Not Beating the Heat: Exploring Heat’s Effects on Students and Teachers

• In Event: Adaptation to Environmental Effects? Win-Win, Win-Lose, or Lose-Lose?

Abstract

At the start of the 2023–24 school year, over a dozen schools in North Carolina were forced to shorten or cancel school days due to extreme heat. These disruptions underscore how worsening environmental conditions increasingly compromise students’ learning environments. Even without full closures, extreme temperatures can impair cognitive performance, lower attendance, and hinder teachers’ ability to provide effective instruction. Older teachers may be particularly susceptible to heat-related stress, potentially amplifying the effects on student outcomes.

This project examines how variation in environmental conditions during the school year, particularly extreme heat, affects student learning and teacher effectiveness. It focuses on two core questions: How do teacher characteristics, such as age, mediate or amplify the effects of extreme weather on student performance? And how effective are current mitigation strategies, namely air conditioning?

To address these questions, I link matched student-teacher administrative data from the North Carolina Education Research Data Center with weather and air quality data from NOAA and the EPA, along with HVAC maintenance request records obtained via FOIA from six of the state’s largest school districts. Using a fixed-effects regression framework, I exploit exogenous variation in temperature across time and location to estimate the causal effects of environmental shocks on educational outcomes. I use climate division fixed effects to account for time-invariant differences in regional climates and control for county-level and student-level characteristics such as average income and past test scores to account for heterogeneity and reduce statistical noise. 

Preliminary findings show that each additional school day above 90°F leads to a 0.002 standard deviation decline in student test scores among those taught by teachers in the top 10% of the age distribution. This effect is cut in half for students taught by younger teachers. These results highlight the importance of accounting for teacher vulnerability in efforts to understand and mitigate climate-related educational disparities.

This research has clear implications for school infrastructure investment, teacher support policies, and emergency heat protocols. As climate change accelerates, districts must consider targeted upgrades to HVAC systems, heat-related leave policies, and adaptive scheduling to ensure equitable access to education. These findings emphasize the urgency of protecting both students and educators, particularly in aging, under-resourced schools most affected by extreme heat.

Author

• Mary Quiroga, University of Michigan
  Presenting Author