Study says new facilities boosted test scores for Los Angeles students

From The Los Angeles Daily News: A nearly $20 billion effort to reduce crowding in the Los Angeles Unified School District has helped boost test scores for elementary school students, according to a new study. Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, have found that the district's construction push has sparked huge increases in elementary school students' test scores. The initiative has been less successful, though, at the high school level; students' scores have increased little or not at all in those grades. Researchers looked at the more than 20,000 students who moved into 73 new facilities built between 2002 and 2008. They found that elementary students improved their scores as much as they would have if the school year were extended by 25 to 35 days.