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Environmental Education and Education Achievement

Many students have a strong interest in nature and the environment—it's real, it's familiar, and it frequently involves being outdoors. Tapping this interest by providing quality environmental education programs has a significant positive impact on academic achievement:

Students are more enthusiastic about learning.
Their behavior improves, leading to fewer discipline and classroom management problems.
They perform better on standardized reading, math, science, and social studies tests.
Their critical thinking and problem-solving skills improve, and they are better able to make connections and transfer knowledge from familiar to unfamiliar contexts.
They retain the knowledge and skills they've learned.

"When I was visiting [Southwestern High School in Somerset, KY], the students took me on a tour of the school and the program. They explained the science concepts underlying what they were showing me, and they were excited about what they knew. They were so articulate! I had been told that some of the students in the group were from the gifted and talented class, and others from special education classes. But I couldn't tell which was which."

—Jane Eller, Executive Director, Kentucky Environmental Education Council, in Environment-Based Education: Creating Higher Performance Schools and Students (Washington, DC: NEETF, 2000)

Learn how environmental education programs are improving student achievement:

Education and the Environment: Partners for Change, Ruth Flanagan and Kathy Draper, NAAEE and EETAP, 1999 and 2006.

Moving Education into the Educational Mainstream, INFOBRIEF, ASCD, Issue 26, August 2001.

Advancing Education Through Environmental Literacy, Michele L. Archie, The Harbinger Institute, ASCD, 2003.

Meeting Standards Naturally, EETAP, 2003

Environmental Education and Educational Achievement: Promising Programs and Resources, NEETF, November 2002.

Environment-Based Education: Creating High Performance Schools and Students, NEETF, September 2000.

EIC: A Framework for Learning

Environment as an Integrating Context for improving student learning (State Education and Environment Roundtable web site)