There is growing awareness of the importance of school building environments for student health, well-being, and even educational outcomes. We ask in this study what role school building heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems play in shaping student attendance, behavior, and learning. In particular, we extract information from…

Active learning is widely recognized as superior to traditional passive, lecture-based techniques for fostering learning in STEM courses. Interactive, hands-on learning where students interact with their peers and physical systems is an effective type of active learning. As the need for scientists and engineers continues to grow, understanding and…

We demonstrate that heat inhibits learning and that school air-conditioning may mitigate this effect. Student fixed effects models using 10 million PSAT-retakers show hotter school days in years before the test reduce scores, with extreme heat being particularly damaging. Weekend and summer temperature has little impact, suggesting heat directly…

Complex Problem Solving (CPS) is seen as a cross-curricular 21st century skill that has attracted interest in large-scale-assessments. In the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012, CPS was assessed all over the world to gain information on students' skills to acquire and apply knowledge while dealing with nontransparent…