Chapter 1: Unmet School Infrastructure Funding need as a Critical Educational Capacity Issue: Setting the Context

The relationship of the physical environment of schools to student achievement has remained an enduring research issue in education with broad policy implications for the adequate and equitable funding of education for over 70 years. This chapter utilizes the backdrop of earlier research to explore the crisis in school infrastructure funding that emerged in the 1990s, given the confluence of years of deferred maintenance and increased enrollments, linking it theoretically to notions of human capital and social capital. School infrastructure and its funding represent physical capital that works in tandem with human capital and social capital to build capacity for education reform and enhanced student achievement.