The quality and condition of school facilities have been linked to teacher retention (Buckley et al., 2005); student attendance and achievement (Branham, 2004; Buckley et al., 2004; Durán-Narucki, 2008); student behavior and suspension rates (Boese & Shaw, 2005; Kumar et al., 2008; Plank et al., 2009); school climate (Uline & Tschannen-Moran, 2008); and physical and mental health (Bernstein & Baker, 2012).  While some of the impacts of school facility on student outcomes are undoubtedly due to physical harms (e.g., improper air ventilation or high levels of lead), the fields of social, environmental, and community psychology suggest that the school physical environment may also be influencing students through messages it sends as to the expectations to which they are being held, social and academic norms, and the degree to which they belong to a vibrant, supportive community (Barker, 1964; Baron, 2009; Goldstein & Cialdini, 2007;  Heft, 2001; Osterman, 2000). Additionally, some early experimental work suggests that space, lighting, design, and room color may influence students’ stimulation and engagement and, through this, their performance and behavior (Baird & Lutkus, 1982; Wohlfarth, 1984).

Publicolor, a non-profit that works with youth to transform the physical appearance of their school environments through paint, comes out of this theoretical framework. Publicolor has ran Paint Club, an after-school intervention program, in high poverty, low performing NYC schools since 1996, working with up to nine schools a year. This study uses Paint Club and its history of intervention work as a means to begin to address the lack of empirical research as to the role of school physical appearance, design, and color on student learning and engagement. Specifically, this study examines pre- and post-intervention trends at schools impacted by Paint Club. Findings will inform the effectiveness of this program; further our understanding of the importance of physical environment, design, and color in school settings; inform potential impacts of such features on engagement and learning; and, through this, contribute to policy work around school physical environment and design features.

Data for this study comes from the School-level Master File (SCHMA) dataset of publically available New York City public school data from 1996-2012 compiled by the Research Alliance and merged with Publicolor’s records of school participants. This study examines 113 regular, public schools: 36 (32%) are in Manhattan, 34 (30%) are in Brooklyn, 31 (27%) are in the Bronx, and 12 (11%) are in Queens. 38% of the schools serve only the middle grades, 34% are high schools, 16% are primary grade schools, 8% have primary and middle grade students, 4% have middle and high school students, and one is a k-12 school. The schools hosted Paint Club in different academic years, allowing for a quasi-experimental evaluation design. This study utilizes staggered interrupted time series to identify trends in school-level attendance rates and standardized test scores before and after the Paint Club intervention. Key findings will be discussed in the context of implications for optimal school design, with a specific focus on underperforming, under-maintained schools.