While arts education isn’t the hottest topic in Baltimore City reform circles, maybe its absence should be. An issue that has for years been condemned to a whisper—a need at once both clearly manifest and nearly mute under tons of testing turmoil—arts education is suddenly being spun to a different beat. And some urban school districts are beginning to listen.
Last week, the Chicago Tribute released an article with the headline, New study shows arts programs helped improve academic scores at three CPS schools. The article describes a recent study, conducted in partnership by the educational arts non-profit Changing Worlds and Loyola University, which attributed significant testing gains to arts programs in three Chicago Public Schools. Researchers tracked the test scores of 95 students enrolled in these schools, all of whom participated in Changing Worlds’ Literacy and Cultural Connections Programs, to find that “fourth graders who started with the program in 2009 saw an 11.5 percentage point gain in composite test scores,” and that these same students “scored on average more than 11 percentage points higher than fourth through sixth graders at the same schools who did not take part in the [arts] program.” (Let’s ignore for a moment that the creator of the program funded 50% of the study, and take them at their word.)
Last week, the Chicago Tribute released an article with the headline, New study shows arts programs helped improve academic scores at three CPS schools. The article describes a recent study, conducted in partnership by the educational arts non-profit Changing Worlds and Loyola University, which attributed significant testing gains to arts programs in three Chicago Public Schools. Researchers tracked the test scores of 95 students enrolled in these schools, all of whom participated in Changing Worlds’ Literacy and Cultural Connections Programs, to find that “fourth graders who started with the program in 2009 saw an 11.5 percentage point gain in composite test scores,” and that these same students “scored on average more than 11 percentage points higher than fourth through sixth graders at the same schools who did not take part in the [arts] program.” (Let’s ignore for a moment that the creator of the program funded 50% of the study, and take them at their word.)
After Chicago Public School officials recently adopted a longer school day, many groups are using research like this to push arts enrichment activities into newly available time slots. Personally, I think this would be a valuable use of time. As a test-obsessed nation, we’ve gone too long starving students of the arts in service of sought-after scores. Rigorous arts education helps provide students with a means for thinking abstractly and creatively about topics—skills that serve them academically, as well as in more obvious artistic fields.
But the artist in me is sad to see that arts education is selling out. Should arts education have to play into the testing game to achieve its goals? Can’t we just appreciate this kind of learning, for art’s sake?
Read the article here:
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