Catherine H. Augustine

Revitalizing Arts Education Through Community-Wide Coordination.

The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective solutions that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the world. R ANDs publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from RAND. Preface For more than 30 years, arts education has struggled to maintain space and time in publicly funded education in the United States for children in kindergarten through grade 12. In the nations urban centers, reductions in state and local budgets in the 1970s and 1980s led to diminished arts programming in favor of maintaining other subjects. More recently, government-legislated accountability based on mathematics and reading test scores has shifted attention to these subjects, to the detriment of other elements of the curriculum. Despite these trends, some urban communities have not given up the struggle to preserve arts education, and have sought to improve childrens access to quality arts learning experiences through collaboration and coordination among the different providers and influencers of arts education. This report examines efforts by six communities to improve arts education provision in their regions through collaborative means. Concrete examples are given to answer why and how these efforts have unfolded and to document the associated challenges. The audience for this report consists of persons interested in improving arts education in urban U.S. centers. As such, it includes leaders in public school districts, mayoral offices, foundations, community-based providers of arts learning activities, out-of-school-time providers of such activities, and cultural centers; it also includes teachers and artists. Federal and state arts and education policymakers may also find the report of interest. This study was conducted by RAND Education, a unit of the RAND Corporation. The work was commissioned by The Wallace Foundation, which seeks to support and share effective ideas and practices that expand learning and enrichment opportunities for all people. The foundations three current objectives are to strengthen education leadership to improve student achievement, to improve after-school learning opportunities, and to build appreciation and demand for the arts. The Wallace Foundation has funded a separate study to examine reputedly high-quality arts education programs to understand what quality arts learning means to those who provide the programs and how …

Promoting Quality and Variety Through the Public Financing of Privately Operated Schools in Qatar

In 2002, Qatar began establishing publicly funded, privately operated “independent schools” in parallel with the existing, centralized Ministry of Education system. The reform that drove the establishment of the independent schools included accountability provisions such as (a) measuring school and student performance and (b) distributing school performance information to parents. Because parental demand for the new schools exceeds supply, the effectiveness of parental choice in promoting accountability is limited. The independent schools showed higher student achievement (in elementary grades) and significant changes in classroom practices on the basis of 2005–2007 data. In 2009, the government announced that all ministry schools would convert to independent schools. In addition, over time, vouchers would become available to allow per-student funding to be used in some private schools.

Study Suggests: Kids Who Attend More Thrive More

Excerpted from Learning from Summer: Effects of Voluntary Summer Learning Programs on Low-Income Urban Youth, Catherine H. Augustine et al., RAND Corporation, RR-1557, 2016. The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. www.rand.org/t/RR1557 These findings are correlational but very likely due to the summer learning programs. The differences in the performance between the “high attenders” and the control group are the equivalent of about 20%–25% of a year’s learning in language arts and math at this age. These benefits persisted throughout the 5th-grade school year. Kids with high attendance performed better in math and reading after two summers compared with students in the control group, who were not invited to participate in the programs.