A guide to lowering test scores: unhealthy environmental conditions in classrooms can make it difficult for students and teachers to concentrate and affect productivity, health and the bottom line.

Suppose for one moment that you are living on a planet where everything is the opposite of what we experience here on earth. (Those of you who grew up on Superman comics will recognize this as the "Bizarro" planet.) On this other planet, your elected representatives, instead of wanting you to raise test scores, are demanding that you lower them. Drop those scores--your job depends on it!

That's the mandate. To get there, try this surefire strategy: make it difficult for students and teachers to concentrate (and generally undermine their health and productivity) by providing poor environmental conditions in their classrooms. Bonus: you'll keep your district facilities staff busy dealing with the complaints that come in. Here are some winning tactics:

1. Make it too hot (or too cold), too humid (or too dry), too noisy (don't forget to avoid day lighting).

2. Fill the air with fumes from idling buses, too much CO2, mold or other allergens, or chemicals and pesticides that can affect occupants' nervous systems.

3. To make sure that indoor air pollutants concentrate in each classroom, install a poorly operating ventilation system that can't provide enough outside air exchange and is difficult to maintain. If you have no ventilation system at all, then nail most of the windows shut.

4. In case their allergies and asthma, sinusitis and coughs aren't sufficiently distracting, put allergic students and teachers on medications that make them either drowsy or agitated.

5. Allow mold, allergens and other pollutants to accumulate long enough for some teachers and students to get sick and have to miss school or feel they need to take extra days off while recuperating from other illnesses. (This accomplishes two purposes, since it also reduces your ADA funding.)

6. To prevent conditions from improving, cut your maintenance budget, and don't forget to cut your custodial budget and then arrange the classrooms in a way that makes it difficult for the few remaining custodians to clean. Then fail to educate school occupants about the way that many of their own activities might contribute to indoor air problems.

7. Prevent good communication between district-level staff, principals and school occupants so work orders don't get processed, or instead, the occupants believe that the district is unresponsive even when the work's been done.

8. Develop a poor relationship with parents and the community so they think you're wasting money and won't give you any more. Allow this poor relationship to fester so that when a problem arises, your staff are so busy trying to calm down parents, teachers and news reporters that you can't get any real work done.

9. Close the school because of health concerns, guaranteeing that everyone falls behind in their studies.

10. Finally, do not take the very simple steps that could correct many of the problems above.

Would such strategies reduce test scores? Well, that's the way to bet, anyway. Sure, some particularly resilient students would still do well, and some "teachers of steel" might carry on unscathed, but it's pretty certain that the graph of test scores would nosedive. The new publication, "Indoor Air Quality & Student Performance" (www.epa.gov/ iaq/schools/perform.html), outlines studies that support what should be obvious.

Is the solution "out of this world?"

Now the question is, is this really the Bizarro planet we're talking about, or California, USA? While hereabouts the purported goal is to raise test scores, you have to wonder about the likelihood of accomplishing it (or schools achieving their overall mission) when so often environmental health obstacles are placed in the way of teachers and students. What we've seen in many years of hands-on experience working with schools seems to indicate that the United States is closer to the Bizarro planet than anyone would care to admit.

The key item in our list of ways to reduce test scores was, "Do not take the simple steps that could correct many of the problems above." How could it be that problems that for so long have impeded schools from achieving their mission could have simple solutions? It seems to be we've forgotten some important things our great grandparents knew.

In 1871, an issue of a journal called the "Health Reformer" made it clear that "neglect of proper ventilation makes the teacher's work toilsome and ineffective." In 1871, our great grandparents had connected ventilation (an important part of assuring good indoor air quality) with a teacher's effectiveness (read "test scores").

Unfortunately, too many contemporary worries have overshadowed consideration of indoor air quality: vandalism and burglaries, energy conservation, construction costs, labor costs and the myriad other social problems with which school officials are all too familiar. Yet, as our great grandparents recognized, the environment within our schools is intimately tied to the effectiveness of our schools. We've got to recapture that wisdom.

Providing a healthy environment

Step one in improving test scores is to realize that you can't teach kids who are absent; it's harder to teach kids who aren't feeling well or are distracted by other kids' hacking coughs; you can't teach kids who are sleepy from high CO2 levels or spacey from medication; and when teachers are out sick, instruction by substitutes may or may not be able to stay on track.

If you've bought into the simple concept that your great grandparents understood, your priorities as an administrator should have just taken a step in the direction of providing a healthy school environment. You'll recognize that rundown conditions in facilities that were once thought of as simple comfort or cosmetic issues are actually high priority matters affecting heath, productivity and the bottom line.

The second step is to understand that everyone has a role to play in providing a healthy, productive environment in which to teach and learn. Facilities staff have to keep the building and mechanical systems in good shape, and the occupants of the building need to engage in good indoor air quality activities. These two groups must communicate with each other.

Facilities personnel need to impart to principals, teachers and staff a minimal understanding of how their buildings work. Occupants have to understand what should and shouldn't be done in enclosed spaces. Classrooms need to be set up so custodians can move around them rapidly in order to clean. All this requires communication. The time and effort required for good communication reaps big rewards in avoiding both mistakes and strained relationships.

Step three is to realize that little things can make big differences. You may have an old, balky ventilation system held together by bailing wire and library paste. It should be replaced, but until it is ... is the outside air intake open? If it is, good! If not, open it. Get the best you can out of the equipment you've got. The right kind of energy conservation is a must, but cutting energy costs at the expense of health will undermine your mission.

You know those old donated couches that teachers have scrounged to make a cozy reading area for kids? Ever wonder what kind of pets used to sleep on them? Were they in damp garages or out on the street, and now they're chock full of dust mites and mold? Can you visualize the allergens billowing out of such a sofa when little Billy goes to lie down on it because his asthma is acting up?

While you might not choose to forbid the use of couches (you don't want to start a mutiny), be sure to educate occupants about the need to be picky about donations. In other words, try to eliminate sources of indoor air pollution.

To make it easy and just "follow the dots" to improved indoor air quality, adopt EPA's "Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Tools for Schools" Program. You can view or download the entire program at www.epa.gov/iaq/schoools/index.html, and then order it free from our IAQ Information Clearinghouse.

It's literally all there in a box, complete with a video created by the folks at the PBS series This Old House. Host Richard Thomas and his ventilation expert, Richard Trethewey, interview staff at a school in New Hampshire, explain the program and lead you on a tour of a school and its ventilation system.

The Tools for Schools kit comes with easy-to-follow reference materials, an indoor air quality management plan and educational materials to help everyone understand the role they play as district staff or school occupants. A problem-solving wheel leads you on an investigation using your own staff to solve problems for which you might previously have hired an expensive outside contractor. More importantly, problems are prevented in the first place.

Thousands of school districts across the country are using "IAQ Tools for Schools" to provide their students and staff with the best conditions in which to work, teach and learn. In August, EPA and its partners hosted the third annual IAQ Tools for Schools Symposium in Washington, D.C. (www.epa.gov/iaq/ schools/symposium.html), which was attended by almost 500 representatives of schools, school districts, governmental and other stakeholders working with them to improve indoor air quality. A highlight of the event was the presentation of awards to school districts that have demonstrated excellence in implementing the Tools for Schools program.

These school officials know that teaching and learning is enough of an uphill climb without a ball and chain around your ankle. Provide your teachers and students with the best conditions you can, and give them a chance to show you what they can do. It's a "down to earth" strategy.

Shelly Rosenblum is an environmental engineer and the "IAQ Tools for Schools" coordinator and Barbara Spark is the Indoor Air Program coordinator at USEPA Region 9 (San Francisco).

RELATED ARTICLE: Resources, curricula and tools for better indoor air quality.

* A wide array of downloadable informational and technical resources are available on EPA's Web site: www.epa.gov/iaq. Start here and check back often; valuable new tools such as the upcoming "Design Tools for Schools" are continually added.

* EPA IAQ INFO Clearinghouse for publications: [phone].

* New! EPA IAQ Tools for Schools Technical hotline: [phone].

* EPA's "Mold Remediation in Schools & Commercial Buildings" http://www.epa.gov/iaq/molds/mold_remediation.html.

* California Department of Health Services/IAQ Program Web site is a great resource with links to other valuable sites: www.cal-iaq.org.

Using the IAQ Tools for Schools kit

To use the "IAQ Tools for Schools" kit you can do it yourself, or draw on a variety of resources to help get you get started. Many affiliates of the American Lung Association are working to assist schools to launch "Tools for Schools" and otherwise help schools become more "asthma-friendly." To reach your local ALA, call (800) LUNG USA.

For more information about the program, contact the regional EPA office: Shelly Rosenblum, EPA Region 9, San Francisco [phone], [e-mail]