National Arts Education Model Schools/Districts & Partnerships
The following are schools, districts, and partnerships that have been evaluated for success in helping students with increased academic growth and school engagement. The list is not meant to be inclusive nor exclusive, but focuses on a few programs with enough history to be both quantitatively and qualitatively evaluated:
- Arizona: Opening Minds Through the Arts, Tucson http://www.omaproject.org/
- South Carolina: ABC – Arts in Basic Curriculum http://www.winthrop.edu/abc/
- Mississippi: WSI – Mississippi Whole School Initiative http://www.mswholeschools.org/
- Oklahoma: A+ Schools – Oklahoma http://www.okaplus.ucok.edu/
- Connecticut: HOT (Higher Order Thinking) Schools http://www.ctarts.org/hot/whoshot.htm
- Texas/Dallas: Big Thought http://www.bigthought.org/
Other National Examples of Promising Arts Education Programs:
The following sites, with the addition of Big Thought, are currently part of a five-year arts education initiative funded through the Ford Foundation:
- California/Alameda County: Using an online petition and letter writing campaign, the Alliance for Arts Learning Leadership (AALL) generated support for Governor Schwarzenegger’s $105 million arts education block grants for public schools. http://www.artiseducation.org/aall/aall.htm
- Maryland: The Baltimore Partners for Enhanced Learning is working to improve performance in high school by focusing on closing the learning gap between elementary and middle school. http://www.baltimorepartners.org/organizationalhistory.html
- California/Berkeley: The Arts Education Initiative (AEI)
seeks to develop, from recruitment to service, new teachers and urban
school leaders who will infuse the arts throughout K-12 public schools.
http://www gse.berkeley.edu/outreach/aei/aei.html - Ohio/Cleveland: The new Cleveland Integrated Arts Collaborative has initiated project READ (Revitalizing Education through Arts Discipline) to improve reading skills by combining arts and literacy for Pre-K through high school students. http://www.yaneo.org/what/artisedu.html
- Mississippi/Jackson: Ask 4 More Arts, a school-community-arts partnership that grew out of the Ask 4 More collaborative, is an arts integration and artist-in-residence program found in fifteen elementary schools to date. http://www.jackson.k12.ms.us/departments/curriculum/ask4more/ask4more_arts.ht
- Missouri/St. Louis: Interchange is a new, innovative community-wide collaborative in St. Louis that has come together to boost the academic achievement of the city's public school students by offering an expanded arts integrated curriculum. http://www.interchangestlouis.org/
- Washington, DC: Formed in 1998, the DC Collaborative believes that arts education enhances children’s intellectual and social development and should be enjoyed by every student. Last spring, the collaborative launched the Arts Education Initiative, a three-year endeavor that will bring equitable arts experiences, learning, and integration to all students in DC public schools. http://www.dccollaborative.org/programs/artseducationinitiative.html
