What does this indicator measure?
This indicator reports the findings of an evaluation research project examining the effects of an arts-enriched curriculum on the academic performance of Dallas Independent School District (DISD) students as compared with the academic performance of DISD students not receiving an arts-enriched curriculum.
As described in program documents, ArtsPartners is a community partnership among the DISD, the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs, and over 60 professional arts and cultural organizations. Big Thought serves as the managing partner of the ArtsPartners program, with responsibilities including curriculum development, professional development and implementation, private sector fundraising, governance, and fiscal management. The ArtsPartners program is designed to provide DISD students with access to cultural institutions, and provide tools to teachers to ensure that cultural arts programs have maximum impact on students, classrooms, and schools. The data presented in this indicator have been obtained from the interim reports and final report created during the longitudinal evaluation of the ArtPartners project.
Why is this indicator important?
Integrating cultural arts into academic curricula has been a longstanding practice in American public education. Earlier generations of American public school students often enjoyed a variety of cultural arts offerings as a basic component of their public education experience. However, as many school districts throughout the nation increasingly encounter shrinking budgets, cultural arts course offerings and extracurricular activities are often significantly reduced, and in extreme cases even completely eliminated, in the effort to fund the more traditional academic curricula.
As it turns out, the impact of not offering cultural arts curricula extends beyond the mere absence of classes and activities. A growing body of educational research continually suggests that educational curricula effectively integrating arts and cultural experiences have a beneficial impact because they augment learning and result in higher student scores on academic achievement tests. This indicator is important because it presents data that provide insight regarding the role and impact of cultural arts education in the DISD.
How are we doing?
As noted in the Spring 2003 interim report for the 3-year ArtsPartners Longitudinal Study, fourth-grade DISD students receiving arts-enriched curricula showed significant growth on the Reading Texas Learning Index. Their average gain was over 6 percentage points higher than those students who did not receive arts-enriched curricula. Minority students (both Hispanic and African American) receiving arts-enriched lesson cycles outperformed their peers. African American students outperformed their peers by an average of 16.09%, and Hispanic students receiving arts-enriched lesson cycles outperformed their peers by an average of 4.98%.
The Spring 2004 interim report for the ArtsPartners Longitudinal Study supports the assertion that the program has a positive effect on student literacy outcomes. According to the 2004 interim report, the data also suggest that the Dallas ArtsPartners curriculum can make a significant contribution toward improving students' writing skills, fluency, word choice, and voice (i.e., a distinctive personal writing style). It is noted here that the Spring 2004 interim report also identifies particular circumstances that have affected the comparability of the data in the 2004 report with data previously collected. Readers are urged to download the reports provided below and/or visit the ArtsPartnersWeb page for important information regarding the results of this study. Additional information about the ArtsPartners program and Big Thought is provided in the ArtsPartners community report provided below.