Assessment
Interchange partners with Dr. Rob Horowitz, Associate Professor of Music and Associate Director of Learning In and Through the Arts at Teachers College, Columbia University, on the formative evaluation of our program.
Dr. Horowitz is a national leader on arts integration research and is looking at Interchange's ability to:
- Improve student outcomes, including meaningful engagement, academic achievement, artistic achievement, and thinking, social and personal skills.
- Enhance teacher knowledge and skills through partnerships with teaching artists and professional development.
- Impact school climate and culture.
Arts integration is a model that is working to improve student outcomes in urban public schools across the country. In St. Louis, we can expect:
Improved student performance.In a national study of 25,000 middle and high school students, those who participated in arts learning performed significantly better than their counterparts on standardized tests, across all socio-economic backgrounds.
In Dallas, fourth grade students benefiting from a curriculum involving programming with area arts and cultural partners demonstrated improved performance on literacy measures of vocabulary, organization, personal voice and overall writing compared to their peers.
Fourth graders in Cleveland with three to six semesters of arts-integrated curriculum performed significantly higher on the 2004 Ohio Proficiency Test in reading, writing, math, science and citizenship when compared to Cleveland students with only one or two semesters of arts-integrated learning.
Success in today's world requires innovative thinkers people with imagination and creative problem solving skills beyond the "basics" of reading and math. Arts integration enables students to comprehend the basics while building their capacity for creativity and innovation.
A 2007 national poll of likely voters found that almost nine in ten agree that imagination is important to innovation and student success. Fifty-six percent of voters believe that compared to other nations America devotes less time to developing the imagination and innovation. Seventy-three percent believe that building capacities of the imagination are just as important as "the basics" for students in public education.
Weaving the arts with the standard subjects is important because not all children learn in the same way. Using the arts to bring the curriculum to life encourages active learning and embraces the learning styles, abilities and needs of all students.
Improved outcomes related to overall school culture and attendance.
Students excited about learning are excited about coming to school. At Jefferson Elementary in St. Louis, not a single student missed a single day during a four-month arts-integrated unit on the Civil Rights era.
