The Performing Arts Workshop

Question
The Performing Arts Workshop of San Francisco wanted to know how their Artists-in-Schools residency program affects underprivileged students in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Improve Group was hired to conduct an evaluation of this program under a 2003 Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination (AEMDD) grant from the US Department of Education. The main goals of the evaluation were to discover how the Artists-in-Schools residency affects student critical thinking in the arts, academic performance and pro-social behaviors, classroom teacher methods for reaching at-risk students and school-wide integration of the performing arts.

Process
We used a quasi-experimental research design with a mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative) approach. Or data collection included review of academic and attendance records at the classroom level, focus groups with classroom teachers and teaching artists, pre-test/post-test surveys of classroom teachers, teaching artists and students and observations of residency periods. We conducted am analysis of covariance and a gain-score analysis on the quantitative data. Qualitative information was summarized with key themes. We prepared annual reports for Performing Arts Workshop and the Department of Education in each year of the three-year grant period, in addition to a cumulative report to summarize outcomes of the project as a whole.

Outcome
Through their work with the Improve Group, Performing Arts Workshop has gained evidence that their program positively impacts student critical thinking and classroom behavior. This is especially true when the program is implemented for more than 20 weeks in a school year or more than once per week. The Workshop and the Improve Group have presented results of this study at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s conference on Arts Education in Lisbon and at the American Educational Research Association annual meeting in San Francisco (see blog posting [title as link]). The reports for this project are published on the Workshop’s website (www.performingartsworkshop.org) along with a best practices manual that was created in Year 2 of the grant period. These reports have increased support for Performing Arts Workshop from the local and national arts education community. Performing Arts Workshop has also been awarded a second AEMDD grant in 2006, which will focus on the program’s effects on educators and students in special education and the Improve Group has been hired to conduct the evaluation of this new grant.