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halrhp
Joined: 07 Apr 2006
Posts: 5
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 Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 4:21 am Post subject: Green schools: economics or hand waving? |
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Arch Week wrote: "A recently published study about the benefits offered by green schools confirms the claim and provides solid statistics to back it up. "Greening America's Schools: Costs and Benefits" was written by Greg Kats and Jon Braman of the research firm Capital E."
"Solid statistics?" The article itself acknowledges that no environmental measurements were made in the schools themselves. It was assumed that LEED credits were claimed for some design measures that 1) they were actually implemented and 2) that the resulting environmental improvement was sufficient to create a significant difference in student learning based on analogy or inference to studies done in offices. But the office studies cited in the report included environmental measurements and, in some cases, actual measurements of task performance or absenteeism or asthma, etc. it is a big leap to assume that because a LEED credit was issued, the environmental improvement can be assumed to be equal to those in the studies reviewed by Carnegie Mellon.
Arch Week also wrote: "The savings to the school, as uncovered by the authors through a rigorous economic analysis, are found in lower energy and water costs, improved teacher retention, and lowered health costs. However these are dwarfed by savings to the broader community through the reduced cost of public infrastructure, lower air and water pollution, and a better educated and compensated workforce."
"Rigorous?" I do not think so, Neither the economics nor the environmental science involved can be labeled as such.
The authors did not use a scientifically defensible approach. Their methodology involves taking on faith the efficacy of the LEED rating system as well as the analogy between schools and office environments. And it flies in the face of science to assume that the intentions or claims of the designers were realized in the completed building as constructed, operated, and used. Anyone with much experience investigating building performance and the resulting occupant response knows that there is a substantial gap in most buildings between design intention and reality.
In the end, this is wishful thinking, something we would all like to believe and wish our clients would believe as well. But one must be more careful in making such exaggerated claims without solid evidence. Such evidence was simply not presented in the green schools " report prepared for the USGBC by Capital E.
Hal Levin |
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The Architect
Joined: 09 Jun 2005
Posts: 184
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| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2007 1:03 am Post subject: |
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Nothing like a "retented teacher"! Without solid financials, nothing is certain. Right?
Take care... |
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halrhp
Joined: 07 Apr 2006
Posts: 5
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| Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 4:15 pm Post subject: What do you mean? |
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What does "retented" mean? I can't find it in my American Heritage Dictionary or "retent" any derivative of it. Thanks.  |
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mrLenin
Joined: 16 Nov 2006
Posts: 22
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| Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 8:54 am Post subject: |
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Retention can have the following meanings:
1. Instance of retaining (e.g. water in the ground; see retention pond or retention basin)
2. In learning: the ability to retain facts and figures in memory (spaced repetition)
3. In schools, keeping a student in the same grade for another year (that is, not promoting the student to the next higher grade with his/her classmates) (see Grade retention and social promotion)
4. In usenet, the retention period is the time a news server holds a newsgroup posting before deleting it as no longer relevant. For practical reasons, most news servers have different categories for different classes of postings: for example, the "announce" newsgroup for the ISP or other agency providing the news server may retain postings either for a very long time or indefinitely, whereas postings in binary newsgroups are usually not retained for long due to the storage requirements involved.
5. In the United States court system, judicial retention is a process whereby a judge is periodically subject to a vote in order to remain in the position of judge.
6. In organizations, keeping personnel within the organization from departing.
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halrhp
Joined: 07 Apr 2006
Posts: 5
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| Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 11:17 pm Post subject: |
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On Sat Mar 24, 2007 12:03 am "The Architect" posted the following comment on my post regarding green school economics: "Nothing like a "retented teacher"! Without solid financials, nothing is certain. Right?"
I didn't recognize the word "retented," so I looked for it in the American Heritage Dictionary, but, alas, with no success. So I posted a question as to the meaning of the word. The word does not appear in either the AHD or the Oxford English Dictionary (OED ver. 3.1). Not having found it there, I asked what it means.
On April 11, mrLenin posted a comment with several definitions of "Retention" which is derived from the word "retained." There is no form of the word retain or its past participle, "retained" that can be read "retented." Even so, the definitions posted by mrLenin do not help me understand The Architect's comment any more than I did before reading mrLenin's post.
'Retented' appears to me to be the past participle of 'retent' -- listed as rare and obscure in the OED and defined there as "to cause to resound." The only example of its use given there is from the year 1584.
I am still clueless as to the meaning of The Architect's comment and am further confused by the definition offered by mrLenin.
Does anyone who has read it want to discuss the article in Architecture Week about the report on green schools and my comments on the report and the article? |
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