• Arts Rationale

  Arts Research

  Arts - Dance

  Arts - Music

  Arts - Theatre

  Arts - Visual

  Arts - Glossary

The Arts Standards

Research Supporting the Value of the Arts as Core Subjects

• The arts have far-reaching potential to help students achieve education goals. Students of the arts continue to outperform their non-arts peers on the Scholastic Assessment Test, according to the College Entrance Examination Board. In 1995, SAT scores for students who had studied the arts more than four years were 59 points higher on the verbal and 44 points higher on the math portion than students with no coursework or experience in the arts.

• The College Board, Profile of SAT and Achievement Test Takers, 1995. The percentage of students at or above grade level in second-grade maths was highest in those with two years of test arts, less in those with only one year and lowest in those with no test arts.

Learning Improved by Arts Training, Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science, by Alan Fox, Donna Jeffrey and Faith Knowles, May 1996.

• Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, studied the power of music by observing two groups of preschoolers. One group took piano lessons and sang daily in chorus. The other did not. After eight months the musical 3-year olds were expert puzzlemasters, scoring 80 percent higher than their playmates did in spatial intelligence-the ability to visualize the world accurately. This skill later translates into complex mathematics and engineering skills. "Early music training can enhance a child's ability to reason," says Irvine physicist Gordon Shaw.

• Scientists argue that children are capable of far more at younger ages than schools generally realize . . . the optimum "windows of opportunity for learning" last until about the age of 10 or 12, says Harry Chugani of Wayne State University's Children's Hospital of Michigan.

Why Do Schools Flunk Biology?, Newsweek, by LynNell Hancock, February 1996.

• Classes were more interactive, there were more student-initiated topics and discussions, and more time was devoted to literacy activities and problem-solving activities in schools using the arts-based "Different Ways of Knowing" program. The program also produced significant positive effects on student achievement, motivation and engagement in learning.

Different Ways of Knowing: 1991-94 National Longitudinal Study Final Report, by J.S. Catterall, 1995.

• Self-concept is positively enhanced through the arts, according to a review of 57 studies, as are language acquisition, cognitive development, critical thinking ability and social skills. The authors examined studies of measurable results in the emotional and social development of children. The relationship between music participation and self-concept was strongly in evidence.

The Effects of Arts and Music Education on Student's Self-Concept, by J. Trusty and G. M. Oliva, 1994.

• As critics, the children learned to emphasize the value of rules, resources and bases for common knowledge in dramatic interpretation. As characters, they shifted perspective from self to other through voice, physical action, and connection to other characters.

Learning to Act/Acting to Learn: Children as Actors, Critics, and Characters in Classroom Theatre, by Shelby Wolf, 1994.

• Research at New York University revealed that critical thinking skills in the arts are transferred to other subjects1, which is something Ann Alejandro, a teacher in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas, observes in her classroom everyday: "I am convinced of the parallels between teaching children how to draw and teaching them how to read and write. In all cases, students need to learn how to see, to interpret data from the word, the canvas, and the page."²

¹National Arts Education Research Center Principal Research Findings, 1987-1991, by Jerrold Ross and Ellyn Berk, 1992.
2Like Happy Dreams-Integrating Visual Arts, Writing and Reading, by Ann Alejandro, 1994.

• The writing quality of elementary students was consistently and significantly improved by using drawing and drama techniques, compared to the control group, which used only the discussion approach. Drama and drawing techniques allowed the students to experiment, evaluate, revise and integrate ideas before writing began, thus significantly improving results.

Drama and Drawing for Narrative Writing in Primary Grades, by B. H. Moore and H. Caldwell, 1993

• Students improved an average of one to two months in reading for each month they participated in the "Learning to Read Through the Arts" program in New York City. Students' writing also improved, the study revealed. "Learning to Read Through the Arts," an intensive, integrated arts curriculum, has been designated a model program by the National Diffusion Network and has been adopted by numerous schools and districts across the country.
  

Chapter 1 Developer/Demonstration Program: Learning to Read Through the Arts, 1992-93; Office of Educational Research, New York City Board of Education, 1993, 1981, 1978.

• Originality and imagination scores were significantly higher for preschool children with disabilities after participation in a dance program than for those participating in the adopted physical education program.
  

Effect of a Dance Program on the Creativity of Preschool Handicapped Children, by D. Jay, 1991.

• "Humanitas Program" students in Los Angeles high schools wrote higher quality essays, showed more conceptual understanding of history, and made more interdisciplinary references than non-Humanitas students. Low-achieving students made gains equivalent to those made by high-achieving students. The Humanitas program incorporates the arts into a broad humanities curriculum, drawing upon the relationship between literature, social studies and the arts. The program has reached 3,500 students in 20 high schools.

The Humanitas Program Evaluation Project 1990-91, by P. Aschbacher and J. Herman, 1991.

• High-risk elementary students with one year in the "Different Ways of Knowing" program gained eight percentile points on standardized language arts tests; students with two years in the program gained 16 percentile points. Non-program students showed no percentile gain in language arts. Students with three years in the program outscored non-program students with significantly higher report card grades in the core subject areas of language arts, mathematics, reading and social studies. Participants showed significantly higher levels of engagement and increased beliefs that there is value in personal effort for achievement. In total, 920 elementary students in 52 classrooms were studied in this national longitudinal study in Los Angeles; south Boston; and Cambridge, Massachusetts.