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2010-2014: Arts Integration, Rochester, NY

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Findings From Third Year (2013) of the Second Grant, 2011-2014

Section 1: Summary Results for Kindergarten

In the third year results at kindergarten we see gains in the treatment group that can be described as more than modest, with kindergarteners gaining four to five months’ additional developmental growth, particularly in the Mathematics and Science domain, where we see at least five months’ additional developmental growth. These third year results at kindergarten closely mirror the third year results in the first Arts Impact project (that third year was 2008-09), where we also saw fairly significant gains in treatment students. While therefore this cannot yet be termed trend data, we now have two comparable data points with similar results.

We witnessed in 2012-13 the treatment kindergarten pupils arriving as low as five months developmentally behind the control kindergarteners. For five year-olds this is a non-trivial gap. By the end of the school year the treatment pupils caught up and even in some instances slightly surpassed the control kindergarteners. This was true to varying degrees in all four sub-scales of the Child Observation Record (COR; a detailed description is below): Math and Science, the greatest gains, followed by Initiative and Social Relations; to a lesser extent Music and Movement and Language and Literacy.

  • Mathematics and Science = .27, over five additional months of growth;
  • Initiative and Social Relations = .21, between four and five months of additional growth;
  • Music and Movement = .17, approximately four months additional growth;
  • Language and Literacy = .15 = Approximately four months’ additional growth.

Section 2: Summary Results for Grades 1, 2

  • Treatment groups start with slight but not significantly better performance in Fall
  • Treatment groups increase during the year and end significantly ahead of control groups in Spring
  • Significance broken down by poverty shows greatest poverty does not benefit

Section 3: Summary Results for Grades 3, 4, 5, 6

Overall results on the new Common Core-aligned New York State Tests:

  • The total of four grades 3 – 6 realized a 41.4% advantage in ELA and a 38.0% advantage on the Mathematics; in other words, 41.4% more students who receiving arts integration passed the ELA Test, and 38.0% more students passed the Mathematics Test.
  • Sixth grade saw the largest comparative advantage, with 88.8% more students in the treatment group passing the ELA and 95.0% passing the Mathematics.
  • Third grade saw big gains as well, with 57.8% more passing ELA and 55.9% passing Mathematics.
  • Fourth and fifth grade realized smaller gains, with 21.9% more fourth graders passing the ELA and 14.9% more passing the Mathematics Test; for fifth grade it was 10.3% more passing the ELA and 4.4% passing the Mathematics.
  • In comparing NWEA scores in third through sixth grade, we generally but not always observe arts integration students gaining more than control school students, although not to the degree shown on the State Tests. This may be the result of the testing administration and not necessarily reflective of the actual student achievement. One advantage of NWEA, which is administered three times a school year, we often see the treatment students behind at the beginning of the school year, and then meeting or exceeding the control students by the end of the year.