Fifteen (15) new awards were made in FY 2008.

The Active, Collaborative Teaching (ACT) Project will study of the impact of using process drama pedagogy as an approach to embedding arts instruction throughout the curriculum at the elementary level. The project represents a collaborative effort between Moorpark Unified School District, California Lutheran University (CLU), and the Kingsmen Shakespeare Company. Project ACT will serve six elementary schools in Moorpark Unified School District with all schools located in the City of Moorpark. This project will phase in service to all elementary school students in Moorpark Unified School District over a two-year period to include 3,040 K-5th grade students.

Project ACT has three goals: (1) Create a practical, effective, replicable model of quality arts integration; (2) Increase teacher effectiveness through art education; and (3) Increase student achievement. The four areas in which project activities will take place are professional development, classroom implementation, project design and evaluation, and dissemination. In the area of staff development, the project will implement yearly Summer Institutes to train project teachers in process drama pedagogy. The project will also provide training for CLU student interns in university level teacher preparation classes, mentoring and coaching for teachers and interns, placement of student interns in project classes to support and sustain the implementation of project strategies, and presentations and collaboration with artists-in-residence (Kingsmen Shakespeare Company). Classroom implementation activities will include demonstration lessons by CLU faculty and teacher-leaders and the implementation of lessons designed by teachers trained in ACT strategies. A project advisory committee will be responsible for refining project design and the evaluation plan, as well as monitoring project results and planning program improvements. Project dissemination will take place through the publication of articles, website posting of project-created lessons, conference presentations, and a final Summer Institute where training and project-developed products will be available to districts interested in replicating project activities and results.

ACT addresses the absolute priorities of standards-based arts education at the elementary level and linkage to state and national standards. The project focuses on and will evaluate student performance in math and language arts to address those two invitational priorities. The evaluation design proposes a quasi-experimental, comparison group design that meets the competitive priority. Project outcomes will include increases in the skill level of current classroom teachers, increases in level of preparation for teaching for student interns, increased student achievement in math and English language arts, and decreases in the achievement gap for Hispanic, English learners, low income, and special education students. The project will produce products for dissemination including lessons, articles on project results, and training materials.

This proposed San Diego County Office of Education (SDCOE) project will provide lasting professional development for teachers as well as marked academic improvement and rewarding learning experiences for a large population of low-income and English Language Learner third and fourth grade students in north San Diego County. By providing innovative, standards-based arts education programs, this project will: improve student academic performance in key English Language Arts (ELA) standards, including word analysis and reading comprehension skills; increase educators' confidence and competence in using arts integrated teaching methods; and develop greater student proficiency in working with and responding to the visual arts and theater.

In order to meet these needs, SDCOE is building on existing partnerships with the North County Professional Development Federation (NCPDF), the San Diego Arts Network, and Center ARTES at California State University San Marcos (CSUSM). This project provides a series of summer institutes that increase teacher proficiencies and confidence in using visual arts and theater activities to address statewide ELA Standards. At these institutes, teachers will: learn existing strategies to teach through the arts as well as about the arts; become familiar with the California Visual and Performing Arts Standards; learn about evidence-based research in arts education and its implications for their work with students; participate in hands on activities to increase their artistic proficiencies; and collaborate with arts coaches, CSUSM faculty, and each other to develop standards-based arts integrated lesson plans for reading skills. Local school and district level administrators will also attend the institutes in order to become familiar with arts integrated techniques in general, and this program in particular, and to learn to provide crucial support needed from those levels in order to ensure the long-term success of the project.

Following the summer institutes, teachers will receive further professional development support through in-class visits from highly experienced arts coaches. These coaches, professional artists themselves, are skilled at using the arts to increase student academic performance in curricular areas. The visits will also give students valuable one-on-one engagement with professional artists, providing them opportunities to experience the artistic process and the value of the arts.

Two week-long institutes will be held each summer for three years with approximately 25 teachers each time, thus training 50 teachers per year and 150 teachers over the duration of the project. Visits from arts coaches will occur once per week for one academic year. Arts coaches will directly serve 1000 students per year and 3000 plus over the term of the project.

This project anticipated bringing proven, effective arts education techniques to northern San Diego County schools. Teachers from 70 eligible schools will be invited to participate, and with the success of this project, many significant resources will become immediately available to the 650 schools and nearly half-million students served by SDCOE. These resources will include a large body of documented best-practices, a library of standards-based curricular guidelines and lesson plans, and a great influx of teachers well-versed in teaching through the arts who can conduct workshops and mentoring for other teachers throughout their schools and districts.

The evaluation plan for this project is an experimental design utilizing a stratified random sample, and will collect and analyze both formative and summative data to be used for accountability reporting and program improvement. The evaluation component will also provide guidance for the project team on replication through the year-to-year expansion, and will provide rigorous and robust research to the SUAVE program and to the larger education community.

The project meets the Absolute Priority, since it is a standards-based arts integrated teaching model for elementary schools. It also meets the Competitive Preference Priority through its experimental evaluation design and Invitational Priority 2 as it supports reading proficiencies.

The Storybridge Listening and Speaking Program brings storytelling, oral history and intergenerational theater by senior citizens to minority, low-income elementary school children of the San Francisco East Bay in a colorful, memorable manner that improves students' artistic and literacy skills. Storybridge builds on the art of communicating through storytelling and the powerful bond of grandparents sharing their stories. Stagebridge, a non-profit arts education theatre company, will partner with Hayward, Alameda and Berkeley Unified Schools Districts. During the planning year, Stagebridge will recruit, train staff and work with key teachers in each district to refine and plan the program elements. In the succeeding years, the study will involve 2,160 students in twelve schools in Hayward, Alameda and Berkeley.

The program goals are to increase: 1) students' skills; 2) teachers' skills and capacity to utilize the arts; 3) schools' capacity for arts in education; and 4) the ability to replicate the program. Participating students will increase their listening, speaking, performance and language arts skills. Teachers will integrate storytelling into their curriculum. Schools will have the resources to continue the program following the grant period. And Stagebridge will nationally disseminate materials, information and program results. 3D Group will conduct an experimental research design in which they randomly assign students and teachers to treatment and control groups. Data collection will use a Story Recall Test, state STAR CST test scores, Teacher Surveys and Rating Forms, and Evaluators' Observations.

Storybridge is poised to become a national model. It has achieved limited success since 2001 as a State Arts Council Model Program, and as a prior AEMDD grantee. Stagebridge has identified program weaknesses and developed a plan to address them. Storybridge now needs only the opportunity for program strengthening, final refinement and more testing in different school districts before being launched nationally.

Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS) will implement Passport to the Arts. Championed by the Superintendent of Schools with the support of local arts organizations and foundations such as the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Passport to the Arts engages students in music, opera and visual arts experiences at the community's best venues and wraps these experiences in a rich array of cross-curricular activities with a focus on math connections. Curriculum mapping teams will map third grade math and reading texts to the arts and develop products that offer a variety of activities that help students learn content, understand context and develop meta-cognition. Each team will consist of third grade classroom teachers, math and reading coaches, arts partners and publishers' representatives. Teams will meet for three days in the summer and convene again twice during the school year to share results of use and transfer.

A rigorous, multilevel, quasi-experimental design will be used to compare six treatment and six carefully matched comparison schools with an average of 150 third grade students per school. The study will be guided by these questions: 1) How effectively does model help teachers improve instructional practice through standards-based arts integration in the 3rd grade? 2) To what degree does the model improve students' academic achievement in mathematics? 3) In reading? 4) To what degree does improved coordination among arts organizations and M-DCPS influence how students experience the arts? The hierarchical linear model used for the evaluation will capture both student-within-school and student-within-classroom as well as longitudinal results.

Many children who speak a language other than English at home are not succeeding in American schools. Georgia ranks 4th among all states in immigrant population growth, and in Fulton County, English Language Learners (ELLs) are taught in mainstream classrooms where their teachers have no professional preparation to meet their language support needs. In 2007, 70% of ELLs completed their Kindergarten year in Fulton County with minimal English proficiency. This places them at risk for academic failure (Thomas & Collier, 2002).

Experimental evidence shows that Georgia Wolf Trap (GWT) programs enhance low-income Kindergarteners' language development and significantly improve their academic achievement immediately and over time. In GWTELL, teaching artists will coach teachers in drama techniques in their classrooms over the course of the school year; this will simultaneously introduce students to the art form and build ELL students' language abilities. Teachers will be enrolled in ongoing professional learning experiences with master Wolf Trap teachers and supported in their increasingly independent use of the strategies. They will be provided with a new curriculum that GWTELL will develop especially for their needs and that will meet language arts and drama standards. In their classrooms, the teachers, teaching artists, and students will create an engaging and rich language-learning environment by telling and listening to stories, analyzing and enacting them, and retelling and reflecting on them. In a number of rigorous empirical investigations, classroom activities focused on meaning, such as story reading and pretend play, have been found to contribute to vocabulary development and emergent literacy in all students (e.g., Connor, Morrison, & Slominski, 2006).

To accomplish this, GWTELL will enhance and expand their current model over the next four years. They will enhance the model by creating a long-term coaching program and a new curriculum that targets ELL needs. The project will expand the current model to include three new schools that have large populations of low-income ELLs in their Kindergartens, adding approximately 24 new classrooms in Fulton County and serving those teachers for a three-year period. GWTELL will document the program in detail sufficient to allow others to follow it, and will evaluate the professional development component systematically and research the student learning outcomes experimentally using random assignment. The results will be disseminated through conference presentations, publications, and streaming video at strategic websites. Over the three-year implementation period, this project will serve approximately 1,440 kindergarten students in Fulton County, providing 28,800 student contact hours of arts programming. Its intention is to have a multiplicative effect through change in everyday practices of teachers.

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The Center for Community Arts Partnerships (CCAP) at Columbia College Chicago, in conjunction with the Evanston School District (as LEA) and Chicago Public Schools, proposes to deepen its current arts integrated model developed at CCAP over seven years of program implementation. The proposed initiative, Translations: Multi-Directional Learning in the Arts, Literacy and Math (TML) will enhance and expand the arts integration model developed at CCAP, which has demonstrated its effectiveness in engaging students across content areas through the vehicle of standards based arts education. The initiative—which will impact and serve 40 classroom teachers and specialists, 20 teaching artists, and 2,267 K-8 public school students-strengthens instruction in the arts (including skills in creating, performing, and responding to the arts) while concurrently improving students' academic performance. TML will address the absolute, competitive, and both invitational priorities of this grant.

The TML initiative, to be offered in two Evanston and three Chicago school sites in Illinois, will support and address the following three OBJECTIVES: 1) Document the Development of Learning Communities; 2) Provide Professional Development on the Integration of the Arts into the Curriculum; and 3) Increase Student Engagement and Achievement, especially in reading and mathematics. The focus on math literacy, as well as deepening the model's articulation of how concepts are translated back and forth between the arts and each core content area, expands the expertise and generative dialogue among the leadership teams who have been successful in the development of effective arts integration programming. The project's evaluative frame will investigate this essential question: What is the impact on student learning when concepts and principles are taught and translated, across the domains of the arts, reading and math?

TML will accomplish the following outcomes: Teacher Outcomes By the end of each project year, at least 80% of the 50 teachers and specialists will have developed skills at documenting the arts learning of their students to support the dissemination and replication of TML. By the conclusion of the project, the Management Team in collaboration with teaching artists and teachers will have disseminated the project's processes, strategies, and products within the district, as well as statewide and nationally, and that dissemination will be rated favorably by 80% of the recipients of the TML model. Professional Development By the fourth year of this program, 50 public school teachers and specialists at five schools in Chicago and Evanston will be able to demonstrate how they have been able to translate big ideas of the arts into the core curricula, with a specific emphasis on increased student reading and numeric comprehension skills. By the end of each project year, 80% of the teachers will have developed the capacity to deliver reading and mathematics curriculum with partner teachers and art specialists in the school, in conjunction with available local artistic resources. Increasing Student Engagement and Achievement By the end of each project year, 80% of the project's students will have made significant gains in reading and mathematics. At least 80% of students will have improved performance in: (a) motivation and engaged learning, as measured by questionnaires and teacher observations; (b) inquiry-based learning, problem-solving, and creativity, as measured by pre-post surveys; (c) creating, performing, and responding to the arts, as measured by observations by teachers and project artists; (d) understanding of artistic modes of thinking; and (e) working on art projects and performances, as measured by teacher observations. By the end of each year of the TML initiative, 80% of the TML students will document, share, and exhibit their work.

The Supporting Arts Integration Learning for Student Success (SAILSS) program at Bates Middle School in Anne Arundel County Maryland is designed to invigorate the school setting with integrated arts-based interdisciplinary classroom and field experiences. The program will serve 567 students in grades 6 through 8th with a collaboration between Bates Middle School and Maryland Hall for the Performing Arts. Maryland Hall includes dance studios, visual arts studios, a theatre, a black box theatre, gallery space, and music rehearsal rooms. Professional artists including Ballet Theatre of Maryland, Annapolis Chorale, Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, Annapolis Opera, and Peabody Conservatory are among the artists in residence at Maryland Hall.

All students will be a part of the arts and learning coming alive across the disciplines with a special focus on integrated arts learning in the mathematics classrooms. Family and community participation alongside students and teachers will be keys to sustainable success. Through the identification and celebration and of students' interests, passions, and multiple intelligences, SAILLS arts integration provides learning connections that were not previously transparent.

SAILLS primary objectives are to increase student engagement and achievement in mathematics and the arts using a school wide approach to interdisciplinary arts integration. Although students are the primary targets of the grant, it is only through teacher knowledge, strategies and engagement that will result in student change. As such, SAILLS begins with arts integration training for teachers at Bates Middle School. Over the first three years, all teachers on the Bates staff will receive Maryland Artist/Teacher Institute (MATI) training - professional development program conducted by MD State Arts Council (MSAC), MD Department of Business and Economic Development, and MD State Department of Education (MSDE) with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

In collaboration with Towson University, all Bates teachers will have the opportunity to earn a post-baccalaureate certificate in Arts Integration. Grounded with these professional development experiences, Bates teachers will modify the content curricula with integrated arts content, strategies, projects and processes. Alongside community arts professionals and artists-in-residence, our 6th-8th grade teachers will modify curriculum, plan and pilot lessons, and eventually teach all subjects through the lens and perspective of artists and art educators. Students and their families will be the recipients of our planned integrated arts opportunities. As the project nears the end of the 4-year grant, teachers at Bates' feeder elementary schools will be invited to engage in arts integration training. Eventually, planning for a K-8 integrated arts approach to learning in the Bates feeder school cluster.

Jersey City, the second largest city in NJ, is a densely populated urban community in Hudson County, NJ with a population of 242,845 (US Census Bureau, 2006). The City is marked with many risk factors that put their youth at risk for poor academic achievement. The Jersey City School District is one of 30 NJ school districts to be designated by the state as at-risk based on a variety of factors including poor academic performance, inadequate school facilities, and lower than state average per pupil spending. The Jersey City School District has been state-run since 1989, the longest running takeover of a failing system in the nation. Poverty, poor academic performance, high truancy and high dropout rates characterize Jersey City's public schools.

Through the Integrated Theater and Arts Strategies project, a series of standards-based theater arts workshops and professional development workshops will be developed and implemented with select 6th and 7th grade students and teachers in eight low performing high poverty middle schools reaching 1,200 students based on innovative methods and current research. Theater arts strategies and lesson plans will be infused into the language arts curriculum resulting in an Applied Lessons and Integrated Theater Arts Techniques Handbook and training materials to be used for replication and dissemination district-wide, statewide and nationally. In Year Three, the project will provide 6 hours of professional development training on integrating visual and performing arts strategies to all 6th and 7th grade language arts teachers in the 34 district elementary and middle schools to enable them to implement the 24 lesson plans in their language arts classes.

An independent team of researchers from Seton Hall University utilizing a randomized design will evaluate the project, and findings will be documented and published. Impact of the workshops on the writing and oral presentation skills of the 1200 students exposed each year, along with their retention and understanding of concepts and information as measured by a variety of language arts performance variables, as well as measures of student motivation and engagement will be documented. The findings from the intervention students will be compared with a control group of 1200 students from the eight schools. Additionally, the independent researchers will evaluate and document the impact of the professional development training provided on teacher knowledge, comfort and pedagogical practices with respect to integration of the arts and the ability of the 14 participating teachers to include arts strategies in their lesson plans as measured by pre/post test surveys and interviews as compared to control classrooms. The results of the project will be published in a national journal and presented at national conferences and posted on the JCPS and EAT websites For further dissemination the project team will offer professional development trainings and materials to other districts around the country after the conclusion of the three-year project.

The Arts Learning Leads to Literacy Skills (the PROJECT) is a cohesive arts integration program designed to improve standards-based English language arts (ELA) and arts achievement outcomes among low-income 3rd - 5th grade pupils in New York City Public Schools. The responsiveness of the proposed model program to all federal priorities is described below:

Absolute Priority: Our target schools are elementary level and content is tied to New York State standards in ELA and the arts. Learning theory, multiple learning styles and arts teaching and learning research are the underpinnings of the initiative.

Competitive Preference Priority: The scientific experimental design methods include: random selection of intervention and control classes; pre- and post-testing; valid and reliable ELA and quantitative arts assessment instruments; rigorous data analysis; and comprehensive formative evaluation, using quantitative instruments to support program improvement. The proposed program builds on LEAP's almost $1,000,000 federally-funded project with similar goals, but targeted to grades K - 2. The original 3-year study showed that target students not only increased their arts skills, but significantly out-performed on up to 85% of assessed literacy skills. After two years of participation, 98% of target students were reading at or above proficiency compared to only 43% of control students.

Invitational Priority: Proficiency or advanced proficiency in ELA is at the heart of our proposed program.

Learning through an Expanded Arts Program (Leap), the applicant, will enhance, expand, document, evaluate and disseminate information about a gold-standard experimental intervention that derives from research. Included in the scientific research supporting the initiative is prior work of the applicant. Leap developed a model integrated arts program serving more than 10,000 pupils over five years focusing on grades K - 2, and involving ELA and arts skills areas. It generated statistically significant differences in achievement gains between control and target students. The extraordinary success of the previous arts integration efforts in grades K - 2 has been reported at Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) conferences.

Over four years the program will be implemented in 20 randomly selected low-income, low-achieving elementary schools involving 240 randomly selected general education classes in grades 3 - 5 in New York City and 10,000 students (over four years). The proposed program focuses on an arts-based instructional approach rather than a new curriculum and therefore can be scaffolded on most ELA curricula. The project presents an opportunity for No Child Left Behind defined gold-standard random-assignment scientific research. Program results will be widely disseminated to increase the amount of information on effective models for arts education that are nationally available that integrate the arts with standards-based ELA instructional programs.

Leap will provide a cash match of more than $245,000 over four years.

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Manhattan New Music Project (MNMP), in partnership with PS 24K of the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE), is a four-year, interdisciplinary, integrative arts initiative. Building on past successful collaborations with PS 24K, MNMP proposes Blank Page to Stage (BPS), a K-5 standards-based program for English Language Learners (ELLs), special education students, general education students, and the teachers who service them.

Blank Page to Stage is a program designed to encourage students' creative inquiry and artistic expression, using a musical theater production as its organizing concept. Through a series of professional development workshops and extensive in-school support, participating teachers in bilingual, special education, and general education classes in grades K-5 will learn skills and strategies across all arts disciplines (drama, music, dance, visual arts and creative writing) to facilitate student artistic creation. Their efforts will be unified by the ultimate project goal of presenting an original, student-created musical theater production based on themes from the class's academic curricula. Each year, participating teachers will work collaboratively to help students conceive and create all aspects of their production, including script, lyrics, music, choreography, sets, costumes and, finally, dramatic performance. Through this process of creative inquiry, children will come to view themselves not merely as consumers of the arts, but as artistic creators in their own right. In addition to increased arts competency, MNMP also anticipates improved language facility and academic performance from participating students.

In its first year, Blank Page to Stage will directly serve approximately 295 students and 24 teachers in PS 24K, a K-5 school in Brooklyn, NY. This number will increase in subsequent years: 420 students and 34 teachers in Year Two, 590 students and 60 teachers in Year Three, and 525 students and 60 teachers in Year Four. BPS will train all of the school's classroom teachers over the four-year period; therefore anticipating an enormous growth in arts activities that will be sustained far beyond the duration of this program. In addition, many teachers will be trained to themselves train others in BPS strategies, thus ensuring the long-term presence of the arts in the PS 24K learning environment.

New York City's Community School Districts 28 on behalf of Districts 25, 28 & 30 in Queens County, and in collaboration with the cultural center, City Lore, have designed Nations in Neighborhoods, a program for integrating social studies, community resources, and the arts. The key objectives are: 1) Create a replicable model for integrating social studies community resources, and the arts; 2) Build teachers' capacity to use community resources and culturally responsive instruction in their classrooms; 3) Improve students' literacy and social studies knowledge and skills, as well as their skill in creating, performing, and responding to the arts in measurable ways; 4) Help teachers address the challenges and promises of a highly diverse and shifting immigrant student population through cultural arts integration; and 5) Execute a rigorous quasi-experimental evaluation that gauges the effectiveness of the arts intervention, and can be used as a model for evaluating cultural arts in-school initiatives in elementary and middle schools.

In year one of the project activities to be completed include: Planning and Program Development; Teacher study groups; workshops; pilot residencies in each of the 7 participating schools; and a summer institute for professional development for the 28 participating teachers and arts specialists (total of four from each school) on teaching Latin American arts and culture in the summer. Year two include: Program Implementation & Evaluation: Teacher workshops; study groups; a series of artist residencies in each participating school focusing on Latin America; and a teacher institute in the summer with professional development on Asian arts and cultures. Year three activities include: Continued Implementation & Evaluation; Teacher workshops; study groups; in-school artist residencies focusing on Asian culture; and matched comparison-group evaluation expands to a total of four treatment and control schools. Year four activities include: Continued Implementation & Evaluation: Teacher workshops; study groups; artist residencies with a focus on African nations, culture, and artistic traditions in Queens. William Tally, Ph.D., the chief evaluator, will draw together data on student and teacher learning from all seven project schools. The expanded evaluation will include analysis of treatment and control school scores on the New York City's 4th and 8th grade Citywide Language Arts exams; a website for the project will draw together the completed units of study, resource materials and evaluation report; and the model will be presented at national and local conferences in arts education and social studies.

Applicable Priorities: Nations in Neighborhoods meets a) the Absolute Priority for projects that enhance, expand and disseminate innovative research-based models; b) the Competitive Preference Priority for an evaluation plan based on rigorous scientifically-based research; and c) the invitational priority for proposals that support proficiency in reading.

Key Measurable Project Outcomes: 1) Increased teacher capacity—participating teachers will improve their ability to integrate the arts into social studies teaching in support of student learning; 2) Increased student learning and achievement—Students in Nations in Neighborhoods schools will develop greater skill in using language to construct meaning from works of art and other texts, compared to students in non-Nations in Neighborhoods schools.

STUDIO and the NYCDOE propose to develop 12 standards-based, visual arts units of study for grades 3-5 that align with, deepen and extend the ELA and mathematics curricula at these grade levels. These units of study will align with the state and national content and performance standards. The units of study will also include formative and summative assessment strategies and tools that serve to provide a continuum of teaching, learning, and assessment connecting the two grades (2 and 5) for which visual arts benchmarks already exist.

Building on its 30-year history of providing quality professional development to NYC educators, STUDIO will offer a rigorous, sustained and intensive sequence of professional development to support the effective implementation of the units of study, assessment and rubrics, and related extension activities in the target schools. This professional development will include training sessions, on-site coaching and mentoring by master teaching artists from STUDIO demonstration sites, and school-based collaborative meetings in order to build professional learning communities.

Framing Student Success will be implemented in three NYC Title I elementary schools either in Year 1 or 2 of School Improvement, and will serve all students (including general education, special education, and English language learners) in grades 3-5 attending these schools. Students will receive a three-year intervention that incorporates a visual arts enriched instructional program integrated with the ELA and math curricula (thereby addressing both Invitational Priorities). Instruction will be provided by their classroom teachers working in collaboration with teaching artists from STUDIO and the certified visual arts teachers in their schools. The instructional program will incorporate the four standards-based, five-week units of study described above. In addition, the intervention includes a rich array of family activities to support and extend learning into the students' homes and communities. The grantee estimates that this project will directly impact a total of 4,725 students, 115 teachers, and 42 school-based administrators in some of New York City's most challenging educational environments by the end of the four-year funding period. To address the Competitive Priority, STUDIO and the NYCDOE propose to collaborate with Metis Associates, a national educational research firm, to conduct a rigorous evaluation of the project, including a randomized control trial research design, to test the impact of the intervention on student achievement and performance outcomes.

As a result of the successes of a two-year pilot, The Center for Arts Education (CAE), in collaboration with four NYC school districts, will implement the School Arts Support Initiative (SASI): a plan to develop, enhance and expand arts education in the core middle school curriculum, and to document, evaluate and disseminate the progress made by those schools over a four-year period. The project is based upon three major objectives: 1) ?To transform five NYC middle schools serving "at-risk" students from "arts-poor" (schools where the arts are peripheral to the school and its students) to "arts-rich" (schools where the arts are treated as core academic subjects and where arts courses are integrated into the totality of school life as outlined in the NYSED instructional requirements); 2) To demonstrate statistically significant growth in students' academic and artistic progress as compared to those in "arts-poor" peer schools; and 3) ?To establish SASI as an intervention model for urban middle schools that can be implemented and disseminated beyond the period of this grant.

Project activities will include training and support for school leadership in the skills needed to build and maintain arts programs, professional development sessions that will support integrated arts instructional strategies, partnerships with appropriate arts organizations and ongoing coaching to help synthesize learned knowledge into a school's culture.

Applicable Priorities: The project meets the Absolute Priority; the SASI program design is based on current research and has demonstrated effectiveness in helping schools integrate and sustain arts education programs. The Competitive Preference Priority is addressed by including a quasi-experimental evaluation plan created by outside 2 evaluators and based on rigorous, scientifically based research methods. The evaluation is designed to assess the project's impact on student achievement. By integrating an instructional plan that is compositional in nature and focuses on arts integration, the proposed project will enable students to achieve proficiency in reading, thereby meeting Invitational Priority #2.

Proposed Project Outcomes: SASI is an exceptional endeavor that transforms middle schools by integrating the arts into both instruction and school culture. The transformation of participating schools will expand teachers' capacities to deliver critical courses of study in and through the arts, build leadership teams that are equipped to manage and sustain arts programs and impact the academic performance of "at-risk" students. All results, findings and tools developed during the project's four-year period have the potential of being used in middle schools throughout NYC as well as in other urban settings. CAE will engage a vast network of partners in its dissemination plan, which will include a toolkit, video footage, online tools and presentation at conferences. Throughout the project, a quasi-experimental evaluation process will compare SASI schools/students with peer schools/students in the same NYC districts, using carefully matched conditions and measuring the impact of the program on student achievement.

The FAME: Act2 (Fine Arts Matter in Education) Fine Arts Program is a joint collaboration between Project GRAD Houston, an education reform non-profit, the Houston Grand Opera, the Alley Theatre and the Davis High School feeder pattern elementary and middle schools in the Houston Independent School District. These schools are located in a low-income urban community just north of downtown Houston, TX.

FAME: Act2 will offer a substantively new arts integration approach to middle school educators, provide focused tutoring to students participating in fine arts initiatives, expand the diversity of fine arts options available to students and the diversity of fine arts professional development opportunities for educators, and provide opportunities for other fine arts educators throughout the country to observe and guide the FAME: Act2 model. All of these measures will support program objectives: further integrate standards-based arts education into the core curriculum, strengthen standards-based arts instruction, improve students' academic performance and skills in the fine arts and other core academic areas, increase the dissemination of the FAME: Act2 model, and improve the effectiveness of the FAME: Act2 model.

The Student Programs of FAME: Act2 consist of four core elements. Specialized Intensive Arts Experiences (e.g. summer camps, workshops) will serve at least 20 students in programs of 15 to 90 hours duration. STARS (e.g. theater, opera, and keyboarding after-school classes) will serve at least 70 students in programs that meet 2 hours a week for at least 30 weeks. The Small Group Instruction in Elementary Schools will serve at least 500 students in weekly 45-minute ancillary classes and approximately 150 students in academic tutoring sessions. The Campus-Wide Programs (e.g. touring performances) will impact at least 3,000 students each year. Each year, 750 students will receive comprehensive, in-depth program services.

Absolute Priority: FAME: Act2 will enhance, expand, document, evaluate, and disseminate its innovative, cohesive research-based model that has demonstrated its effectiveness in: 1) integrating standards-based arts education into the core curriculum, 2) strengthening standards-based arts instruction in the classroom, and 3) improving the academic performance of students, including their skills in creating, performing and responding to the arts. FAME: Act2 serves only elementary school and middle school grades and is linked to local, state and national standards.

Competitive Priority: FAME: Act2 will be evaluated using a quasi-experimental research design that compares students from in-depth FAME: Act2 programs with students who receive general, campus-wide programs in fine arts. The evaluation plan is based on rigorous scientifically based research methods to assess the program's effectiveness. Invitational Priorities 1 and 2: FAME: Act2 will support expanded arts initiatives (including incorporating the "Math+Music" program in keyboard ancillary classes), focused tutoring, and teacher professional development efforts to enable students to achieve proficiency or advanced proficiency in mathematics and reading.

Arts Impact: Math Artistic Pathways is a joint project of Puget Sound Educational Service District (PSESD) and Tacoma Public Schools (TPS) in the Puget Sound Region of Washington State. Arts Impact (AI) is a successful two-year teacher training model that incorporates Artist Mentors to prepare classroom teachers to teach standards-based arts and shared academic concepts through arts-infused lessons. Math Artistic Pathways (MAP) enhances the existing Arts Impact program in the following ways: (1) expands from an elementary school-based training program to involve middle schools; (2) develops a middle school visual arts/math and dance/math arts infused curriculum aligned with State standards in visual arts, dance and math; (3) creates an Arts-Math Learning Community; (4) creates and formalizes a professional development model for arts infused learning for TPS middle school staff.

Six middle schools in Tacoma Public Schools with free and reduced meal percentages of 35% or more will be randomly selected and assigned to one of two groups—MAP or control—with an equal matched set of teachers and students. Twenty Basic Ed Math teachers from grades 6, 7, and 8 will be joined by Visual Arts (VA) Specialists, Dance Specialists (year 2), Instructional Facilitators (IF), Learning Assistance Program (LAP) teachers, and Title I teachers, to comprise the MAP treatment group. This Cross Curricular Instructional Team (CCIT) will receive the Arts Impact two-year teacher-training program with the math teachers as key instructors. Training will be adapted to meet curricular needs and scheduling issues of the middle school environment. The CCIT will advise on specific ways to meet these needs. Schools must participate as an extended project faculty—the Math, IF, VA, LAP, and Title 1 teachers from each school—will all take part. The project will evaluate two Basic Ed Math classes for each math teacher, representing 1,000 students across the three schools, each year for three years for a total impact on 3,000. Students in MAP will demonstrate greater knowledge and skills in selected visual arts, dance and math concepts than the matched control group.

Project goals are: (1) integrate standards-based arts education into the core middle school curriculum; (Absolute Priority 1), (2) strengthen standards-based arts instruction in the middle school grades; (Absolute Priority 2) 3) improve academic performance of students in middle school grades including their skills in creating, performing and responding to the arts; (Absolute Priority 3)(4) create a district-wide professional development model for dissemination and replication. (Absolute Priority). MAP addresses the Competitive Priority in that it creates an experimental design and compares matched groups in treatment and control groups assigned randomly. Map addresses the Invitational Priority to support instruction that will enable students to achieve proficiency in math at the middle school level as measured by Washington State Assessment of Student Learning in math.

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