Schooling’s Crumbling Infrastructure

Addressing a Serious and Underappreciated Problem

By Sara Mead

In the last few years, national debates on education policy have had little to say about the seemingly mundane yet vitally important issue of school construction. School construction is a significant policy issue because without major renovations, upgrades, and new facilities, many schools are in such bad physical shape that they cannot even begin to offer students a high-quality education. Just as policymakers have worked to modernize and reform curriculum, assessment, and instruction, they also need to modernize the way we finance school buildings.

The last time that concerns about school facilities were seriously addressed on the national stage was during the 2000 election. Since then, the issue has fallen off the agenda in Washington. Instead, policymakers are focusing on student achievement.

Unfortunately, the same school facilities problems that drew attention in the late 1990s—overcrowded buildings, leaky roofs, and the like—remain unresolved today. We entered the 21st century with one in four schools making do with buildings in poor condition, and one in four schools overcrowded, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Fully 3.5 million students attend schools that are in very poor or nonoperational condition. In a 2004 study, the American Society of Civil Engineers found no evidence of improvement in the overall quality of...