- 4 times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement
- 3 times more likely to be elected to class office within their schools
- 4 times more likely to participate in a math and science fair
- 3 times more likely to win an award for school attendance
- 4 times more likely to win an award for writing an essay or poem
Young artists, as compared with their peers, are likely to:
- Attend music, art, and dance classes nearly three times as frequently
- Participate in youth groups nearly four times as frequently
- Read for pleasure nearly twice as often
- Perform community service more than four times as often
(Living the Arts through Language + Learning: A Report on Community-based Youth Organizations, Shirley Brice Heath, Stanford University and Carnegie Foundation For the Advancement of Teaching, Americans for the Arts Monograph, November 1998)
The facts are that arts education...
- makes a tremendous impact on the developmental growth of every child and has proven to help level the "learning field" across socio-economic boundaries.
(Involvement in the Arts and Success in Secondary School, James S. Catterall, The UCLA Imagination Project, Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, UCLA, Americans for the Arts Monograph, January 1998)
- has a measurable impact on youth at risk in deterring delinquent behavior and truancy problems while also increasing overall academic performance among those youth engaged in after school and summer arts programs targeted toward delinquency prevention.
(YouthARTS Development Project, 1996, U.S. Department of Justice, National Endowment for the Arts, and Americans for the Arts)
Businesses understand that arts education...
- builds a school climate of high expectation, discipline, and academic rigor that attracts businesses relocating to your community.
- strengthens student problem-solving and critical thinking skills, adding to overall academic achievement and school success.
- helps students develop a sense of craftsmanship, quality task performance, and goal-setting—skills needed to succeed in the classroom and beyond.
- can help troubled youth, providing an alternative to destructive behavior and another way for students to approach learning.
- provides another opportunity for parental, community, and business involvement with schools, including arts and humanities organizations.
- helps all students develop more appreciation and understanding of the world around them.
Highlights from Key National Research on Arts Education
We hope that the findings from various studies recorded below are a quick introduction to some of the high quality work being done regarding the effects of the arts in the education of children. Increasingly "controlled" studies reveal a powerful relationship between study in the arts and other academic, attitudinal, and behavioral achievements. Few "causal" connections are possible at this point in social science research but gains are being made in that area.
The arts are disciplines of study in themselves with their own histories and practices yet they are also increasingly recognized for the ways they promote learning for various children and in various ways. The findings reveal some of the academic, behavioral, and attitudinal power of the arts among general K-12, pre-school, and at-risk populations of students.
A summary of findings from seven separate academic studies revealed that the arts:
- reach students who are not otherwise being reached
- reach students in ways that they are not otherwise being reached
- connect students to themselves and each other
- transform the environment for learning
- provide learning opportunities for the adults in the lives of young people
- provide new challenges for those students already considered successful
- connect learning experiences to the world of real work
- enable young people to have direct involvement with the arts and artists
- require significant staff development
- support extended engagement in the artistic process
source: Champions of Change, 1999 pp. 9-11
The YouthARTS Development Project, a research initiative of the U.S. Department of Justice, offered arts opportunities to youth at risk in three cities and found decreased delinquent behavior and improved cooperation and attitudes about school. Some of the findings reveal that in Portland, while only 43 percent of the program participants demonstrated an ability to cooperate with other at the start of the program--a full 100 percent did so by the end of the 12-week program. Attitude toward school also improved by program participants: only 7.7 percent improvement in the non-arts group over the same time frame in contrast to 31.6 percent improvement in the youth involved with the arts program. In San Antonio, 16.4 percent of the arts program participants had a decrease in delinquent behavior in contrast to only 3.4 percent of the non-arts comparison group. In Atlanta, despite the fact that the arts program participants had, on average, more court referrals than the comparison group at the start of the program (6.9 and 2.2 referrals, respectively), they had, on average, fewer court referrals during the program period than the comparison group (1.3 and 2.0 respectively).
source: OJJDP, U.S. Department of Justice
study: YouthARTS Development Project pp. 7, 10, 12
Troubled students involved in afterschool arts programs excelled in academics and school life beyond less troubled students in a national sample. Though the students observed and studied in after school arts organizations were twice as likely as those in a national sample (U.S. Department of Education, NELS:88) to be undergoing insecure family situations and attending violent schools, they were four times more likely to have won school-wide attention for their academic achievement, three times more likely to be elected to class office, four times more likely to participate in a math and science fair, four times more likely to win an award for writing an essay or poem, and three times more likely to win an award for school attendance.
source: Americans for the Arts Monograph, p. 3
Living the Arts through Language+ Learning: a report on community-based youth organizations
Shirley Brice Heath
Stanford University and Carnegie Foundation For the Advancement of Teaching
The arts provide a "cognitive use of the emotions. In this domain it is judgment rather than rule that prevails"(Israel Scheffler, 1977). Ten general lessons the arts teach children:
- to make good judgments about qualitative relationships
- that problems can have more than one solution
- to celebrate multiple perspectives
- that in complex forms of problem solving, purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity.
- that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know.
- that small differences can have large effects
- to think through and within a material.
- constructive ways to say what cannot be said
- that the arts offer experience we can have from no other source
- that the arts' position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.
source: Learning and the Arts: Crossing Boundaries, 2000, p. 14
article: Ten Lessons the Arts Teach
Professor of Education Elliot Eisner
Stanford University
More students who had received high levels of arts instruction earned high scores on measures of creative thinking than students with the lowest levels of arts instruction. Creative thinking includes various aspects of problem solving: how many ideas a student has in response to a problem, how original those ideas are, how detailed the ideas are, and the student's ability to keep her mind open long enough for innovative ideas to surface. The results were found to be, "more firmly tied to rich arts provision than to high economic status."
source: Champions of Change, 1999
p.38, p.39, Figure 1
Teachers College/Columbia University
study: Learning In and Through the Arts: Curriculum Implications
A student making music experiences the "simultaneous engagement of senses, muscles, and intellect. Brain scans taken during musical performances show that virtually the entire cerebral cortex is active while musicians are playing." Different areas of the brain perform different functions from directing movement, to thinking, to feeling, to remembering including many sub-regions within those areas that relate to more specialized activities. Making music engages, and is increasingly seen to strengthen, a vast array of brain power.
source: Educational Leadership, November, 1998, p.38
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
article: The Music in Our Minds
Norman M. Weinberger, Professor of Psychobiology at the University of California, Irvine
First graders who received instruction in music listening had significantly higher reading scores than those first graders who did not receive the instruction but were similar in age, IQ and socioeconomic status. The same teacher taught reading to all the students. Those given music instruction were taught for 40 minutes a day for 7 months and learned to recognize melodic and rhythmic elements in folk songs. They scored in the 88th percentile for reading performance and the non-instructed control group scored in the 72nd percentile.
source: Educational Leadership, November, 1998, p.38
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
article: The Music in Our Minds
Norman M. Weinberger, Professor of Psychobiology at the University of California, Irvine, referencing research of Hurwitz et al, 1975, Journal of Learning Disabilities, 8, 45-51
Elements of music and reading are highly related in first graders. Students were tested on various elements of music and reading and a strong relationship was found between a student's awareness of pitch and their ability to sound out material in reading--material that included standard language and phonetic material.
source: Educational Leadership, November, 1998, p.39
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
article: The Music in Our Minds
Norman M. Weinberger, Professor of Psychobiology at the University of California, Irvine, referencing research of S.J. Lamb and A.H. Gregory, 1993, Educational Psychology, 13, 19-26
Elementary students who attended schools in which the arts were integrated with classroom curriculum outperformed their peers in math who did not have an arts-integrated curriculum. In 1998, more than 60 percent of the students attending schools integrated with the Chicago Arts Partnership in Education (CAPE) performed at or above grade level on the math portion of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills while the remainder of Chicago Public School students averaged just over 40 percent. Those same numbers in 1992, before the CAPE program began were 40 percent in the pre-CAPE schools and 28 percent district-wide.
source: Champions of Change, 1999
p. 54-55, Figure 4
Imagination Project at University of California
Graduate School of Education & Information Studies
study: Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education Summary Evaluation
6th grade students who attended schools in which the arts were integrated with classroom curriculum outperformed their peers in reading who did not have an arts-integrated curriculum. In 1998, the difference in the Iowa Basic Skills Test for 6th grade reading favoring 19 schools integrated with the Chicago Arts Partnership in Education (CAPE) was 14 percentage points above 29 other Chicago public schools matched to the CAPE schools in terms of family income, neighborhood and academic performance. In 1992, before CAPE was initiated, the difference between those schools had been 8 percentage points.
source: Champions of Change, 1999
p. 55, Figure 5
Imagination Project at University of California
Graduate School of Education & Information Studies
study: Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education Summary Evaluation
Students involved in after-school activities at arts organizations showed greater use of complex language than their peers in activities through community-service or sports organizations. Linguistic anthropologists found that "the influences of participation in the arts on language show up in the dramatic increase in syntactic complexity, hypothetical reasoning, and questioning approaches taken up by young people within four-to-six weeks of their entry into the arts organization." "Generalized patterns emerged among youth participating in after-school arts groups: a five-fold increase in use of if-then statements, scenario building followed by what-if questions, and how-about prompts, more than a two-fold increase in use of mental state verbs (consider, understand, etc.), a doubling in the number of modal verbs (could, might, etc.)"
source: Champions of Change, 1999, p.27
Stanford University and Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
study: Imaginative Actuality: Learning in the Arts During Nonschool Hours
Students in afterschool arts groups "had nine times as many opportunities to write original text material (not dictated notes) as their classroom counterparts."
source: Champions of Change, 1999, p.28
Stanford University and Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
study: Imaginative Actuality: Learning in the Arts During Nonschool Hours
Many students in a theater acting program reported that the intense review of Shakespeare texts in preparation for performing helped them not only master that difficult material but also improve their reading of other complex material such as math and physics texts.
source: Champions of Change, 1999, p.82
Harvard Project Zero from the Shakespeare & Company Research Study
study: 'Stand and Unfold Yourself': A Monograph on the Shakespeare & Company Research Study
Acting out texts creates compelling learning experiences for students that also benefit parents and the broader community. Students in the Shakespeare & Company program learn Shakespeare's difficult texts through the process by which an actor analyzes and works with the text of a play and a company of actors. In so doing the acting program meets the six criteria for rigorous and relevant project-based learning: authenticity, academic rigor, applied learning, active exploration, adult relationships, and assessment practices. "These performances are not simply school-room exercises: they are authentic acts of communication, culture, and community. When they are successful, they are demonstrations of deep understanding that make the complex and difficult world of Shakespeare's text lucid, vibrant, relevant, and moving to everyone in the auditorium."
source: Champions of Change, 1999, p.84
Harvard Project Zero from the Shakespeare & Company Research Study
study: 'Stand and Unfold Yourself': A Monograph on the Shakespeare & Company Research Study
Elementary students involved in creating original opera showed higher rates of classroom participation and quality of participation than their non opera-creating peers. Students involved in reflecting, collaborating, and making the choices necessary to create opera participated more in class (50 percent vs. 33 percent) than their non opera-creating peers. The participation of the opera-creating students was more coherent and responsive to the flow of others' comments. The researchers note the pattern in three opera-creating classrooms, "breaks down in the fourth, where students were more often a work force doing teachers' bidding than a company of individuals in charge of making choices and decisions." In other words, the responsibility for and engagement in creating art is crucial to yielding its broader benefits. The longer students are engaged in the opera-creating process, the more substantial the effects on the quantity and quality of their classroom participation.
source: Champions of Change, 1999
p. 94, Table 1, p.95, Table 2
PACE, Harvard Graduate School of Education
study: Why the Arts Matter in Education or Just What Do Children Learn When They Create an Opera
Various disciplined attitudes and behaviors were observed in underprivileged students who were given instruction in an art discipline. The effects of students' involvement with the arts were tracked over time. These effects included artistic, academic, and personal achievement and states of mind. Common characteristics across all age groups (elementary through adult) were: resilience, self-regulation, (constructive) identity, and the ability to experience flow (total focus and absorption in a task).
source: Champions of Change, 1999, p.69
National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented
University of Connecticut, Storrs
study: Artistic Talent Development for Urban Youth: The Promise and the Challenge
In schools with strong arts climates, teachers and students both benefit. Teachers found students who had received high levels of arts training to be more cooperative and more willing to share what they had learned than students with low levels of arts training. "High-arts" students were better able to express their ideas, use their imaginations and take risks in learning, as reported by teachers. High-arts students had better rapport with teachers and teachers in arts-rich schools demonstrated more interest in their work and were more likely to become involved in professional development experiences. They were also more likely to be innovative in their teaching.
source: Champions of Change, 1999
pp. 38-41, Figures 2 and 5
Teachers College/Columbia University
study: Learning In and Through the Arts: Curriculum Implications
Environments of afterschool activities at arts organizations "emerged as somewhat different from those of groups engaged primarily in community service or sports." Linguistic anthropologists found that in the arts organizations, "Students participated in planning and preparing as a group, their sentences peppered, "with 'could,' 'will,' 'can,'--asserting possibility."
source: Champions of Change, 1999, p.24-25
Stanford University and Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
study: Imaginative Actuality: Learning in the Arts During Nonschool Hours
The opportunity to be instructed in music or dance disciplines offered a variety of compelling social benefits for students in addition to the knowledge and skill of an art. For some of the underprivileged students offered this opportunity to be treated as gifted and talented, the participation in the art form was an emotional safe haven from family turmoil. The art forms were an assimilation tool for recent immigrants and other new kids. Achievement in the art and friendships built in that process bolstered students as they entered new situations of various kinds. Performances brought the broader community together in pride. Horizons were broadened through access to classes at studios and trips to theaters outside of students' immediate neighborhoods and offered a glimpse of the broader cultural world. "Ultimately the skills and discipline students gained, the bonds they formed with peers and adults, and the rewards they received through instruction and performing fueled their talent development journey and helped most achieve success both in and outside of school."
source: Champions of Change, 1999, p.77-78
National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented
University of Connecticut, Storrs
study: Artistic Talent Development for Urban Youth: The Promise and the Challenge
The arts develop skills and habits of mind that are important for workers in the new "Economy of Ideas" (Alan Greenspan). The SCANS 2000 Report links arts education with economic realities, asserting that young people who learn the rigors of planning and production in the arts will be valuable employees in the idea-driven workplace of the future." (* The Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) was established in 1990 by the Secretary of Labor with the goal of encouraging a high-performance economy characterized by high-skill, high-wage employment. It defined critical skills that employees need in order to succeed in the workforce and, indeed, in life. In addition to basic literacy and computation skills which workers must know how to apply, they need the ability to work on teams, solve complex problems in systems, understand and use technology.)
source: Champions of Change, p.32
Stanford University and Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
study: Imaginative Actuality: Learning in the Arts During Nonschool Hours
Preschoolers who were given music keyboard lessons improved their spatial-temporal reasoning. A peer group, who were given computer lessons, showed no improvement. Spatial-temporal reasoning is the abstract reasoning that is used for understanding relationships between objects such as calculating a proportion or playing chess. Spatial-temporal reasoning is important in subjects such as mathematics and science.
source: Educational Leadership, November, 1998, p.39
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
article: The Music in Our Minds
Norman M. Weinberger, Professor of Psychobiology at the University of California, Irvine, referencing research of F.H. Rauscher, G.L. Shaw et al, 1997, Neurological Research , 19, 2-8
Dramatic play, rhyming games, and songs are some of the language-rich activities that build pre-reading skills. The problems many children face in learning to read could be prevented with high-quality instruction that incorporates a range of pre-school language-building activities and early exposure to stories and books.
source: Young Children and the Arts: Making Creative Connection , 1998, p. 1
Arts Education Partnership
Referencing Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, 1998
Regular, frequent instruction in drama and sign language created higher scores in language development for Head Start students than for a control group not offered drama and sign language. Drama and sign language were used to tap the physical, kinesthetic, and visual abilities of the 60 Head Start children studied. The four-year-olds participated in activities combining drama and sign language for four days a week throughout the 1987-88 school year. The children in the drama/sign language program scored significantly higher on the Head Start Measures Battery, Language Scale, than the 60 children in the control group.
study: Young Children and the Arts: Making Creative Connections, 1998, p. 20
Arts Education Partnership
Referencing Youth Theatre Journal,
American Alliance for Theatre & Education
Drama and Sign Language: A Multisensory Approach to the Language Acquisition of Disadvantaged Preschool Children,
vol. 6, No, 3, 1992
A co-relationship between high involvement in the arts and better academic scores was found among all students and remained consistent when the students studied were selected only from the lowest socioeconomic quartile. Socioeconomic status (SES) takes into account parental income and education levels and has long been known to be the most significant predictor of academic performance. High SES students would be expected to have both greater involvement in the arts and better academic performance making the relationship seen here between the two not very significant. However, by comparing low SES students with other low SES students, the relationship between high arts involvement and better academic performance could be tested without SES affecting the results.
In the low SES group, significant differences were found between the academic achievement of high arts-involved students and low arts-involved students as measured by standardized tests and reading proficiency measures. For instance, 30.9 percent of 12th grade, low SES, high arts-involved students scored in the top half on the standardized tests which combined math and verbal achievement. Only 23.4 percent of their low arts-involved peers (12th grade, low SES) did so. For achievement in high levels of reading proficiency the percentages are 37.9 percent for the high arts-involved students (12th grade, low SES) and 30.4 percent for the low arts involved (12th grade, low SES).
source: Champions of Change, 1999, p. 8
Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, University of California at Los Angeles
study: Involvement in the Arts and Human Development: General Involvement and Intensive Involvement in Music and Theater Arts
The levels of academic achievement recorded by high arts-involved students in the lowest socioeconomic (SES) quartile narrows the gap that they have with higher SES students. 12th grade, low SES, high arts-involved students nearly close the achievement gap in reading proficiency with higher SES, low arts-involved 12th graders (37.9% reaching high levels of reading proficiency versus 42.9% respectively).
source: Champions of Change, 1999, pp. 6, 8
Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, University of California at Los Angeles
study: Involvement in the Arts and Human Development: General Involvement and Intensive Involvement in Music and Theater Arts
Drop outs rates are co-related to levels of arts-involvement among all students, even when controlled for socioeconomic status (SES), and high arts-involved, low SES students close the drop out gap with higher SES but low arts-involved students. Low SES students in general have a higher drop out rate than higher SES students but 3.5% of low SES, high arts-involved 8th graders studied dropped out by the 10th grade whereas 3.7% of higher SES but low arts-involved 8th graders dropped out by the 10th grade.
source: Champions of Change, 1999, pp. 6, 8
Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, University of California at Los Angeles
study: Involvement in the Arts and Human Development: General Involvement and Intensive Involvement in Music and Theater Arts
A high level of involvement in instrumental music co-related to high achievement in math proficiency. This held true among all students and among those students in the lowest socio-economic (SES) quartile. More than twice as many 12th grade, high music-involved, low SES students performed at high levels of math proficiency as non music-involved, low SES 12th grade students. Instrumental music involvement also related to high-music, low SES students closing the math achievement gap with higher SES students. In 8th grade, high-music, low SES students closed the expected achievement gap that low SES students would usually have with the average student. By 12th grade the high-music, low SES students had pulled significantly ahead of the average student in math proficiency (33.1 percent to 21.3 percent).
source: Champions of Change, 1999
p. 11, figures 8 and 9
p.12 text and figures 10 and 11
Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, University of California at Los Angeles
study: Involvement in the Arts and Human Development: General Involvement and Intensive Involvement in Music and Theater Arts
High level of involvement in theater co-related to high levels of achievement in reading proficiency. Low socio-economic status (SES) students highly involved in theater outscored the low SES students who were not involved in theater in reading proficiency. The 9 percent advantage of high-theater involved 8th graders grows to a 20 percent advantage by 12th grade.
source: Champions of Change, 1999, p. 14
Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, University of California at Los Angeles
study: Involvement in the Arts and Human Development: General Involvement and Intensive Involvement in Music and Theater Arts
High levels of arts involvement co-related to the number of hours students watched television. 10th grade students in the top quartile of arts involvement watched less television than those students in the bottom quartile of arts involvement. 28.2 percent of the high-arts students watched one hour or less of television on weekdays contrasted to 15.1 percent of the low-arts students. Only 20.6 percent of the high-arts students watched three hours or more of television on weekdays contrasted to 34.9 percent of low-arts students.
source: Champions of Change, 1999
p. 3, Figure 1
Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, University of California at Los Angeles
study: Involvement in the Arts and Human Development: General Involvement and Intensive Involvement in Music and Theater Arts
Students in the United States receive different degrees of instruction in the various art forms but not a high degree of instruction in any of them. The National Assessment of Educational Progress determined in 1997 that 3 percent of the nation's eighth-graders attend schools that reported that the typical eighth-grader receives instruction in dance at least three or four times a week. For theater the comparable figure is 10 percent, for music it is 43 percent and for visual arts, 52 percent.
The National Assessment for Educational Progress, 1997
National Center for Education Statistics,
U.S. Department of Education
Instruction and participation in the arts affects students' abilities to respond to, perform, and create in the arts. Students who played instruments almost every day schored almost twice as high in music performance (on average, 53 percent) as those student who did not have music all year (27 percent). The same relationship held true for singing. Those students who were asked to sing almost every day scored almost a third higher (on average 40 percent) in music creating than those students who did not have music that year (29 percent). Among the students in the upper 25 percent of those tested in responding to music, 44 percent reported playing music in a band, either at school or independently, compared to only six percent among those in the lowest 25 percent.
The National Assessment for Educational Progress, 1997
press release
National Center for Education Statistics,
U.S. Department of Education
"The Congress finds that the arts are forms of understanding and ways of knowing that are fundamentally important to education." The United States Congress drew that conclusion, among others, about arts education in the re-authorization of The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (H.R.6, Title X, section D, 1994).
Champions of Change
Summary
Champions of Change (1999) is a collection of seven major studies that examined the role of arts education on the academic, behavioral, and thinking lives of children. The report acknowledges the "messy, often hard-to-define real world of learning, both in and out of school" and, therefore, sees these findings as all the more relevant.
In addition to the individual studies, all conducted by professional academics, the report organizes the material from each of the studies into a coherent presentation of the broader concepts and findings that emerged. The studies reveal that the arts:
- reach students who are not otherwise being reached
- reach students in ways that they are not otherwise being reached
- connect students to themselves and each other
- transform the environment for learning
- provide learning opportunities for the adults in the lives of young people
- provide new challenges for those students already considered successful
- connect learning experiences to the world of real work
- enable young people to have direct involvement with the arts and artists
- require significant staff development
- support extended engagement in the artistic process