Relations between acoustic quality and student achievement in K-12 classrooms

Abstract

Prior work by Ronsse and Wang (2013) found that, in elementary schools, higher unoccupied background noise levels do correlate to lower student achievement scores in reading comprehension, but that study did not include detailed logs of acoustic conditions taken during the school day nor did it investigate middle or high school classrooms. More recently, measurements of the indoor environmental conditions in 110 K-12 classrooms, logged over a period of two weekdays three times seasonally, were taken over the 2015-16 academic year. Assorted acoustic metrics have been calculated from the raw measurements and a confirmatory factor analysis has been conducted to statistically create a comprehensive construct of “acoustic quality” that includes three general components: room characteristics (including reverberation times), occupied noise levels, and unoccupied noise levels. Standardized test scores of students who learned in the measured classrooms that year have also been gathered as an indicator of student achievement. Results from a structural equation model are presented to show how the various components of the proposed acoustic quality construct relate to student achievement. [Work supported by the United States Environmental Protection Agency Grant Number R835633.]