Please Note: All grants for FY2003 except for The Guggenheim Foundation have ended. The available abstracts are for historical purposes only.

Thirty-five (35) new awards were made in FY 2003. These grants support the further development, implementation and expansion of standards-based arts education programs and the integration of arts instruction into the core curriculum. Grants were awarded to both local educational agencies (LEAs) and nonprofit arts organizations that work in partnership with LEAs.

The Alliance for a Media Literate America
20 N. Wacker Drive Suite 4200
Chicago, Illinois 60606

Project Director: Faith Rogow Telephone: (607) 277-8833

The Alliance for a Media Literate America (AMLA), in partnership with Just Think, a San Francisco-based media education nonprofit, will implement a three-year Media Arts education program suitable for grades six to eight to be piloted in two low-income middle schools in San Francisco and evaluated by outside professionals. Through this project, the AMLA and Just Think will create an innovative and cohesive model curriculum demonstrating the effectiveness of integrating Media Arts into the core middle school curriculum, strengthening arts instruction, and improving students' academic performance. This curriculum will be based on California State Standards for grades six through eight and will be adaptable to standards in other states.

Just Think and the AMLA are uniquely suited to partner in the implementation of this program. The AMLA's goal is to promote media literacy throughout the U.S., the only developed English-speaking country in the world without a media education component throughout its standard school curriculum. Just Think's programs teach young people to understand, evaluate, and create media. Together Just Think and the AMLA will pilot an exciting and innovative Media Arts program and curriculum that will engage students in learning and build their creativity, self-confidence, and critical thinking skills, assist teachers with incorporating media literacy concepts and Media Arts skills into their classrooms, and advance media literacy nationwide.

Arapahoe County School District # E-1
4101 S. Bannock Street
Englewood, Colorado 80110-4605

Project Director: Kim Mueller Telephone: (303) 806-2042

Englewood School District Arts Reaching Kids (ARK) project is designed to perpetuate a school culture where learning in, about, and through the arts enables each student to develop the critical and creative thinking skills that necessarily accompany responding to and engaging with the arts on a daily basis. An interactive, integrated model employs the arts to enhance a broad range of thinking skills in students across all aspects of their learning, and ultimately will result in higher academic achievement in every area. The ARK project responds to the educational challenges facing the Englewood community: high poverty rates, social and other problems related to discipline, high drop-out and transient rates, academic underachievement, and disparate achievement among our ethnic populations (primarily Anglo-Americans and Latino/a).

ARK uniquely builds upon an existing partnership of arts professionals and educators by strengthening the integration of literacy, music, visual arts, dance, and drama. The Englewood School District; the Englewood Education Foundation (EEF); the University of Northern Colorado (UNC); Metropolitan State College (MSCD); the Englewood Cultural Arts Center Association (Englewood Arts); Museum of Outdoor Art (MOA); David Taylor Dance Theatre (DTDT); Up Close and Musical (UCAM); Englewood Public Library; and the Englewood Parks and Recreation Center are combining resources to develop a pilot program. The project will provide artists, staff, and students with a teaching and learning model of creative and critical problem solving through the arts, enabling students to transfer to other core curriculum areas, focusing on literacy. Once embedded across the curriculum, ARK will be accessible to the district's 3800 students PK-12, as well as parents and adult community members.

The ARK project is designed to meet all three primary objectives of the Office of Innovation and Improvement - Arts in Education Model: (1) to integrate arts into the core elementary and middle school curricula, curriculum; (2) to strengthen arts education; and (3) improve students' academic performance, including their skills in creating, performing, and responding to the arts. The intended outcomes for Arts Reaching Kids will reflect the accomplishment of the proposal objectives and program goals and will be measured through improved academic achievement for participating students, utilization of community education programs, and positive attitudes towards the arts as a core of the curriculum.

Beacon Street Gallery
4131 N. Broadway
Chicago, Illinois 60613-2104

Project Director: Patricia Murphy Telephone: (773) 525-7579

Arts Impacting Achievement (AIA) is an Illinois partnership initiative led by Beacon Street Gallery in conjunction with Elgin School District U-46 (LEA), the state's second largest school district, with collaborative support from Northeastern Illinois University, Steppenwolf Theatre, Zephyr Dance Ensemble, Hamilton Wings, National-Louis University, the Illinois Alliance for Arts Education, Arts for Learning Chicago, and the LEAP network of schools. It will implement the AIA Model for arts integrated curriculum development in 25 K-6 classrooms in five high poverty elementary schools-Washington, Harriet Gifford, and McKinley in Elgin and Chase and Chopin in inner-city Chicago. Through rigorous evaluation, including an experimental research design, the model will be tested in the classrooms of the 25 randomly selected teachers to determine its efficacy in producing teacher change and improved student achievement and compare these results against a randomly selected control group of 25. The project will emphasize both 1) the need for teachers to learn how arts integration plays a crucial role in teaching students across the curriculum and 2) how to teach the arts as a core content area. It also will demonstrate strategies for connecting students to the communities in which they live, taking advantage of the resources that abound from organizations whose missions all stress the importance of integrating culture and art into the education of our children.

This project will build upon the research base that has been created over the past decade demonstrating that using the arts as a catalyst in the classroom significantly affects student achievement across the curriculum while providing arts education. Arts integration strategies have been an essential component of the outreach work of each of the initiative's community arts and educational partners. The schools in which they have worked have been profoundly affected through their emphasis on arts and how inner city students respond to an opportunity to explore self-expression within the learning process. Research also has shown that low-income, racially diverse populations especially benefit from arts integrated instruction because of different learning styles, the emphasis on authentic, alternative assessment of student achievement, and the ability to reach multiple intelligences through creativity and the arts. Furthermore, such teaching strategies also utilize and honor the culture of the students that are served thereby increasing the commitment each child develops for his/her own learning.

The partners will document and test the replicability of the AIA Model through the following three goals:

• Develop teacher capacity to integrate the arts across the core curriculum by developing and documenting successful strategies that increase teacher expertise in planning and implementing arts integrated curriculum through a comprehensive and rigorous coordinated professional development program;
• Utilize model arts integration program to increase performance of students in core curriculum by developing, implementing, and establishing a high-quality, arts-integrated model in 25 classrooms serving 625 students at risk; to promote high student achievement in core academic subjects and improve students' skills in creating, performing, and responding to works of art; and
• Document and disseminate the Arts Impacting Achievement Model by evaluating documenting, and disseminating the model's processes and structures, materials, workshops, and courses beyond the partnership to local school initiative/consortia; regional, statewide, and national professional educator networks; and global /electronically connected educational networks through publications, conference presentations, and extensive use of technology media.

California Center for the Arts
340 N. Escondido Bolevard
Escondido, California 92025

Project Director: Natasha Martinez Telephone: (760) 839-4192

The California Center for the Arts, Escondido Foundation (The Center), will implement project, SUAVE: A Model Approach to Teaching English Language Learners Through the Arts. The project will further develop, evaluate, and disseminate its nationally recognized model arts learning program SUAVE (Socios Unidos Para Artes Via Educación—"United Communities for Arts in Education"). The SUAVE project, a collaborative venture of The Center, Cal State San Marcos, and local partner school districts, is an educational and cultural partnership designed to infuse the arts into core curriculum instruction in multicultural and multilingual settings. SUAVE pairs The Center's resident artists, called "arts coaches," with classroom teachers to develop strategies that integrate multiple disciplines-visual arts, music, dance, theater-into instruction of core subjects such as language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies, as well as to develop knowledge of the arts in and of themselves.

SUAVE will support activities for three purposes:

• Document and research learning outcomes using a randomized experimental design for students who experience arts-infused core English Language instruction;
• further refine already demonstrated elements of SUAVE as a professional development program for teachers; and
• Disseminate SUAVE best practices on a regional and national level at a conference on Arts Learning in 2004, SUAVE's 10th anniversary, with the goal of improving opportunities for the expansion of the role of the arts in pre-K to 12 schools.

The project will involve more than 50 teachers and 1,500 students over a three-year period from five school sites at two school districts, one inner city and one rural, in North San Diego County with substantial numbers of at-risk English language learners (ranging from 28% to 80%).

Central Falls School District
21 Hedley Avenue
Central Falls, Rhode Island 02863-1900

Project Director: Kurt Wootton Telephone: (401) 863-7785

Central Falls School District will work collaboratively with the Brown University Education Department to implement Transitions through ArtsLiteracy Learning (TALL). Since 1998, the Central Falls School District (CFSD) and the Brown University Education Department's ArtsLiteracy Project (ArtsLit) have worked together to develop educational partnerships between practicing teachers and professional artists in Central Falls, the most economically disadvantaged community in Rhode Island. The goals of the partnership between CFSD and ArtsLit have been to use performance to create powerful literacy and arts learning opportunities for a wide range of students in Central Falls classrooms and to promote district-wide improvements in teacher practice. For more information about the ArtsLit project, please refer to: www.artslit.org.

The goals of project TALL are: 1) sustained professional development for CFSD elementary and middle school teachers of grades 4 - 6; 2) evaluation of student academic and social performance that informs further ArtsLit development; and 3) documentation and dissemination of Central Falls/ArtsLit work through print and electronic materials and presentations at conferences and workshops. Heretofore the ArtsLiteracy Project has primarily concentrated its efforts on high school teachers and students in Central Falls. By extending into the elementary and middle schools, TALL aims to support students' academic and social transitions from elementary to middle school; to provide curricular continuity for Central Falls students extending from grades 4 through 12; and to develop materials for disseminating ArtsLiteracy practices to other urban and diverse communities.

Through TALL, fifty-five (55) 4th through 6th grade Central Falls teachers will receive various levels of service including: in-class partnerships with professional artists, after-school professional development opportunities, and intensive workshops at Brown University. Youth Leaders, Central Falls High School students who have participated in ArtsLit professional development alongside teachers and artists, will be assistant teachers, peer mentors, and student researchers in the after-school professional development program.

Evaluation of this work will be ongoing and will focus on the application of ArtsLiteracy strategies in 4th through 6th grade classrooms and in particular on their effect on students' social and academic transition into middle school and continuity of teacher pedagogy. Throughout the process, ArtsLit will engage in documentation and dissemination of the TALL project and its evaluation.

Chicago Public Schools
125 South Clark Street
Chicago, Illinois 60603-5200

Project Director: Diane Chandler Telephone: (773) 553-2170

The Chicago Public Schools, in partnership with Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education, will implement the "Developing Early Literacies Through the Arts" (DELTA) project. DELTA applies the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE) model of improving schools through arts integration, teacher professional development and teaching artist collaborations to support the Improving Academic Achievement Through The Arts (IAAA) initiative of the Chicago Public Schools. This project, which includes intensive professional development, artist residencies, technical assistance, and research, will serve 26 schools.

This research-based project is predicated on long-term relationships between artists and schools to co-develop and co-deliver standards-based arts integrated curriculum, to provide rigorous professional development in literacy, arts integration, and school planning methodologies, and to share the work with others by developing extensive and ongoing documentation and dissemination strategies. By working with CAPE, the Chicago Public Schools is seeking to support ongoing school improvement by focusing intensively on a limited number of low-income schools (in this case three schools with different challenges) and providing these schools with an opportunity to model successful practices to other schools working to increase the presence of the arts and their contribution to literacy in the curriculum. The DELTA project brings a high-quality research-based model to challenged schools by encouraging partnerships of arts and education specialists who have developed and documented effective models for improving arts education and student achievement to focus on the need for improving early literacy skills.

Dallas ArtsPartners
2501 Oak lawn Avenue
Dallas, Texas 75219

Project Director: Giselle Antoni Telephone: (214) 520-0023

Dallas ArtsPartners (AP) is a community collaboration involving Dallas Independent School District (DISD), the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs, and 62 professional arts and cultural organizations, designed to:

• provide all DISD elementary students with equal access to high quality arts programs offered by the city's professional cultural institutions;
• train every DISD elementary classroom teacher to integrate those programs into the curriculum to benefit student academic achievement and learning in the arts, and
• ensure that ArtsPartners is an institutional, sustainable part of Dallas' school district and cultural community and suitable for replication across the nation.

The Dallas ArtPartner's project will employ a 3-tiered Professional Development system. The project will provide multiple trainings and educational materials to instruct teachers and principals on how to move their schools through each tier of the 3 tier model: Access, Alignment, and Integration.

AP's 3-year assessment study, currently underway, is examining the effects of the model on students, teachers, and the cultural organizations. The study is longitudinal, rigorous, intensive, collaborative, and literacy-focused to address the interest of DISD. Data collected are both quantitative and qualitative.

East Bay Center for the Performing Arts
339 11th Street
Richmond, California

Project Director: Miko Lee Telephone: (510) 234-5624

The East Bay Center for the Performing Arts and West Contra Costa Unified School District (WCCUSD) will implement "Learning Without Borders". The project will include modules in multicultural music and dance, theater, and media arts. The project will focus on a core theme, linking to fundamental questions appropriate to multiple curriculum areas. The questions will center on the curriculum and allow teachers and artists to readily frame cross-disciplinary projects in arts, social science, and language arts. Core themes and key questions also help translate content across art forms, so that Mexican dance, African/Caribbean percussion, and new media design are all utilized to forward common learning goals, making Learning Without Borders relevant to students of all backgrounds.

Learning Without Borders includes a year-round joint professional development program for artists and teachers (modeled on the successful format developed for APEI), and incorporates deliberate efforts to build community involvement in arts learning, with frequent performances and participation opportunities for peers, parents, and other community members. Learning Without Borders takes the concept of "arts integration" beyond the classroom, exploring new ways to weave arts programming into the life of each school.

Learning Without Borders will be the subject of a multi-year evaluation study. The study design is based on a comprehensive summative evaluation plan custom-designed for the East Bay Center and WCCUSD by SRI, International. After three years, Learning Without Borders will yield a fully evaluated multi-arts and media curriculum series ready for dissemination. Along with this curriculum, the project will produce a practical Implementation Guide with professional development curriculum and suggestions for building community involvement. The goal of the project is to create a model that can be successfully expanded to other WCCUSD schools and utilized by community arts/school partnerships in other districts.

Education Development Center
55 Chapel Street
Newton, Massachusetts 02458-1060

Project Director: Eileen Mackin Telephone: (617) 969-7100

The goal of the SmART School project, housed at Education Development Center, Inc., (EDC) is to strengthen the place of arts as a core academic subject in the regular curriculum and to strengthen the use of high-quality arts in other academic subjects. SmART Schools is a standards-based, whole-school change model with five key design features:

1. Daily instruction in the arts
2. Arts integration (teaching for understanding in and through the arts)
3. Professional development that builds a powerful learning community
4. An inclusive school culture that supports arts-infused education
5. Active parent//community involvement

Starting in 1999, the model was developed, tested, and refined in five elementary schools in Rhode Island. Students in these schools have not only learned to create, perform, and respond to the arts, but also have experienced significantly greater gains than students in matched comparison schools on statewide assessment in writing and mathematical problem solving. SmART Schools has garnered local and national attention and support:

• It has been recognized by the Arts Education Partnership and the Rhode Island Department of Education as a program worthy of replication.
• Four of the five pilot schools received the Kennedy Center's prestigious Creative Ticket Awards.
• SmART Schools has received grants from the Rhode Island Foundation, Jesse B. Cox Charitable Trust, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
• North Kingstown, RI, home of three pilot schools, has allocated $150,000 per year of its own budget to expand the program to four more elementary schools in the district.

This project will test the SmART Schools model in diverse, high-need settings, refine the model's tools, materials, techniques, and processes so that they are adaptable in various contexts; conduct a rigorous third-party evaluation of the program, strengthen dissemination efforts so that the model can be replicated throughout New England. EDC will work in partnership with six schools in these districts where strong working relationships have already been developed. All of the schools are located in inner city and rural communities in New Hampshire and Rhode Island. Four have high concentrations of students at risk of educational failure, and 36% to 83 % of the students on free or reduced lunch. Two are among the worst performing schools in their states and are designated in need of improvement. The three school districts are Warwick, RI; Manchester, NH; and Conway, NH.

Fresno Unified School District
2309 Tulare Street
Fresno, California 93721-2287

Project Director: Linda Furnas Telephone: (559) 457-3186

Fresno Unified School District (FUSD) will implement Fresno's Arts as Core Education or "Let's FACE It!" into four elementary Title I Improvement schools. Let's FACE It! will train teachers and art specialists in standards-based arts education in dance, music, theatre, and visual art with the correlation of writing strategies with arts education. The project will apply the Getty Foundation's Discipline-Based Art Education (DBAE) model for professional development with specific changes. The ten-day intensive summer visual art institute format will change to ongoing professional development throughout each year. Music, dance, and theatre education will be added. The training will be correlated with FUSD's adopted Houghton Mifflin language arts program. Teachers will be trained and will implement a research-based art/writing program, Picturing Writing, from the University of New Hampshire. Art specialists will model and coach teachers in the arts as teachers acquire knowledge and skills to assume teaching the arts. Follow-up training and support will be provided, to best support efforts to embed the arts within the elementary core curriculum. A full-time project manager/visual art specialist will be funded. Art study field trips for students and supplies will be funded.

The project goals are to achieve academic success in writing among the participating students, especially among students in low-achieving schools, and to embed standards-based arts education in elementary curriculum. Multiple measures will be used to identify academic achievement in student writing among elementary students in the study. Data will be collected from teachers and analyzed for frequency and quality of art programs implemented into the core curriculum in elementary classrooms to identify relevant ongoing professional development.

Greenburgh Central 7
475 West Hartsdale Avenue
Hartsdale, New York 10530-1398

Project Director: Miriam Bernabei Telephone: (914) 761-6000

The Greenburgh Central 7 School District will implement a model that will support Artists and Teachers Together, a program for the Highview School. The project will enable artists from the four arts disciplines (art, music, theater, and dance) to become full participants on grade-level planning teams, so that they may collaborate with teachers on all aspects of the curriculum and help teachers execute the lessons developed. The team will consist of classroom teachers, the resident art and music teachers, and artists (dance and theater) from the Council. Students will become involved in program documentation through video, expanding on skills that have been introduced through their participation in the Jacob Burns Film Center's visual literacy program last year.

This project fits seamlessly into the district's outcomes-based Student Performance Plan. The district goals for the 2003- 2004 school year are based on English Language Arts and Mathematics performance standards and are derived from a careful, team-based analysis of the data for NYS assessments, the Terra Nova Survey, and quarterly Benchmark exams. The project will provide the opportunity to formalize and further define the district's already innovative arts program. It will allow the school district to assess the processes that have developed over time, using scientific-based research methods, to analyze those practices that appear successful, to discard those that may have failed, and to focus on refinement and alignment of our program with the State and District goals using the latest information from educational theory and research. Teachers, experts in curricula and child development, will work side by side with artists, experts in their art form, to develop and deliver meaningful integrated lessons that will allow for individual learning styles. These efforts will be supplemented by field trips for students and professional development for teachers and artists, so that they can become more adept at the collaborative process.

Stand-alone performances are valuable learning experiences; longer residencies are more effective, as they require a dialogue between the teacher and artist, and are, hopefully, linked to some aspect of the curriculum. This is the next step in the natural progression towards a fully realized, integrated model that insures success for all students.

The Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 10128-0173

Project Director: Hillary Strong Telephone: (212) 423-3541

The Guggenheim Museum will further implement and develop its oldest and most intensive school program, Learning Through Art (LTA). LTA is an artist-in-residency program where teaching artists collaborate with teachers to design unique projects that support a curriculum area identified by the teacher. Lessons include discussing works from the Guggenheim's collection, trips to the Guggenheim Museum, art making, and reflection about student artwork and process. This 33-year-old artist-in-residence program was originally entitled "Learning To Read Through The Arts," and has at its core a strong commitment to increasing literacy through the arts.

The Guggenheim proposes to examine the Learning Through Art program, with the Teaching Literacy Through Art project, to test the hypothesis that the analytical skills developed while discussing works of art are transferable and will be reflected in the children's test scores as well as in their responses to art works and written pieces.

With the help of the Department of Education, the museum will increase its professional development for teaching artists, ensuring that they are experts in the delivery of literacy-related interventions. Guggenheim will work with an outside evaluator to study the impact of this intervention on both students and teachers. We will make program changes based on their findings, as well as work with RKA to disseminate study findings.

In addition to improving and studying our program, the project will hold a conference for arts educators nationally, to develop new ways of training teaching artists around the country to use inquiry techniques and to explore the potential of art to teach literacy skills.

Research findings will be disseminated by the Guggenheim and RKA through local and national education and museum education conferences and through national educational publications. Findings will be shared with teachers and school administrators both through local and national educational resources and through the local museums with which they work.

Hawaii Art Alliance
2445 Kaala Street
Honolulu, Hawaii 96822

Project Director: Marilyn Cristofori Telephone: (808) 941-2787

The ARTS FIRST project is a systematic undertaking to pioneer, test and evaluate a model comprehensive K-5 standards-based arts curriculum. The target audience for ARTS FIRST project is the generalist classroom teacher who rarely has access to an arts specialist. This ARTS FIRST project provides a model that can demonstrate how an elementary, arts-infused curriculum, based on the standards, can have a critical and long-term impact on educational reform in Hawaii.

Project goals are: 1) To show significant improvement in student performance (particularly reading comprehension), positive attitudes, and motivation through strengthening the use of high-quality, standards-based arts in academic instruction and as a core subject in the regular school curriculum; 2) To improve and change the way teachers provide instruction by engaging students more effectively; and 3) To observe and document changes in teaching pedagogy, to encourage positive practices and creativity in teaching and learning, and to spark new interest in learning by both teachers and students.

Generalist teachers need professional development in order to become familiar with objectives and vocabulary specific to each grade level. The Essential Arts Toolkit will provide a foundation for effective delivery of quality arts education for generalist teachers who often have not had training in the arts and need to become familiar with objectives and vocabulary specific to each grade level. A critical aspect of the professional development is interaction between the generalists and the specialists (mentors), which affords the teachers the opportunity to fully comprehend the elements and principles of the art forms.

The ARTS FIRST project will be evaluated by an outside evaluator and will use a pre/post control group design to address questions about changes in project students' reading and mathematics achievement, attitudes toward school, interest in the arts, and behavior, and how these changes differ from students at the control schools. Sampling will ensure that the control schools are demographically similar to the project schools. At each of the project schools, the project will target Grade 3 during the first year of the project, followed by adding Grade 4 in the second year, and Grade 5 in the third year. A minimum of 300 students per grade will participate in this project.

As an affiliate of the APPLE Learning Interchange, information on this project and the evaluation report will be on their website (www.appl.com/ali/hawaii) which provides access to all organizations and schools nationwide to any information pertaining to this project.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Abstract
2 Palace Road
Boston, Massachusetts 02115

Project Director: Margaret Burchenal Telephone: (617) 278-5123

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum will implement its School Partnership Program, a multiple-visit program serving K-8 at-risk students from neighboring inner-city public schools. The findings of this project will provide guidance to museum education professionals as they seek to provide high quality experiences that are particularly unique to art museums, as well as better align those programs with learning standards in the arts and other core subjects. It will also provide K-8 educators and administrators with the kind of reliable evidence they need to make informed decisions about the integration of arts in the general curriculum. In addition, this project can help the field focus its thinking about a national museum education research agenda, which will provide a framework for universities and encourage graduate students to embark on research that will contribute to the field in a meaningful way.

The major goals of the project are to:

• closely align program components with program outcomes in order to identify a set of meaningful and measurable learning indicators that will be applicable to a wide range of school/museum programs across the country;
• develop a strong scientific research design with valid and reliable measures that will assess achievement of learning indicators, the result of which can be more confidently generalizable to a wider population of students in museum/school programs; and
• broadly disseminate study findings to the museum education profession, K-8 teachers and administrators and higher education through such channels as lectures and a symposium, publications, conference presentations, website features and/or instructional video, and an assessment "toolkit."

The proposed three-year, quasi-experiment study of the SPP program will address the need for a clear and shared understanding of how student creative and critical thinking skills are developed in the unique environment of an art museum. This study will also deepen understanding of how museums and schools can work together to address the needs of at-risk students through sustained arts experiences. Finally, this project is designed to spark lively public dialogue about the multi-faceted nature of learning in the arts and authentic assessment strategies that can best capture that learning in young people.

Jefferson County School Board
1490 West Washington Street
Monticello, Florida 32344

Project Director: Isabelle Potts Telephone: (850) 644-9319

This project, with its emphasis on individual writing, collaborative writing, and performance of students' writing, supported by relevant reading and writing instruction in the students' language arts class, is meant to both remediate the students' academic deficiencies in reading and writing, and to improve their higher-level creative and thinking skills. The benefits of the theater arts and of programs that emphasize the acquisition of language skills through the arts have been demonstrated by recent studies. These benefits have been found to accrue to low-income students and students with academic deficiencies.

This proposed Arts-in-Education project will provide arts education to Howard Middle School in theater arts, as well as music, dance, the visual arts, and audio-visual media. In addition, the project will develop, nurture, and support the maintenance of a system designed to ensure the active involvement of community artists and academics in the provision of arts education to Howard Middle School. The proposed program is expected to remediate and enhance the reading, writing, and creative skills of participating students.

The project will bring together the Jefferson County School District, arts and education faculty members of Florida State University (FSU), Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), Tallahassee Community College (TCC), artists from the Mickee Faust Alternative Performance Club, the Afro-Caribbean Dance Theatre, 621 Gallery, arts facilities such as the Monticello Opera House, and individual artists not affiliated with these organizations.

Litchfield Performing Arts
174 West Street
PO Box 69
Litchfield, Connecticut 06759

Project Poetry Live! (PPL) is a year-round program involving seven Connecticut school districts (Waterbury, Torrington, Winchester, Watertown, Litchfield, Region 6 and Thomaston). The program is directed by Litchfield Performing Arts, a nonprofit arts educator and presenter, in partnership with the school districts and Education Connection (EC), the regional education-coordinating center. The program is community based and has had support and guidance from The State Department of Education, CT Commission on the Arts, regional foundations, local historical museums, teachers, and parents of participating students. Other participants include artists, writers, dancers, choreographers, composers, musicians, and administrators.

Completing its 11th year in 2003, PPL's leading goal is to provide a regional interdistrict program that brings together 1700 seventh-grade students from rural, racially isolated districts with their urban (inner city) peers in an academically and artistically rich program. An additional 40 to 50 8th through 12th graders from previous years' programs now rejoin the 7th graders each year as mentors and performers. Students interact with peers and arts professionals, as well as technology specialists of diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, in a context that enhances awareness of diversity while it improves artistic, academic, and personal achievement.

PPL is designed to give more than 600 self-selected and teacher-recommended students out of its 1700 the opportunity to study and work on in-depth interdistrict activities. Together students write, read, and perform poetry; play and compose music; create visual art, drama and dance; learn computer skills needed to compose music electronically (using MIDI software) and create websites and hardcopy of their poetry. This is all accomplished in a climate of interdisciplinary curriculum, including language arts, social studies, math, geography, and the visual, performing and technical arts created by teachers and project team leaders. An interdistrict dance ensemble rehearses and performs a work choreographed to an original score based on student poetry. They join an interdistrict student big band, which rehearses intensively to accompany the dancers, alongside professionals, at all final performances at an urban community college. All students at the final performances view an interdistrict student art exhibit and sets created by peers under the guidance of an award-winning set designer. In the classroom, teachers use multidisciplinary lesson plans they have created to employ the arts as a tool for academic learning. These lessons are "essential question" driven and follow the Curriculum Frameworks approach. This completes the arts learning cycle.

Long Beach Unified School District
1515 Hughes Way
Long Beach, California 90810

Project Director: Geraldine Walkup Telephone: (562) 997-8316

This project is a partnership between Dramatic Results (DR), an award-winning, community-based, nonprofit educational arts agency, the Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD), which is the third largest school district in California, and California State University at Long Beach (CSULB), School of Education, which is the primary source of professional development and credentialing for teachers in Southern California.

This project has three primary goals: (1) integrating basketry into the core academic curriculum, (2) strengthening arts instruction and (3) improving students academic performance including skills in creating, exhibiting and responding to basketry. Both students and their teachers will receive direct program services.

This project will serve a total of 1400 4th and 5th grade students from inner city schools in Long Beach. More than 92% of inner city students are ethnic/racial minority. 70% have limited English proficiency and less than 30% of these students are at grade level in any academic area. The average Academic Performance Indicator (a California-created statistical ranking based primarily on Stanford Achievement Test scores) is 564 in Title I schools, compared to the state-set goal of 800. Each student will be involved in an intensive, focused arts education program integrating math and basketry in their classroom. Student achievement in math, as measured on the SAT-9 and CAT-6, will increase 5 percentile points each year and performance on Basic Math Facts tests will improve significantly.

This project will provide 20 classroom teachers and 20 instructional aides with 40 hours of hands-on learning in basketry and art in year one. It provides teachers, aides, and 180 teacher trainees with 24 hours of supervised training in years two and three, together with the support and mentoring needed by non-art specialists to allow them to become comfortable and creative in integrating arts into their classroom. The project also develops a network of teachers teaching teachers to stem attrition rates and foster the professional development needed to complete the credentialing process.

The project will develop and create materials needed to replicate this project into other elementary school classrooms and will provide systematic, illustrated information showing how to use basketry to provide quality arts instruction and how to integrate basketry into the academic curricula to strengthen instruction in math.

Mt. Diablo Unified School District
1936 Carlotta Drive
Concord, California 94519

Project Director: Maria McCullough Telephone: (925) 682-8000

The Mt. Diablo Unified School District (MDUSD) Learning Arts Project (LAP) will address specific learning needs for many students at risk of educational failure in 10 elementary schools within the district. The project will include both a Coaching Model and a Resident Artist Model for the participating 4th and 5th grade classrooms, and will provide direct services to 32 teachers and nearly 1,000 students.

The proposed project will build upon the existing collaboration between the Mt. Diablo Unified School District (MDUSD) and Civic Arts Education (CAE). This work includes supporting the Steering Committee, composed of district administrators, classroom teachers, and local arts agency staff. The Committee is working on the development of a District Master Plan for Arts Education and the development and implementation of additional integrated curricula.

The project will provide both a Coaching and Resident Artist model to assist teachers in the development of effective skills and tools for both teaching visual and performing arts and for using the arts to enhance the effectiveness of instruction in core academic subjects.

The Coaching Model program is designed to help teachers learn to effectively plan, create, and teach Theater Arts, Visual Arts, Dance, or Music to their students in a manner that addresses grade-appropriate standards from the California Visual and Performing Arts Standards. These Standards serve as the focus for the professional development program. Teachers not only learn about the strands included in the Standards, they develop strategies to incorporate them into their classroom and discover classroom management techniques and arts integration ideas and concepts that allow them to create and implement solid lesson plans that effectively incorporate arts education.

The Resident Artist model is designed to provide teachers with exposure to actual lesson development and presentation by a Resident Artist in the teacher's classroom, and will occur after the initial Coaching model is completed each year. The artist comes into the classroom for 10 hours of direct instruction with the students, working in conjunction with the classroom teacher. In addition, the artist provides 3 hours of pre- and post-classroom instruction and discussion/feedback with the teacher. CAE has conducted the Resident Artist program in a number of schools and districts within Contra Costa County, including some schools within MDUSD.

Through the use of the experimental design, the project will be able to demonstrate the effects of the program on academic achievement in the arts and core academic subjects for participating students. In addition, the project will track attendance and disciplinary actions for participating and non-participating students to determine if increased exposure to the arts, arts education, and the integration of the arts into core academic subjects has increased attendance and reduces disciplinary actions.

The National Museum of Women in the Arts
1250 New York Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20005-3970

Project Director: Judy Larson Telephone: (202) 783-7362

The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington, D.C., will partner with public schools in Arlington, Virginia, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, and The Albuquerque Museum of Art and History. The project will integrate the visual and language arts into classroom lessons, while supporting national and state Standards of Learning in the arts and helping children discover their own potential for creativity. The goals of this project are: 1) to promote the acquisition of basic skills in creating and responding to the visual arts, 2) to further an interdisciplinary method of learning through the arts, 3) to expand the creativity, critical thinking, and communication skills of the students, 4) to transform the American school arts curriculum into a model that includes information on women artists, and 5) to create a curriculum that can be widely replicated. The project will target nine- and ten-year-old students in the two locations. Both school districts contain a large number of at-risk students; in Arlington, 38% of students receive free or reduced rate lunches, while in Albuquerque, 59.1% of the elementary school students receive free or reduced-rate lunches.

Overarching concepts that link the various components of the project include that it is: 1) interdisciplinary, linking the visual and language arts, 2) student centered, 3) based on enduring understandings - big picture ideas such as self-understanding or the relation of self to community, and 4) designed to provide a framework for integrating information on women into the arts curriculum.

Art, Books, and Communities is based on two long-term programs initiated by NMWA: Bridging Communities (first implemented in 1998) and Exploring Art (begun in 1999). Both are partnerships between the museum and schools, and both consist of lessons that are taught in the classroom and at the museum. The shared objectives of these programs - and of Art, Books, and Communities - are to strengthen students' visual, verbal, and problem-solving skills while fostering an appreciation for museums and the contributions of women to art and society. Teachers will use the Exploring Art workbook as a text to introduce students to basic concepts of visual literacy and to further the analytical process of applying abstract classroom concepts to tangible objects during a museum visit. Building upon these two existing programs, Art, Books, and Communities will expand upon their structures to create a large scale, national model for integrating the arts into the core curriculum while maintaining a specific focus on the contributions of women to our shared cultural history.

Fourth-grade classes are the target audience for this project. The project will begin with in-depth professional development workshops for teachers. In Albuquerque, the project will work with classroom teachers and in Arlington with art teachers. Students' in-class lessons will begin with concepts outlined in the Exploring Art workbook. Each student and teacher involved with the program will be provided with a copy of the text, and each teacher will receive a copy of the Teacher's Guide. After visits to a museum in which classroom lessons are applied to a discussion of works of art, students will work under the guidance of classroom and art teachers as well as visiting artists and writers. They will design their own projects - artists' books - that will include art making and creative writing.

Artists' books are especially well suited to this project that integrates the visual arts and language arts. Artists' books are one-of-a-kind, handmade objects that are conceived as works of art. Students participating in the project will create their own artwork, write their own poem or story, and assemble these two components into a book format.

The students will conduct self-documentation and assessment throughout the project by keeping a teacher-guided journal. During year two, a videographer will record the professional development workshops for teachers and other project activities so that training videos can be produced. Art, Books, and Communities will be documented by NMWA and evaluated by outside evaluators. Curriculum units, developed by participating teachers, museum staff, curriculum and instructional technology specialists, and evaluators, will be made available to schools nationwide both in the form of a publication and as a section on NMWA's website. The project manager will use a variety of approaches to make these materials known to teachers, curriculum specialists, and school superintendents nationwide.

New York City Department of Education
52 Chambers Street
New York, New York 10007

Project Director: Karen Rosner Telephone: (914) 428-3611

The New York City Department of Education in collaboration with Learning through An Expanded Arts Program (LEAP), will further develop, document, rigorously evaluate, and disseminate information about a cohesive and promising (prior pilot studies show increases in English language arts skills) model program entitled Arts-Based Learning Leads to Literacy and Arts Skills Development Project. The project will support scientifically-based research that quantitatively examines increases in pupil standards-based early English language arts and arts skills achievement levels. The project will take place in New York City. All target/control schools will be Title 1 Schools In Need of Improvement thereby focusing services on students most in need.

The fully responsive to federal research design:

• includes 96 Kindergarten and1st grade classes randomly assigned to experimental/control groups;
• serves 3,840 target/control group K-1 pupils at 8 schools over 3 years;
• uses the Early Childhood Literacy Assessment System (ECLAS); it is a valid and reliable measure of English language arts academic performance that has been approved by the federal government for use under Reading First;
• develops and field tests an Early Childhood Arts Assessment Framework related to the adopted New York State Learning Standards in the Arts;
• documents/disseminates through extensive use of video and web-based technologies, as well as the use of teacher/parent surveys, observation protocols, rubric-based analysis of on-going pupil work in relation to state/city standards; and
• uses t-test analysis to measure the differences between control/treatment student outcomes.

LEAP will implement a structured intervention, which uses theater arts, dance/creative movement, visual arts, and music to promote the development of literacy and art skills. Arts skills involve student abilities in creating, performing, and participating in the arts (NYS standard 1); knowing and using arts materials and resources (S. 2); responding to and analyzing works of arts (S.3); and understanding the cultural dimensions and contributions of the arts (S.4). The intervention is one hour per day, five days per week for 20 weeks. The service providers will be artist-educators and teachers. LEAP has developed and already tested the curriculum and related lesson plans. The intervention essence is to use an arts-focused, multi-modal approach to teaching and learning of NYS standards-based early childhood English language arts and arts skills and content.

The project presents an opportunity for No Child Left Behind-defined gold standard research under uniquely controlled conditions (e.g., all target/control sites have the same English language arts curriculum, employ only certified teachers, have the same professional development, use the same assessments). An experienced research team will work in a fertile environment that is focused on improving student outcomes.

Niagara Falls City School District
607 Walnut Avenue
Niagara Falls, New York 14301

Project Director: Margaret Kaiser Telephone: (716) 286-4265

The Arts in Education Institute, in collaboration with the inner city Niagara Falls (NY) City School District and numerous performing artists in the areas of music, dance, visual arts, architecture, and arts literacy, will implement a unique arts programs in five District Elementary and Middle Schools. Five arts genres will be introduced. Participating schools and arts foci include: 60th Street Elementary - Arts & Literature; Niagara Elementary - Architecture; Kalfas Elementary - Visual Arts/Technology; Niagara Middle -Dance, and Gaskill Middle - Music.

Each of the participating schools is utilizing the America's Choice Comprehensive School Reform Model, which requires use of a literacy coach to assist teachers to implement creative strategies to promote improvements in English Language Arts and math performance. An arts specialist, working in each school, will coordinate and collaborate with the literacy coach at each school to integrate the arts with core curriculum in English language arts and, in selected schools, in math, social studies, science, and technology. Curriculum will be developed around the theme, using the particular art genre specific to each school.

A Summer Institute will immerse teachers in a five-day study of an arts piece and strategies that will prepare them to integrate a study of the artwork into their core area of study. A teaching artist assigned to each school will coach teachers as they prepare and teach lessons. Three units of study, integrating arts and a core subject, will be offered each year in each school, with a unit offering ten lessons. A quasi-experimental evaluation design will be used to assess project impact on student performance.

Performing Arts Workshop
Fort Mason Center
Building C, Room 265
San Francisco, California 94123-1382

Project Director: Gary Draper Telephone: (415) 673-2634

Performing Arts Workshop, Inc. (the Workshop), a nonprofit arts education organization in San Francisco, California, will implement its Artists-in-Schools (AIS) Demonstration Project. The AIS model is based on current validated scientific evidence that an 'in' and "through" the arts curriculum model improves critical thinking skills, language skills, and overall academic performance. The Workshop's innovative model of teaching "in" and "through" the arts has evolved over 37 years of experimentation and has been successfully replicated in collaboration with several LEAs to serve thousands of "at-risk" students, including English Language Learners, the economically disadvantaged, special education students, and juvenile offenders.

The Workshop and four Bay Area LEAs will: 1) build on our initial two years of scientific research and evaluation; 2) improve the academic performance of 840 economically disadvantaged inner-city students with an effective 'in' and 'through' the arts curriculum; and 3) document the implementation and achievements of the model and develop resources and tools for educators so the program can be replicated in other settings.

Region 1
1 Fordham Plaza
Bronx, New York 10458

Project Director: Maria Fico Telephone: (718) 329-8107

The POETRY (Providing Opportunities for Expression through Technology Resources for Youth) Express project will support the Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination Grant program by creating a quasi-research model for evaluating an integrated literacy and arts project. This model has successfully increased students' oral and written skills and deepened their appreciation of the arts in 12 District Ten schools. The replication of the model will team professional artists in to team with 12 classroom literacy teachers in four Region 1 schools that have never participated in the District Ten program, over the next 3 years: 2 elementary schools, and 2 middle schools. A directed research study of The POETRY Express will provide the experimental data needed to validate demonstrated positive outcomes for student achievement through integrating literacy and the performing arts. Additionally, the project will equip the school with videoconferencing technology and appropriate telecommunications services. This will enable students to engage in videoconference workshop sessions and academic competitions based on traditional poetry "slams" with other similarly equipped schools. This use of state-of-the-art, innovative technology will enable students and teachers across widespread geographic locations to collaborate and share best practices without wasting valuable instructional time.

The successful model created in District Ten called Bronx WRITeS (Writers and Readers Integrating Technology in Schools) is a dramatized poetry writing and performance project that culminates with a District -wide academic competition, traditionally known as a Poetry Slam, twice per year via videoconferencing. This project presently involves 12 District schools: 8 middle schools, and 4 elementary schools. The project combines the art of performance, original poetry writing, and the use of video conferencing technology to promote standards-based literacy, communication, and the use of technology. The success of this project lies in its ability to engage students in performing and writing original poetry works and receiving immediate feedback from authentic audiences across the District. The 20 teachers and over 300 students who have been participants in Bronx WRITeS will serve as mentors for the four schools new to this project. The project has collaborated with District Ten's Arts and Technology departments and artists from the arts organization, Dream Yard.

The goals of The POETRY Express are designed to meet the needs of teachers, students, and the Region 1 community, all of which are necessary ingredients to academic success.

• Students will increase their oral and written communication skills and will deepen their appreciation for the arts.
• Teachers will become more proficient at leading literacy instruction and integrating the performing arts with the core curriculum.
• POETRY Express will be sustained beyond the federal funding period as a result of the project's capacity building and dissemination activities.

The Sacramento County Office of Education
9738 County Office of Education
Sacramento, California 95827-3399

Project Director: Maureen Gemma Telephone: (916) 228-2371

The Sacramento County Office of Education's project will use funds to support the expansion and refinement of the Crocker Art Museum's ArtPower Lab model program, which has just completed its first year of implementation at Jedediah Smith and Tahoe Elementary schools in the Sacramento City Unified School District.

Expansion in year one will occur through the creation of two ArtPower Labs at Freeport Elementary School, in Sacramento Unified School District and Arbuckle Elementary School in the rural Pierce Unified School District. Expansion in year two will occur through the development of stand alone A.R.T. kits based on an analysis of the component parts housed in each permanent ArtPower Lab. These kits will provide access to arts resources found in the lab that can be utilized by teachers within their regular classroom setting. A.R.T. kits will be implemented at the existing ArtPower Lab schools as well as at two new schools in the suburban Elk Grove Unified School district where space availability is limited.

Refinement of the ArtPower Lab model will occur through the development of curriculum and professional development materials that directly linked arts literacy to the districts' adopted research-based Reading Language Arts program SRA/Open Court Reading (SRA/McGraw-Hill Publisher) Unit themes. Curriculum and professional development will utilize the research-based Understanding by Design model and reflect both the California State English Language Arts Content Standards and the California State Visual and Performing Arts Content Standards. Students will be provided with opportunities to create, perform, and respond to works of art within both the lab and classroom settings in grades 3-5. The project evaluation design will look at both academic and arts outcome measures to determine level of student improvement based on exposure to the arts integrated curriculum.

The goals of the project are:

• Design, implement, disseminate, and evaluate visual and performing arts lessons that build upon selected units/themes/lessons within the Open Court Reading/Language Arts series for grades 3 through 5.
• Design, implement, disseminate, and evaluate professional development for teachers that is focused on (a) the integrated arts and Open Court lessons and b) instructional strategies and approaches that facilitate teachers' abilities to continue to integrate arts.
• Design implement, and disseminate a system for school districts to sustain the proposed A.R.T. Project.

Santa Clara County Office of Education
1290 Ridder Park Drive, MC 237
San Jose, California 95131

Project Director: Barry Vitcov Telephone: (408) 453-6632

The goal of the Arts in the Classroom Professional Development Program is to augment reflective practice in interdisciplinary arts instruction of targeted teachers in Santa Clara County, California to directly increase their students' achievement in the arts and other core subjects. Through the dissemination of resulting research, the program also intends to improve arts instruction, interdisciplinary arts learning, and student achievement in the greater county area.

Through the proposed program, K-6 early service and veteran teachers at high-priority, inner-city schools in Santa Clara County will participate in an intensive professional development arts series, including hands-on arts lessons, interdisciplinary curriculum development, peer coaching and lesson study as communities of practice. They will receive on-going, follow-up support to deepen interdisciplinary curriculum design, implementation, and reflective practice, and will develop leadership skills as arts education mentor teachers. Approximately 2,500 students will benefit from the teachers' application of their learning in the classroom.

The program evaluation will employ mixed-methodology, pre- and post-treatment design utilizing matched comparison groups of teachers. Data will be collected using surveys, assessments of content knowledge, interviews, lesson analysis, and classroom observations. The Santa Clara County Office of Education will publish research results and teacher-developed materials as a supplement to its existing Arts in Your Classroom Visual and Performing Arts Resource Binder, as well as in CD-Rom and web-based formats. The Arts in the Classroom Professional Development Program will be studied for its impact on teacher attitudes and beliefs toward the arts and arts education, on student achievement in interdisciplinary study, and on the school as a community of arts practices.

The School District of Greenville County
301 Camperdown Way
Greenville, South Carolina 29602-2848

Project Director: Roy Fluhrer Telephone: (864) 241-3330

The School District of Greenville County is implementing The Grove/Tanglewood Model Arts Project, an arts integration and model development and dissemination program based at Grove Elementary and Tanglewood Middle School, two of seventeen designated Title I schools located in Greenville County, South Carolina. Presently, Grove Elementary is ranked "below average" and Tanglewood is ranked "unsatisfactory" in academic achievement. The project will involve total participation of more than 900 students. The project will address the needs of at-risk, low performing students through an arts integration program across the core academic curriculum. Educators in grades three through eight and artists will receive training in arts integration techniques. The program will build across the grades over three years starting in the third grade at Grove Elementary and in the sixth grade at Tanglewood Middle. Artists and teachers will team together in integrated units of study, using inquiry and standards-based processes to find entry points into the curriculum being taught. In addition, students will benefit from improved arts instruction, after-school arts programs, and concerts and residencies in school and in the community.

With the participation of school administrators, teachers, students, and cultural arts organizations, this coordinated community effort will seek attainment of the following:
Project Goals:

1. To raise academic achievement as measured by the Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test (PACT) by 5% annually.
2. To increase average daily attendance by 2% annually.
3. To increase positive character development and responsibility by 10% annually.
4. To reduce the number of court referrals for truancy at Tanglewood by 10% each year.*
5. To increase home/school relations by a minimum of 15% annually at Tanglewood.*
6. To create a model program using research-based evaluation methods, that can be easily duplicated at other schools across Greenville County, the state, and the nation.

*These two situations are unique to Tanglewood and are currently and only being tracked through The Tanglewood Project.

The following procedures provide a framework for program design, implementation, and evaluation:
Process Objectives:

1. Extend the formal partnership between the School District of Greenville County, Tanglewood Middle School and the Metropolitan Arts Council to include Grove Elementary School.
2. Structure long-term, continuous training and professional development in arts integration techniques for teachers and participating artists to ensure quality instruction for students.
3. Strengthen school-based arts programs through improved equipment and supplies, in-school artist residencies, after school arts programs, and attendance at cultural performances and exhibitions in the community.
4. Create a mechanism to document and disseminate the model developed through the Grove/Tanglewood Model Arts Project.
5. Create a method for evaluation that is based on reliable research and effective practice that will provide a basis for distributing project information.

Saint Paul Public Schools
360 Colborne Street
St. Paul Minnesota 55102

Project Director: Jan Spencer Telephone: (651) 793-5487

Saint Paul Public Schools (SPPS) - ISD 625, will implement a project that will further demonstrate the effectiveness of Arts Allies in Basic Learning & Excellence. Arts ABLE is a locally initiated, yet research-based, exemplary program with strategies that have proven effective in addressing specific needs of students at risk of academic failure. Arts ABLE has successfully expanded the skills of teachers and the relationships with "allies" in the community so that all students in participating schools can achieve to high standards in and through the arts.

The objectives of the Arts Allies in Basic Learning & Excellence model project are to 1) successfully develop and effectively use all 10 elements of the Arts ABLE program in five urban elementary schools; 2) improve at-risk and other students' achievement on standardized tests and in the arts at five replication sites; and 3) expand, produce, and disseminate model program information, materials, and tools based on the results and processes developed by the initiating Arts ABLE schools. 3,156 students, 450 instructional staff, 4,000 family members, and 200 community artists and arts experts will directly benefit from the project. Thousands of other schools, students, staff, and community members will indirectly benefit from the project.

Arts ABLE has been pioneered over seven years in two public elementary schools in SPPS, in partnership with two community-based arts organizations. The District has obtained reliable, longitudinal data on Arts ABLE that reveals the program's effectiveness in raising the bottom quartile of low-performing students on standardized tests in the participating elementary schools, and reducing the number of students "below average." Students in Arts ABLE schools out-performed their peers in other Saint Paul schools with similar socio-economic and cultural profiles, and each school showed overall student achievement gains in comparison to its own student body. Further, the model shows impact on the number of opportunities and the quality of outcomes related to students' learning in the arts disciplines of music and visual arts, and, to a lesser, but significant extent, of dance, theater, literary arts, and media arts.

The Arts ABLE model involves students, educators, community arts organizations, and families as "allies" in the program. Arts ABLE bases its model on best practice strategies proven successful in other arts and education programs. These include: analysis of each schools' data regarding student success and gaps in performance; inventory of each schools' arts assets and challenges; alignment of the new arts programming to support the school's improvement plan or comprehensive reform model; job-embedded and other results-oriented professional development offered by trained artists and arts experts; and curriculum planning, mapping, and implementation of new standards-based arts-infused teaching content and process by teachers and arts-expert allies.

Arts ABLE is ready for further demonstration, external evaluation, and dissemination to other elementary schools, first in Saint Paul, and eventually in other districts, in collaboration with Perpich Center for Arts Education, a public arts education agency. Arts ABLE will be replicated in five Saint Paul schools and thoroughly evaluated by an external evaluator through a quasi-experimental design with carefully matched comparison conditions. Arts ABLE will also refine and generate grant-funded products that can be used by other school districts locally and nationally seeking to incorporate the arts to address the needs and raise the performance of students at risk of academic failure.

Stagebridge
2501 Harrison Street
Oakland, California 94612
Web page address: http://www.stagebridge.org

Project Director: Stuart L. Kandell Telephone: (510) 444-4755

Stagebridge, a nationally acclaimed theatre of seniors, will replicate its "Storybridge" project. The nonprofit organization will partner with the Oakland Unified School District to run and evaluate the project in eight elementary schools. "Storybridge" brings storytelling, oral history, and intergenerational theater by senior citizens to at-risk, low-income urban elementary students in a colorful, memorable manner. The objective is to improve students' literacy skills, stimulate language arts and social studies curricula and promote intergenerational understanding. The company will develop program manuals and training video for dissemination and replication. This three-year grant will allow the company to build on a successful history and complete the final stages of model development.

Streetside Stories
285 9th Street
San Francisco, California 94103

Project Director: Linda Johnson Telephone: (415) 864-5221

Streetside Stories and consortium members, San Francisco Unified School District, the Center for Digital Storytelling, and WestEd, will implement a project that will integrate arts learning into the core curriculum. The STAR! (Storytelling, Technology, and Arts Resource) Project will work to integrate arts into San Francisco public middle schools in several ways:

• The Storytelling Exchange program will help 1250 randomly assigned sixth grade students at Title 1 middle schools to create autobiographical narratives. Students will create these narratives during an engaging two-week, 16-hour program that uses storytelling, theater, and daily writing to teach core curricular concepts of narrative writing and oral communication. The project will teach both core arts curriculum and core language arts curriculum.
• The Tech Tales program will help 1250 randomly assigned seventh grade students at Title 1 middle schools to create autobiographical narratives during a one-week program that builds on the Storytelling Exchange. Students will then go on to create digital stories, which use digital tools to creatively bring stories to life, with the help of specially trained teachers and special technology at each school site.

Each teacher who takes part in the program will also receive training that will allow him or her to replicate the program after the grant period ends, and, in the case of the Tech Tales program, to carry out digital storytelling in the classroom. In all, approximately 40 teachers will be trained in engaging arts education, language arts, and technology techniques. Overall, the project will:

• provide 2,500 youth with intensive, experiential arts education;
• train at least 40 educators to replicate arts learning program content for their students;
• evaluate the educational effectiveness of two arts education programs and two teacher training programs and disseminate evaluation results;
• integrate arts learning, language arts, and technology;
• strengthen the position of arts in the SFUSD middle school curriculum;
• disseminate student works over the Web and through a book; and
• disseminate a follow-up storytelling education and digital storytelling training program that can be offered nationally, via curriculum guide, DVD, the Web, or face-to-face training.

1. Student achievement on state tests (CAT 6)
2. Student written and oral communication skills
3. Student proficiency with technology
4. Student confidence in and enthusiasm for the narrative arts and artistic ability
5. Student achievement motivation
6. Utility of the training to teachers
7. Arts integration by teachers post programs/trainings

Texarkana Regional Arts and Humanities Council, Inc.
P.O. Box 1171
321 West 4th Street
Texarkana, Texas 75504-1171

Project Director: Sara Lawrence Telephone: (903) 792-8681

Texarkana Regional Arts and Humanities Council, Inc. (TRAHC) will implement its innovative "ArtsSmart to the Maximum" (aMax) Project. It will partner with 15 elementary, four middle, and one alternative (serving students K-8) school from three, identified urban, school districts to develop Project schools as effective models of arts integration in all subject areas for overall student academic excellence. The aMax Project is designed to supplement TRAHC's highly successful ArtsSmart Program, initiated in 1992, to develop teachers "interested in, willing to and effective at using the arts to teach curricular objectives allowing students to reach their greatest academic potential." TRAHC identifies its success when campus and district decisions regarding time, funds, and personnel are based on a value in the arts.

aMax Project goals, objectives, and activities are based on 30 years of solid research including current work of Howard Gardner and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and the consultation of Thomas Armstrong, Eric Jensen, former NEA Director Warren Newman, and Linda Clarke, Executive Director for the Houston Annenberg Foundation. Processes and strategies successful in strengthening the overall academic performance of students through effective arts-integration and skills training in creating, performing, and responding to the arts will be rigorously documented and evaluated through a matched comparison approach by Project partners and skilled evaluators with Texas A & M University - Texarkana. Relevant reports and materials will be developed and prepared to provide guidance and advocacy to other schools, districts, and community cultural organizations. Materials will be prepared for wide dissemination through effective use of technology and presentation.

Project Strengths Include:

1. number of schools involved, ensuring project replicability in a variety of settings;
2. number of schools involved, serving high percentages (over 50%) of economically disadvantaged students, to provide models for schools identified for improvement, corrective action, or restructuring under Title 1;
3. strategies and processes based on objectives in the No Child Left Behind Act;
4. strategies and processes partnering community organizations with school entities to allow students to reach their greatest academic potential for overall success, thereby positively impacting the overall economic health of the community;
5. strategies and processes based on reliable research, effective practice, and coherent theories to strengthen the use of high-quality arts in all areas of learning.
6. Strategies and processes to develop campus administrators as leaders in arts advocacy who know they are the key to moving a campus forward in the arts.

Traverse City Area Public Schools
412 Webster
P.O. Box 32
Traverse City, Michigan 49685

Project Director: Alison Arnold Telephone: (231) 933-8995

The "Building Connections" project will provide an effective demonstration model with successful outcomes that : 1) integrate the arts into core elementary school curriculum to improve reading and writing literacy and enhance student achievement: 2) strengthen arts instruction at the elementary level to increase the scope and quality of student engagement in arts content instruction, involvement in art studies, and arts enrichment experiences beyond the classroom. Project sites will be Interlochen Community and Long Lake elementary schools. These schools are Title I designated schools in Traverse City Area Public Schools, and were selected as ideal sites based on needs of their rural student populations with significant "at risk" factors due to poverty as reflected by identified "at-risk" populations, free and reduced lunch populations, family socio-economic and educational factors, significant enrolled special education and pre-primary impaired students.

"Building Connections" project will incorporate a rural-pronged strategic framework of professional development for improving instructional practices; curriculum development for Arts infusion into core content areas; instructional practices; curriculum infused core curriculum; arts subject content =enrichment using Teaching for Understanding protocols and artists in residence. "Building Connections" will further extend the research-based "Teaching for Understanding (TFU) comprehensive model for instructional delivery (developed by Harvard's Project Zero); and resources from Attuned Schools research-based program (based on the work of Dr. Mel Levine, University of North Carolina Medical School) will be used to create individualized profiles of student's strengths and weaknesses in eight neurological constructs. The staff at Interlochen and Long Lake schools has already been trained to administer the assessment.

Traverse City Areas Public Schools "Building Connections" model project will be independently evaluated by the Evaluation and Policy Research Group at NCREL through a subcontract arrangement. The evaluation will include booth formative and summative components. Summative evaluation objectives will be accomplished by using a quasi-experimental design involving a matched comparison group.

The Trenton Board of Education
108 N. Clinton Avenue
Trenton, New Jersey 08609

Project Director: Marge Herbert Telephone: (609) 989-2477

The Office of Early Childhood Programs of the Trenton Board of Education will collaborate with Trenton Community Music School (TCMS) to implement its Music for the Very Young (MVY) program in 26 preschools in 14 district elementary schools. These partners plan to address the learning needs of Trenton's four-year-olds, two-thirds of whom are eligible for free or reduced lunch.

The goals of the proposed project, Music for the Very Young: Music, Movement, and Literacy, are to: (1) build music education into the fabric of Trenton preschools; (2) help preschoolers realize the full potential of their musical intelligence; (3) train preschool teachers to be independent, confident leaders of developmentally appropriate music and movement activities; (4) demonstrate ways parents can participate in their children's musical learning; and (5) evaluate the effects of a comprehensive music program on the development of literacy skills in preschool children. MVY is provided by TCMS, collaborating with the Center for Music and Young Children, developers of the national, research-based Music Together® program. MVY provides professional development sessions for classroom teachers, weekly music sessions led by early childhood music specialists, and educational family music events.

Through MVY, the Trenton Board of Education hopes to stimulate both musical and literacy development in its preschool children. Education Resources Group will evaluate the accomplishment of these goals with comprehensive and rigorous measures of student music and literacy learning outcomes for students participating in the program and control groups of non-participating students.

Warren County School District
185 Hospital Drive
Warren, Pennsylvania 16365-4885

Project Director: John Sechriest Telephone: (814) 723-6900

Warren County School District (WCSD), a rural, economically depressed school district located in northwestern Pennsylvania, will expand the work being accomplished under the current Project Art Smart (PAS I) project. In the fall of 2001, the school district was awarded one of only eleven grants funded under the first round of the U.S. Department of Education's Arts Education Model Development and Dissemination Grant Program. The award enabled the school district to partner with the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, the Arts Council of Erie, and the Warren County Historical Society to improve student learning for approximately 600 rural students in 4 elementary schools by strengthening fine arts instruction and infusing the arts into the core elementary curriculum. According to the outside evaluator, PAS I "has demonstrated several significant strengths since implementation began. The project has 'delivered' on provision of high quality professional development, effective partnerships that have enriched the arts, dissemination of project goals and progress to the larger school community, provision of classroom resources that are easily accessed and shared, and development of targeted assessment via extensive qualitative and quantitative measures."

This project, entitled Project Art Smart II (PAS II), will allow the school district to broaden the scope of dissemination to all 13 elementary schools in the district utilizing the "lessons learned" during PAS I regarding the process of reform. Two new partners are being added to the project, the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and the City of Erie School District. The Carnegie Art Museum in Pittsburgh has agreed to host teacher training in their facilities. Their education faculty will work alongside Sharon Shaffer of the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center to provide 5 days of teacher training each summer. The partnership will make teacher training more affordable, as the Carnegie Museum is located closer to the school district than Washington, D.C. (where summer training for PAS I has occurred), plus teachers from the school district often arrange student field trips to Pittsburgh. The district also intends to disseminate products and process to one elementary school within the City of Erie School District that serves a high number of impoverished and minority children. Through the Erie pilot project, the partners will acquire experience in replicating the model in an urban environment.

The project will include 10 new schools; the formal evaluation of the project will be narrowed, and will focus on qualitative and quantitative data collection at two target elementary schools. The two schools selected for focused evaluation served as control sites under PAS I. Therefore, in this quasi-experimental model, they will serve as their own controls. Baseline data for the two-targeted schools has been collected during the 2002-2003 academic year. Quantitative data has been collected to serve as a comparative baseline on the Terra Nova, Torrance Test of Creativity, and locally designed Curriculum Based Assessments.

The goals of PAS II are:

1. To show a significant improvement in student performance, positive attitudes, motivation, and appreciation of cultural and racial diversity through strengthening the use of high-quality arts in the course of academic instruction, and the place of arts as an academic subject in the regular school curriculum; and
2. To improve and change the way teachers provide instruction in a way that engages students more effectively. To observe and document changes in teaching pedagogy taking place, to encourage positive practices and creativity in teaching and learning, and to spark new interest in learning by both teachers and students.

Ysleta Independent School District
9600 Sims
El Paso, Texas 79925-7225

Project Director: Lupe Casillas-Lowenberg Telephone: (915) 434-9721

The Ysleta Independent School District's project, through its fine arts program, will expand upon its arts program by effectively integrating the arts into the regular curriculum. This will allow the school district to strengthen other core academic subjects and strengthen art as an academic discipline. The approach will address the lack of high quality, research-based models by encouraging the partnership with VSA arts of Texas, an international, nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting artistic excellence and providing educational opportunities through the arts for children and adults with disabilities. The overall outcome of the program will allow students to create, perform, and respond to works of art which will build creativity, self-confidence, and critical thinking skills-qualities central to their success in school, work, and life, and will exhibit an increase in academic performance and cultural awareness. This partnership will allow for the development and documentation of effective models for improving arts education and student achievement.

The school district will further develop and create materials for the replication and adaptation of its current comprehensive approaches for integrating a range of arts disciplines in music, dance, theater, and visual arts, including cultural and folk arts. The project will be implemented at six early childhood/elementary campuses for 2,602 Pre-Kindergarten through Third Grade Students. The project will incorporate a design that improves and expands the integration of arts education in grades Pre-Kindergarten through Third. This will be accomplished by developing materials that are designed to help replicate and/or adapt the program at other campuses. A researched-based evaluation that is experimental in design, will randomly assign students, teachers, classrooms, and schools to receive the program or be in a control group that does not receive the program. This will determine whether the implemented program produces meaningful effects on student achievement or teacher performance. The Texas Center for Disability Studies will provide the qualitative and quantitative evaluations of change and perceived change of the parents of children with disabilities. All outcomes and their resulting benefits will be documented and the products and services developed will be made available so that they can be used to replicate the program in other settings. The Ysleta Independent School District serves an inner-city community in El Paso, Texas.