Art Education Facts

Did You Know?
Young people who participate in the arts for at least three hours each week through at least one full year are:

• 4 times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement
• 3 times more likely to be elected to class office within their schools
• 4 times more likely to participate in a math and science fair
• 3 times more likely to win an award for school attendance
• 4 times more likely to win an award for writing an essay or poem

Young artists, as compared with their peers, are likely to:

• Attend music, art, and dance classes nearly three times as frequently
• Participate in youth groups nearly four times as frequently
• Read for pleasure nearly twice as often
• Perform community service more than four times as often
  
  Ten weeks of in-class drama coaching in a remedial third and fourth-grade classroom helped the teacher and students transform their approach to reading and improve the students' attitude about and success in reading.  Dramatic training and expression offered students the opportunity to contribute their own background knowledge and understanding, improve their accuracy and momentum, broaden their understandings and expressive choices, and begin to see themselves as actors, or active readers.  That sense of achievement positively affected their self-perception.
  
  source: Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development, 2002, pp. 56–57
  study: The Flight of Reading: Shifts in Instruction, Orchestration, and Attitudes through Classroom Theatre
  
  Want more reasons to feed your child the arts? Click Here.
  
  ("Living the Arts through Language + Learning: A Report on Community-based Youth Organizations," Shirley Brice Heath, Stanford University and Carnegie Foundation For the Advancement of Teaching, Americans for the Arts Monograph, November 1998)
  
  *Data courtesy of the Americans for the Arts.
  

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