Relationships between vegetation in student environments and academic achievement across the continental U.S

Abstract

Recent studies suggest that vegetation in student environments can enhance academic achievement. Identified relationships vary, however, and our understanding of the links between urban nature and academic performance remains incomplete. This study broadens this understanding by investigating associations between vegetation and urban intensity in school attendance areas and high school reading and mathematics proficiency and graduation rates. We utilize a sample of schools from across the U.S. This study is the first to explore these relationships at this extent. We estimated relationships between these indicators of academic achievement and tree canopy cover, non-forest vegetation, agricultural vegetation, and urban intensity using negative-binomial, mixed-effects models. Models included indicators of socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, poverty, and class size and state and ecoregion random effects to account for socioeconomic, political, and ecological factors that could influence achievement and vegetation abundance. We found no significant relationships between environmental variables and academic achievement indicators across the full sample. However, we did observe significant interactions between urban intensity and non-forest vegetation as well as between socioeconomic status and tree canopy cover. These interactions indicated a positive relationship between non-forest vegetation and graduation rate for schools in highly-urban settings, and a negative relationship between canopy cover and graduation rate for schools that serve primarily low socioeconomic status populations. These results indicate that the effects of some vegetation types on academic achievement vary with urban intensity and socioeconomic context. These findings also suggest that managing urban vegetation to support academic performance requires an understanding of population social and environmental context.