A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

This report was written by the Department's National Center for Education Statistics at the request of our budget office to get a more accurate measure on the progress of school construction in America. I want to thank Bernie Green, John Ralph and Val Plisko and other NCES staff for putting this report together. They are here to answer any technical questions.

The condition of our public schools is something that has concerned me for some time. I have been to hundreds of schools that are in need of repair or modernization. This report tells me very clearly that we are, at best, still running in place when it comes to repairing or renovating old schools, and at worst we are falling farther behind, even as more and more young people enter our public school system.

This NCES report is the first comprehensive study the U.S. Department of Education has undertaken on the matter of school facility conditions. This report tells us several things. First, while the majority of our schools buildings are in "adequate" condition, three-fourths of our schools reported that they needed to spend some money to repair, renovate, or modernize their school buildings in order to get them in good condition. The cost estimate of that investment is $127 billion. 

This figure is roughly comparable-adjusted for inflation-to the $112 billion the General Accounting Office said in 1994 would be needed to bring America's schools to a good standard. Earlier this year, a report released by the National Education Association indicated that $54 billion alone would be needed just to properly upgrade classroom technology.

What is especially striking to me is that while the new cost estimate is comparable to the amount in the 1994 GAO study, public school districts have been trying to address this problem. In the last five years, our nation's school districts have been playing catch-up and have been working hard to modernize our public schools. Annual school construction and repair funding has been rising steadily since 1995. In 1998, public-school-construction projects totaled $15 billion, and about $17.2 billion was spent in 1999. Despite this very strong pattern of investing in building, repairing, and modernizing our schools, we are still losing ground. 

And there are some obvious reasons why we are still losing ground. 

Building new schools and renovating old ones was put on the back burner in the first part of the last decade because of the severe economic recession of the early 1990s.

Many school districts were then caught off-guard by rising enrollment, and as I continue to tell people, there is no end in sight when it comes to increasing enrollment. Next September, for the fifth year in a row, we will set a new national school enrollment record. 

Finally, construction is becoming more expensive as we invest in technology. Computer labs simply cost more to construct than study halls, and all of our students need to have 21st century tools for learning. 

Let me share some other findings. One in four schools said they had at least one type of on-site building that was in less than adequate condition. Some 11 million students are enrolled in such schools. About 3.5 million of those children attended schools where at least one type of building was in poor condition-meaning that it failed many building codes-or needed to be completely replaced. Some 5 million children attend schools that are over 35 years old and have never been renovated.

I don't think that we should be sending any of our children to schools that are in poor condition in this time of great prosperity. Even sending the majority of our children to what this study terms an "adequate" school building is not good enough in my book. In fact, only 16 percent of all original school buildings are considered to be in "excellent" condition. 

Some of the findings in this report are actually quite disturbing regarding the current condition of some of our schools. Some 8 million children attend schools with less than adequate "life safety" features such as water sprinklers and smoke alarms. That's just not acceptable. Another 8.3 million children are enrolled in schools with less than adequate physical security.

And 11 million go to schools that lack proper ventilation and other environmental controls. I don't think any child should have to go to a school where they have to worry more about breathing than learning. We have millions of children who have asthma, and they don't need to be breathing bad air all day long as they try to learn. 

This report also found that a full 25 percent of our schools are overcrowded, as defined by having enrollments that are more than five percent above the building's design capacity. Some 12.7 million of our children are in overcrowded schools, and 5.1 million are in seriously overcrowded schools. 

Schools with high-minority enrollments were more likely to be seriously overcrowded than schools with low-minority enrollments. And, jam-packed schools tend to be more susceptible to wear and tear, as you might imagine.

Overcrowded schools are also problematic because a great deal of research indicates smaller schools and smaller class sizes enhance student achievement all the way from kindergarten through 12th grade. 

But this report need not be just a tale of unmanageable woe. In fact, there currently exists in the Congress a bipartisan approach to provide $24.8 billion to communities across the country to build and modernize up to 6,000 schools.

H.R. 4094 is a bill sponsored by Representatives Charlie Rangel (D-NY) and Nancy Johnson (R-CT) that currently counts 198 bipartisan cosponsors. It authorizes states and school districts to use a new type of bond-a tax-credit bond-for school construction, renovation, and modernization. The federal government pays the interest to the bondholder in the form of a tax credit. This relieves the community of the expense. Since interest payments can swallow up to 50 percent of the cost of issuing bonds for school construction, this can result in substantial savings to states and local communities. 

This report, along with similar studies, re-emphasizes the case for getting on with the job of fixing our nation's school buildings now. I cannot tell you how it pains me when I visit a school to see crumbling plaster in kindergarten classrooms, broken toilets, or children lined up in the hallway to get their asthma treatments. 

We know what needs to be done to help communities fix their schools. Now we just need to decide how important it is for our children to have safe and healthy learning environments and to commit ourselves to achieving that goal. Thank you. 

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Last Updated -- [06/22/00] (etn)