Great teachers, stable families and a school’s location [1] have long been said to be key to student success. But a new study out of the United Kingdom suggests that a school’s physical design can improve or worsen children’s academic performance by as much as 25 percent in early years, the Huffington Post reports. The year-long study by the University of Salford’s School of the Built Environment and British architecture firm Nightingale Associates examined 751 students in 34 classrooms across seven primary schools for the 2011-2012 academic year. Students were assessed at the beginning and end of the year for academic performance in math, reading and writing, and classrooms were rated on environmental qualities like classroom orientation, natural light, acoustics, temperature, air quality and color. The researchers found that classroom architecture and design significantly affected academic performance [2]: Environmental factors studied affected 73 percent of the changes in student scores…