• Visual arts education boosts students’ academic achievement.
• The Arts Help Achieve Multiple Measures of Success - ESSA
• Higher Graduation Rates: CAE’s study of more than two hundred NYC high schools found a close correlation between arts programs and graduation rates. Schools in the top third of graduation rates also had the most well-developed arts education programs; those in the bottom third of graduation rates offered the least arts programming.
• Higher SAT Scores: The national evaluation of the YouthARTS Development Project found that students who participate in arts learning for all four years of high school scored substantially higher on the SAT than students with six or fewer months’ training in the arts. Arts-learning participants scored, on average, 58 points higher on verbal and 38 points higher on math.
• High-arts, low-SES students were more likely to graduate than low-arts, low-SES students -- and all students.
• High-arts, low-SES students were more likely to both attend and finish college than low-arts, low-SES students.
• Students with high rich arts experiences were more likely to take a calculus course
• Students with few or no arts credits were five times more likely not to graduate than students with many arts credits.
• Students with high arts involvement are more likely to be in honor societies.
• “The arts enhance the process of learning. The systems they nourish, which include our integrated sensory, attentional, cognitive, emotional, and motor capacities, are, in fact, the driving forces behind all other learning” (Jensen, 2001).
• A well-documented national study using a federal database of over 25,000 middle and high school students, researchers from the University of California at Los Angeles found students with high arts involvement performed better on standardized achievement tests than students with low arts involvement.
• The College Board’s National Taskforce on the Arts in Education recommends that “greater access to arts education can serve as an effective tool in closing the achievement gap, increasing the number of underserved students that achieve at the highest level in education.
• The arts have some unique parallels to the Common Core Standards that may make Arts Integration implementation a beneficial addition for teachers and administrators.
• Art Education is Essential because "... high school students from under-resourced environments who are highly involved in the arts have better grades, are less likely to drop out, and are more likely to go on to college."​ Catterall, J.S., Dumais, S.A., & Hampden-Thompson, G. (2012). The Arts and Achievement in At-Risk Youth: Findings from Four Longitudinal Studies. Washington, D.C.: National Endowment for the Arts.
• Students receiving arts and arts integrated literacy instruction outperform peers without such arts instruction on standardized reading assessments (Corbett, Wilson & Morse, 2002; Keehn, Harmon & Shoho, 2008; Catterall & Chapleau, et al., 1999; Ingram & Meath, 2007).
• Participation in arts and arts-integrated programming helps students develop problem solving, abstract reasoning abilities, and perseverance, skills that are critical for mathematics achievement (Heath & Roach, 1999; Hetland, 2000; Imms, Jeanneret & Stevens-Ballenger, 2011; Rostan, 2010; Winner et al, 2006).
• Improved Cognition: Studies by the Dana Foundation demonstrate a close correlation between exposure to the arts and improved skills in cognition and attention for learning.