Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews touches on one of the important 'chicken or the egg' questions for public schools: Can we have a great school without state-of-the-art, or even functioning, facilities? He concludes that great teachers, and not great buildings, make great schools:

"Great buildings don't make great schools. It might be better if we spent our money on principals and teachers who inspire, who don't take lethargy or resentment for an answer. Put educators like that in the rickety buildings we have, and stand back. We can get the money we need to fix the facilities, once everyone sees that those are schools worth repairing."

I'd rather see a focus on instructional quality - what goes on inside the walls matters more than the walls themselves - but common sense tells us that we shouldn't spurn the physical plant entirely.

Dave Saba of the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence injects Mathews with a small dose of reality and concludes that "Jay is a little off":

"The teachers that have made a difference in the small number of great schools in crappy buildings would do well in any setting. They are passionate about their craft and continue to work hard ignoring the structural problems that surround them.

But can we seriously expect to find 3.5 million people like that? I doubt we can. We need to be more selective in picking our teachers and in order to do that we have to attract many more of them into the profession and in order to do that – we cannot ask them to work in buildings that are falling down."

It's hard to argue with that.

Robert Pondiscio at the Core Knowledge Blog once taught in an old, crumbling school. Schools in which plaster falls from the ceiling, rooms are boarded up and creative murals are actually mold and water damage send the wrong message. Apologies for cliches and mixed metaphors, but broken windows can be a slippery slope.

As Joanne Jacobs says, yes, it is the teaching, stupid - but, as one of her commenters points out, "mimimal standards have to be met on both for either to work."

EducationNews Colorado reminds us all that wonderful, high-tech buildings don't guarantee a superb education, either.

It's gone unsaid in these articles that distance and online education solutions eliminate the problem almost entirely.