Greenness and school-wide test scores are not always positively associated – A replication of “linking student performance in Massachusetts elementary schools with the ‘greenness’ of school surroundings using remote sensing”

•This is the first replication in the greenness-academic performance (G-AP) literature.•We used analogous variables and an identical statistical model as a leading G-AP study.•The initial replication showed unstable results due to high multicollinearity.•An adjusted model showed a small negative lin...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Landscape and urban planning 2018-10, Vol.178, p.69-72
Main Authors: Browning, Matthew H.E.M., Kuo, Ming, Sachdeva, Sonya, Lee, Kangjae, Westphal, Lynne
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic performance
Greenness
Remote sensing
Replication
Vegetation
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Summary:•This is the first replication in the greenness-academic performance (G-AP) literature.•We used analogous variables and an identical statistical model as a leading G-AP study.•The initial replication showed unstable results due to high multicollinearity.•An adjusted model showed a small negative link between greenness and performance.•Limitations in greenness measure and moderators may explain surprising findings. Recent studies find vegetation around schools correlates positively with student test scores. To test this relationship in schools with less green cover and more disadvantaged students, we replicated a leading study, using six years of NDVI-derived greenness data to predict school-level math and reading achievement in 404 Chicago public schools. A direct replication yielded highly mixed results with some significant positive relationships between greenness and academic achievement, some negative, and some null – but accompanying VIF scores in the thousands indicated untenable levels of multicollinearity. An adjusted replication corrected for multicollinearity and yielded stable results; surprisingly, all models then showed near-zero but statistically significant negative relationships between greenness and performance. In low-green, high-disadvantage schools, negative greenness-academic performance links may reflect the predominance of grass in measures of overall greenness and/or insufficient statistical controls for the moderating effect of disadvantage.
ISSN:0169-2046
1872-6062
DOI:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2018.05.007