Champions of Change: The Impact of Arts on Learning

 

GE FUND/MACARTHUR FOUNDATION REPORT PRESENTS
GROUNDBREAKING EVIDENCE OF IMPACT OF
ARTS ON LEARNING

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) A new report compiling the results of seven major studies provides important new evidence of enhanced learning and achievement when the arts are an integral part of the educational experience, both in and out of America's K-12 schools.

Champions of Change: The Impact of the Arts on Learning will be released on Friday, October 22nd at the Arts Education Partnership meeting, which will be held at the National Education Association, 1201 ]6th Street, N.W. in Washington, D.C. Interview opportunities and the meeting agenda are available on request.

Researchers whose work is featured in the report will be available to review Qualitative and Quantitative data on the learning and achievement of students involved in a variety of arts experiences. The research projects included students, educators, artists and others in New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and the San Francisco/Bay Area. The report was edited by former New York Times Education Editor Edward B. Fiske, who is also the author of Smart Schools, Smart Kids and the best selling Fiske Guide lo Colleges.

In an introduction by U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley, the findings are referred to as "groundbreaking," and are offered to "address ways that our nation's educational goals may be realized through enhanced arts learning."

The Champions of Change research offers clear evidence of how the arts can improve academic performance, energize teachers and transform learning environments. Among the findings:

• Students with high levels of arts participation outperform "arts-poor" students on virtually every measure.

Based on an analysis of the Department of Education's NELS:89 data base of 25,000 students, UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies Professor James S. Catterall found that sustained involvement in the arts correlates with success in other subjects, and in developing positive attitudes about community -- both generally and also for children in poverty. The correlation is particularly strong between music and success in math.

• The arts have a measurable impact on students in " high-poverty" and urban settings.

In the midst of an inspiring turnaround, the Chicago Public School District saw significant student improvement in reading and mathematics in schools where the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE) developed arts-integrated curricula.

 

• The arts in after-school programs guide disadvantaged youth toward positive behaviors and goals.

After a decade studying dozens of after-school programs for disadvantaged youth, Shirley Brice Heath of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Stanford University found that youth in arts programs were achieving more in both school and their personal lives than those from the same socioeconomic categories, as tracked by NELS: 88. Students involved in the arts programs were doing even better than those in programs that focused on sports and community involvement.

• Learning through the arts has significant effects on learning in other domains.

Judy Burton, Rob Horowitz and Hal Abeles at the Center for Arts Education Research at Teachers College in New York found that student achievement is heightened in an environment with high quality arts education and a school climate supportive of active, productive learning.

• Arts experiences enhance "critical thinking" abilities and outcomes.

Students preparing for what Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan describes as America's "economy of ideas" need an education that develops imaginative, flexible and tough-minded thinking. In examining the offerings of Arts Connection, the largest outside provider of arts education for the New York City public school system, researchers at the National Center for Gifted and Talented at the University of Connecticut found that students involved in the arts were motivated to learn not just for test results or other performance outcomes, but for the learning experience itself

Unlike other learning experiences that seek only right or wrong answers,
engagement in the arts allows for multiple outcomes. Steve Seidel and researchers from Harvard University's Project Zero found that when "refusing to simplify" Shakespeare's challenging texts, students became passionately engaged in learning classic works which high schoolers often consider boring.

The arts enable educators to reach students in effective ways.

Dennie Palmer Wolf and researchers from the Performance Assessment Collaboratives for Education (PACE) of Harvard's Graduate School of Education examined professional development programs for teachers, and articulated the numerous ways that sustained, integrated and complex projects like producing an opera - offer teachers a way to deepen learning across many disciplines.

Champions of Change was developed with the support of The GE Fund, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Arts Education Partnership and the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. For a copy of the report, please contact pcah@neh.gov.