

In the United States, schools serving predominantly urban, lowincome populations are struggling
In Chicago Public Schools, we found tree cover to be an important predictor of academic performance, but not grass and shrub cover
The study here suggests that greening has the potential to mitigate academic underachievement in high-poverty urban schools

Summary

Introduction

In the United States, schools serving predominantly urban, lowincome populations are struggling. Children who attend urban schools in low-income areas have shown the lowest academic achievement in the country for decades (Bernstein, 1992). Three key preconditions for learning— ability to concentrate, manageable levels of stress, and intrinsic motivation to learn—have each been tied to green settings and views. Recent experimental work in a school setting echoes a large body of research on the restorative effects of contact with nature on both attention and stress (for reviews, see Kuo, 2015; Becker et al, 2017); views of greenery from classroom windows improve concentration and reduce both self-reported stress and heart rate, whereas classrooms without green views do not (Li and Sullivan, 2016). At least one quasi-experimental study has shown teaching course material outdoors boosts students’ intrinsic motivation (Bølling et al, 2018)

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