This may seem like it’s from the Department of Obvious Studies, but it’s hard to quantify this stuff. Boy howdy do I remember hot classrooms and low-sleep nights, but I’ve been out of school for a while now and many parts of the country keep getting hotter. The study shows a correlation between days above 26.7 C (80 F) and decreased test performance. There’s a larger impact for Black, Hispanic, younger, and lower-income students.
I had initially thought they were looking at indoor temperatures but they’re not, so some of the effects may be due to different prevalence in both classroom and home air conditioning.
The paper was referenced in an article in today’s wapo print edition, which discusses how classroom heat is increasingly becoming a problem and how differences in heat stress can affect education outcomes.
Many cities have seen a rising number of days when the temperature hit 90 degrees or higher in May and June, when schools are operating, according to a Washington Post analysis. Philadelphia averaged four such days in 1970; now the figure is eight. In Baltimore, it went from six to 10; in Denver, from six to 11; and in Cleveland, from one to four. Portland, Ore., now averages three days over 90, up from one in 1970.
There’s probably a policy GD in here but I’m not equipped to launch one today, hence MPSIMS. Kindly flag a mod if you’d like to move in that direction.
In many climates with mild summers, there may not be the infrastructure for cooling of public buildings and classrooms (look e.g. at the 72000 dead during the 2003 European heat wave, even though it was not that hot, with many cities not even hitting 40 °C).
But standard room temperature is supposed to be climate-controlled to stay within the range of roughly 20–25 °C; I don’t think this is a particularly new or unusual standard. Like you said, hotter than that is uncomfortable, nor would you expect anyone to sit around in literally freezing temperatures. In fact, in regions where “extreme heat” is now “periodic” I would expect about 100% of schools to install air conditioning.
Though, to clarify, it’s not like entire schools were systematically decimated, more like you had a lot of people, maybe elderly, living at home, without air conditioning because they never really needed it, were not used to drinking enough water or changing their activity schedule, and it adds up. But people, regardless of whether their lives were actually in immediate danger, were not as productive they could be in the classroom or office because they were busy sweating their asses off.
Way, way back in the dark and dank mists of time when PT went to primary school (a single room building without aircon in western NSW for the edumacation of about 30 5-12yos by a lone teacher) there was the regulation when the temperature hit 110F (43C) we could go home.
This assumed that parents wanted to get organised and drive the 5+miles to pick their kids up early. The temp breached 110 several times when I was in attendance but we never went home early. I do recall a number of totally awesome water fights.
