Arts Impact Receives U.S. Dept. of Education Grant

The Puget Sound Educational Service District is one of thirty-four programs nationally to receive a 4-year, $1.08 million U. S. Department of Education Arts In Education Model Development and Dissemination Grant (AEMDD).  The AEMDD Grant Program is designed to support the development, documentation, evaluation and dissemination of cohesive and innovative models that demonstrate their effectiveness in:

• Integrating arts into the core elementary and middle school curricula by strengthening the use of high-quality arts in academic instruction and strengthening the place of arts as a core academic subject in the school curricula;
• Strengthening arts instruction; and
• Improving students’ academic performance, including their skills in creating, performing and responding to the arts.

In total the Department reviewed 146 applications from around the nation for the AEMDD grant program and of those thirty-four were funded.  The grant program is designed to be a 4-year grant and funds will total 1.08 million dollars over the course of the 4 years.  This amount represents 90% of the total cost of the project which is $1.2 million for the four years.  10% of funding will come from private and corporate funding sources. 

Arts Impact/Arts Leadership (AI/AL) is a joint project of Puget Sound Educational Service District and the Washington State Alliance for Arts Education (dba ArtsEd Washington).  The project combines Arts Impact, a successful two-year teacher training model with ArtsEd Washington’s Principal Arts Leadership Initiative. 

The Arts Impact teacher training incorporates artist/mentors to develop classroom generalists to teach standards based arts and shared academic concepts through arts infused lessons, for example symmetry in math and visual art, story structure in theater and writing and number patterns in dance and math.  The Principal Arts Leadership Initiative trains principal/school/community teams to draft and implement multi-year arts plans that support teachers and incrementally bridge the gap between the school’s current arts instruction and Washington State’s Arts Essential Learnings. 

The project also partners with the Tacoma Art Museum and the Broadway Center for the Performing Arts. These cultural partners serve as the venues for teacher training summer institutes and as a resource for project funded cultural study trips.  Participating teachers take their students to a museum exhibition or a dance or theater performance as part of the total teacher training program.

Twelve elementary schools in Pierce County with free and reduced lunch percentages of 35% or more will be randomly selected and assigned to one of three groups—teacher and principal training; teacher training only; and control group.

The research model will track student performance on selected WASL tasks in math and writing that specifically line up with the arts infused concepts taught during the two year training to study the impact of arts infused learning on student achievement in math and reading.  Schools progress in implementing an arts plan will also be monitored and the effects of combining strong principal leadership training in the arts with comprehensive teacher-training will be studied. 

As Washington State is poised to begin state wide arts testing in 2008-09, this project will provide a model to support teachers and principals to prepare their students to be successful on the statewide assessments.  And more importantly, teachers will gain strategies and skills to provide students new pathways to learning.

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