Making the Case for Net Positive Education in School Design

School buildings are the physical foundation for students’ intellectual, social, and emotional development. Given the substantial amount of time children spend in school—more than 7,600 instructional hours on average over their first nine years of education according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development—intentionality in the design of school facilities serves a critical role in students’ growth, experience, health, and well-being.

In our Net Positive Education™ (NPE) framework, a supportive learning environment is an important contributor to the health and well-being of children, teachers, staff, and the larger community. This approach leverages the tools of net zero energy (NZE) design, which requires sophisticated analysis to reduce energy usage and integrate renewable energy systems. To document the impact of NPE and NZE, we conducted pre- and post-occupancy evaluations of Benjamin Banneker Academic High School and John Lewis Elementary School, which were both completed in 2021 within the District of Columbia Public Schools’s facility modernization program. In this multiyear study, we assessed how our design strategies impacted school performance and occupants’ teaching and learning experiences, taking into account both building efficiency and the overall educational environment.

When building design and education work together to create learning environments that positively impact people, the result is Net Positive Education. The framework measures building, education,
and human impact variables (gray bars).

Evaluating Pre- and Post-Occupancy Data

The study collected teacher, staff, and student feedback on many topics, including how well the schools support learning (left) and satisfaction with well-being and comfort such as perception of daylighting (right).

Our findings, published in Impact of Design: The Case for Net Positive Education, suggest that the two new schools provide better teaching and learning environments—from building, human, and educational performance perspectives—compared to their previous facilities. The high-efficiency buildings enhance the schools’ indoor environmental quality (temperature, air quality, acoustics, and lighting), which has been shown to contribute to occupants’ health and well-being. Moreover, the schools’ designs create inspiring environments that support educational objectives, including different modes of learning such as class activities and independent pursuits. Teachers, students, and staff reported generally high satisfaction with the buildings, which is an indicator of enhanced educational experience.

We collected pre-occupancy data in early spring 2018 and post-occupancy data in spring 2023—approximately 18 months after the new buildings opened. We measured indoor environmental quality and distributed questionnaires to teachers, staff, and students. The questionnaires captured the users’ perceptions and satisfaction of navigation, safety, security, and comfort, as well as how the environments support the educational experience and sense of community within the schools.

The study compared building conditions and occupant perceptions of the previous and current school buildings. Benjamin Banneker Academic High School formerly occupied an outdated junior high school building (top left), and John Lewis Elementary School occupied a 1970s brutalist-style, open-plan facility (top right).
Banneker Photograph by Widya Ramadhani and John Lewis Photograph by Mary Rankin/© Perkins Eastman

Both new schools were designed to enable dynamic learning in comfortable and inspiring environments, while increased building efficiency helped reduce operational costs and free up financial resources for educational investment. In recognition of the schools’ sustainable design, the AIA COTE Top Ten Awards program honored John Lewis Elementary School in 2025 and Benjamin Banneker Academic High School in 2026.

Designing for Positive Outcomes

The Benjamin Banneker Academic High School Learning Commons (left) unifies the building and the school community. The John Lewis Elementary School library (right) holds discovery zones, reading nooks,
and a treehouse makerspace.

As technology, pedagogical methods, and society evolve, the environments in which students learn, adapt, and grow must evolve too. As a result, schools face an urgent need to reimagine traditional classroom designs and provide extended learning, multipurpose, and other flexible spaces to accommodate specialized learning and collective activities. Connectivity within the school and the surrounding neighborhood is essential, as schools are integral to their larger community ecosystems.

The new Benjamin Banneker Academic High School and John Lewis Elementary School buildings have yielded positive impacts on teacher, staff, and student health and well-being and positive outcomes such as energy conservation and generation. Further, by adopting the NPE framework, the schools’ design and spatial features—abundant daylight and classroom neighborhoods that foster interaction, for example—provide the necessary support for high-performance education, allowing building occupants to thrive and reach their full potential in a 21st-century learning environment.

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