Arts Education Increases Overall Student Performance
Research shows that young people who participate in the arts for at least three hours on three days a week for one full school year or more are:
- Four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement
- Three times more likely to be elected to class office
- Four times more likely to participate in a math and science fair
- Three times more likely to win an award for school attendance
- Four times more likely to win an award for writing an essay or poem
In addition, young arts participants compared with their peers are more likely to:
- Read for pleasure nearly twice as often
- Participate in youth groups nearly four times as frequently
- Perform community service nearly three times as often
Source: Dr. Shirley Brice Heath, Stanford University, for the Carnegie Foundation of the Advancement of Teaching
Arts Education Increases the Skills that Businesses Value
- An education in the arts encourages high achievement.
- Study of the arts encourages a suppleness of mind, toleration for ambiguity, a taste for nuance, and the ability to make trade-offs among alternative courses of action.
- Study of the arts helps students to think and work across traditional disciplines. They learn both to integrate knowledge and to “think outside the box.”
- An education in the arts teaches students how to work cooperatively.
- An education in the arts builds an understanding of diversity and the multicultural dimensions of our world.
- An arts education contributes to technological competence.
Source: Educating for the Workplace through the Arts, the Getty Education Institute for the Arts Business Week, October 28, 1996
The Arts Contribute to Excellent Education
- The visual environment of the school improves and relates better to the students.
- The intuitive, imaginative, and emotive aspects of the children are engaged in a complement to the sciences.
- History and geography are made personal and real. Artists’ perceptions add insight about life now and in the past.
- Students can develop empathy and compassion—the basis of relating to and cooperating with others.
- The multicultural aspects of the arts foster appreciation and acceptance of diversity.
- A focus on the “three Rs” (reading, writing, and arithmetic) can often stress skills over personal development; the arts teach both.
Source: “Understanding How the Arts Contribute to Excellent Education,” prepared for the National Endowment for the Arts by OMC, INC with Charles Fowler and Bernard J. McMullan, 1991.
Schools Benefit from a Strong Arts Program
Students involved in an arts program benefit from:
- Intensified student motivation to learn.
- Better attendance among students and teachers.
- Increased graduation rates.
- Improved multicultural understanding.
- Renewed and invigorated faculty.
- More highly engaged students.
- Development of a higher order of thinking skills, creativity, and problem-solving ability.
- Greater community participation and support.
Source: “The Power of the Arts to Transform Education: An Agenda for Action.” Arts Education Partnership Working Group, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 1993.
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