The Enduring Benefits of Art in Education

While Magdalena Abakanowicz stated that "Art does not solve problems, but makes us aware of their existence," arts education actively addresses and solves problems, offering a wide array of benefits to students. Years of research have consistently demonstrated a strong connection between arts education and crucial aspects of child development and academic success. From enhancing academic achievement to fostering social and emotional growth, promoting civic engagement, and ensuring equitable opportunities, art in education plays a vital role in shaping well-rounded individuals.

Academic Achievement and Cognitive Development

Involvement in the arts is associated with gains in math, reading, cognitive ability, critical thinking, and verbal skill. Arts learning can also improve motivation, concentration, confidence, and teamwork. A 2005 report by the Rand Corporation about the visual arts argues that the intrinsic pleasures and stimulation of the art experience do more than sweeten an individual's life -- according to the report, they "can connect people more deeply to the world and open them to new ways of seeing," creating the foundation to forge social bonds and community cohesion. Recent research published in npj Science of Learning found that students aged 14-16 who participated in at least two semester-length arts workshops achieved higher grades in language arts and math, along with overall improvements in GPA.

An arts-integrated curriculum that asks students to draw or sing as part of the learning process may enhance their ability to recall material such as scientific principles or vocabulary. For example, students use shapes and drawings during math to better understand complex geometry concepts. Students act out or dictate important parts of a play or book in English.

Social and Emotional Development

The benefits of art in education extend beyond academics, playing a crucial role in social and emotional development. Arts education provides a medium for students to experience and process emotions and develop emotional intelligence. Arts education usually involves collaboration and enhances students’ understanding of social skills. Art education also allows students to experience and understand cultural differences and fosters communication among diverse individuals.

Researchers found that parents who consistently sang songs and read books to their infants were more likely to interact with them in ways that supported the development of social competence, secure attachment, and cognitive skills-compared with parents who did not engage in those arts activities. Among toddlers, arts engagement was associated with stronger parent-child relationships. Preschool-age children who consistently participated in any type of arts activity had higher scores on academic assessments (reading, math, and language) than children not engaged in those activities. Moreover, kindergarteners who participated in arts activities at home were seen to exhibit positive, pro-social behavior.

From kindergarten through fifth grade, meanwhile, children’s participation in out-of-school arts activities (e.g., taking an arts class or lesson or attending a concert, play, or show) was associated with the following social-emotional attributes as reported by teachers: positive approaches to learning; greater interpersonal skills; and lower rates of exhibiting internalized or externalized problem behaviors.

Participating in arts programs - particularly those that focus on more collaborative forms like theater and music - is a good way for students to sharpen their communication and social-emotional skills, experts say. Art classes offer students opportunities to interact with their fellow students in a constructive and creative manner, a process that fuels their social and emotional development. For example, one study published in the Journal of Primary Prevention found that students in low-income schools who participated in an after-school dance program tended to experience heightened self-esteem and social skills.

Equitable Opportunities

Strong arts programming in schools helps close a gap that has left many a child behind: From Mozart for babies to tutus for toddlers to family trips to the museum, the children of affluent, aspiring parents generally get exposed to the arts whether or not public schools provide them. Low-income children, often, do not. "Arts education enables those children from a financially challenged background to have a more level playing field with children who have had those enrichment experiences,'' says Eric Cooper, president and founder of the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education.

Combating Complacency and Improving Engagement

Educators are continually searching for ways to excite students about learning, combat chronic absenteeism, and curb the dropout rate. Arts education is particularly well-suited to combat complacent attitudes toward learning. Indeed, research finds that students enrolled in arts courses have improved attendance, and the effects are larger for students with a history of chronic absenteeism. The arts provide students a sense of ownership and agency over their own education. Students who enroll in a theater class, for example, gain a sense of purpose as they work toward opening night, and they build a community with their peers and teachers as they work together toward a common goal.

The one thing that kept me in school was that I really loved band. I couldn’t see myself leaving the band behind, and so I stayed in school and even went to college. Not as a music major, but I continued to play in the College Marching and Concert bands. Finally, the collaborative nature of the arts can build strong bonds among students, teachers, and parents, thus contributing to a more positive school culture. Art programs are one of the main factors that motivate children to come to school. The arts allow students an opportunity to have fun throughout the day without having to worry so much about the stressors of other content areas.

Developing Essential Skills

Art projects often require kids to use their fine motor skills to complete tasks. Holding a narrow paint brush, cutting with scissors and sculpting clay are a few examples of art activities that use fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. By participating in open-ended art projects, the kids get a chance to practice those skills without being judged on the outcome. The more often they practice the fine motor skills, the more improved they become. Art education offers a more open approach and celebrates the differences in finished products. Kids learn that there is more than one way to complete the art project. They are able to express themselves and their emotions through the artwork. The open-ended nature of art education also allows kids to take more risks in their projects. Because there is flexibility in the outcome, kids don't feel as much pressure as they create. They know that the finished product will be accepted even if it doesn't look exactly like all of the others.

Addressing the Erosion of Arts Education

Arts education has been slipping for more than three decades, the result of tight budgets, an ever-growing list of state mandates that have crammed the classroom curriculum, and a public sense that the arts are lovely but not essential. This erosion chipped away at the constituencies that might have defended the arts. Yet against this backdrop, a new picture is emerging. Comprehensive, innovative arts initiatives are taking root in a growing number of school districts. Many of these models are based on new findings in brain research and cognitive development, and they embrace a variety of approaches: using the arts as a learning tool (for example, musical notes to teach fractions); incorporating arts into other core classes (writing and performing a play about, say, slavery); creating a school environment rich in arts and culture (Mozart in the hallways every day) and hands-on arts instruction.

The Role of Policy and Implementation

Education policies almost universally recognize the value of arts. Forty-seven states have arts-education mandates, forty-eight have arts-education standards, and forty have arts requirements for high school graduation, according to the 2007-08 AEP state policy database. The Goals 2000 Educate America Act, passed in 1994 to set the school-reform agenda of the Clinton and Bush administrations, declared art to be part of what all schools should teach. NCLB, enacted in 2001, included art as one of the ten core academic subjects of public education, a designation that qualified arts programs for an assortment of federal grants.

Whatever NCLB says about the arts, it measures achievement through math and language arts scores, not drawing proficiency or music skills. It's no surprise, then, that many districts have zeroed in on the tests. A 2006 national survey by the Center on Education Policy, an independent advocacy organization in Washington, DC, found that in the five years after enactment of NCLB, 44 percent of districts had increased instruction time in elementary school English language arts and math while decreasing time spent on other subjects. A follow-up analysis, released in February 2008, showed that 16 percent of districts had reduced elementary school class time for music and art -- and had done so by an average of 35 percent, or fifty-seven minutes a week.

Success Stories and Innovative Approaches

Yet some districts have made great strides toward not only revitalizing the arts but also using them to reinvent schools. The work takes leadership, innovation, broad partnerships, and a dogged insistence that the arts are central to what we want students to learn. In Dallas, for example, a coalition of arts advocates, philanthropists, educators, and business leaders have worked for years to get arts into all schools, and to get students out into the city's thriving arts community. Today, for the first time in thirty years, every elementary student in the Dallas Independent School District receives forty-five minutes a week of art and music instruction.

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The Minneapolis and Chicago communities, too, are forging partnerships with their vibrant arts and cultural resources to infuse the schools with rich comprehensive, sustainable programs -- not add-ons that come and go with this year's budget or administrator. In Arizona, Tom Horne, the state superintendant of public instruction, made it his goal to provide high-quality, comprehensive arts education to all K-12 students.

The Importance of Constructive Criticism

Unlike many other school subjects, in which questions often have one specific answer, the arts allow for students to come up with a nearly unlimited variety of final products. This means that art teachers often give feedback a little bit differently, particularly with older students. Art teachers typically provide their students with highly individualized, constructive criticism. This allows students to learn how to gracefully receive a critique and respond to it, she says, explaining how and why they developed the artwork that they did.

Empirical Evidence and Research Findings

We find that a substantial increase in arts educational experiences has remarkable impacts on students’ academic, social, and emotional outcomes. Relative to students assigned to the control group, treatment school students experienced a 3.6 percentage point reduction in disciplinary infractions, an improvement of 13 percent of a standard deviation in standardized writing scores, and an increase of 8 percent of a standard deviation in their compassion for others. When we restrict our analysis to elementary schools, which comprised 86 percent of the sample and were the primary target of the program, we also find that increases in arts learning positively and significantly affect students’ school engagement, college aspirations, and their inclinations to draw upon works of art as a means for empathizing with others.

A 2005 study on the impact of a comprehensive arts curriculum in Columbus, Ohio, public schools found that students with the arts program scored higher on statewide tests in math, science and citizenship than students from control schools. This effect was even greater for students from low-income schools. In the NEA analysis, socially and economically disadvantaged children with significant arts education had better academic outcomes - including higher grades and test scores and higher rates of graduation and college enrollment - than their peers without arts involvement.

Different disciplines also provide their own specific cognitive benefits - for example, participating in dance has been shown to sharpen young children's spatial awareness, while making music can help students develop their working memory. Research has shown that training in the arts also helps students hone their ability to pay closer attention and practice self-control. In 2009, researchers at the Dana Foundation, which funds neuroscience research and programming, posited based on multiple studies that training in the arts stimulates and strengthens the brain's attention system. A study published in the Journal of Neuroscience provides evidence that musical training before the age of seven has a profound effect on the development of the brain-stronger connections between the motor regions.

The Broader Impact on Society

Engaging with art is essential to the human experience. Almost as soon as motor skills are developed, children communicate through artistic expression. The arts challenge us with different points of view, compel us to empathize with “others,” and give us the opportunity to reflect on the human condition. Empirical evidence supports these claims: Among adults, arts participation is related to behaviors that contribute to the health of civil society, such as increased civic engagement, greater social tolerance, and reductions in other-regarding behavior.

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