Montalvo Arts Center

Montalvo Arts Center is a non-profit organization dedicated to forging connections between art, artists and the Silicon Valley communities around its Saratoga, CA campus. Montalvo fulfils its mission through regular performances and art exhibitions, offering facilities and a creative environment for artist resident fellows, and fostering artistic creativity in children through a number of education programs. Recently, Montalvo began the Teaching Artist Fellowship program in partnership with Downtown College Prep, a San Jose charter high school. This new initiative combines an artistic residency at the Montalvo campus with a teaching residency at Downtown College Prep. The Improve Group has been hired to evaluate this program during its initial pilot period.

Question

One of the challenges with a new initiative, particularly one as complex as Montalvo Arts Center’s Teaching Artist Fellowship is making clear connections between the activities of the program and the expected and actual outcomes and benefits. Montalvo seeks to develop a portable curriculum model based on the Teaching Artist Fellowship initiative. This will require learning how the initiative functions within Downtown College Prep and how and why it is successful. The Improve Group has been hired to lead an evaluation during the two-year pilot period of the initiative.

Process

The Improve Group developed an evaluation plan for the Teaching Artist Fellowship initiative that was split into two parts. During the first semester of the pilot period, the Improve Group is using short interviews and surveys of the participants (students, classroom teachers, artist-Fellow and administrators) to discover if the initiative is being implemented as initially planned and what have been the initial challenges, successes and lessons learned. This information helps Montalvo to articulate how the Teaching Artist Fellowship is structured and how it functions. During the next three semesters of the pilot period, the evaluation uses focus groups, surveys and record reviews to understand and make connections between the outcomes and benefits of the Teaching Artist Fellowship and its structure. 

Outcome

The evaluation of the Teaching Artist Fellowship initiative will be completed in summer 2009. The results of the evaluation will be used to model the initiative as it continues past its pilot period and to inform a portable curriculum model to be used in other schools and communities and by other organizations that provide community-based arts education.