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Sarah Jessica Parker and elite federal arts grant fail to improve performance of Portland’s King

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A high-profile effort by President Obama’s arts commission to prove that arts education could elevate low-performing high-poverty schools to greatness paid off in six of the eight schools where it was tried — but not in Portland’s King Elementary.

Despite the Northeast Portland school’s and local Portland artists, the arts never really took hold, math achievement tanked and overall student achievement remains among the worst in Oregon.

The in-depth look at all eight schools’ performance in the three years after the arts initiative was launched, conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago and consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, found notable improvements in most of the schools. Math and reading scores moved steadily up, school discipline improved, attendance increased and teachers reported that the arts were deeply embedded in core academics at the school.

Almost none of that happened at King, however, the report says — perhaps because the arts initiative did not really take hold at King. King did report steady increases in student attendance, culminating in by far the highest attendance rate of all eight schools, 98.6 percent, in 2013-14.

Erin Berg, principal at King School for the past two years, did not respond when The Oregonian/OregonLive asked her for the school’s response to the report.

King got plenty of publicity for its involvement with the arts, particularly when Emmy-Award-winning Parker was part of the story. She Skyped with the school many times, visited in April 2013 to applaud student performances, and sang and danced alongside five King students at the White House last May.

But, according to researchers who talked to teachers, observed at the schools, tallied the number of artists working at each site and took other detailed measurements, King did not come close to fully implementing the arts commission’s vision in any area except building partnerships with the local arts community.

King’s two principals, Kim Patterson and Berg, her successor, did not became true leaders of arts education, students were taught by relatively few artists and in few disciplines, classroom teachers failed to weave arts into their teaching and the school did not offer rich displays of student artwork or hold frequent student performances, among other weaknesses, the report says.

By contrast, arts education transformed teaching and the instructional climate at Findley Elementary in Des Moines, Iowa, Roosevelt Elementary in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and four other schools, the researchers found.

And reading and math achievement improved or held steady at all six, including dramatic improvements at Findley and Savoy Elementary in Washington, D.C.

Achievement scores at King showed a different story: Reading achievement rose, math achievement plummeted and King students’ achievement and year-to-year growth remained in the bottom 5 percent among Oregon schools. Only 44 percent of King students passed the state reading test last spring, placing it among the lowest 4 percent of elementary and K-8 schools. Its math passing rate, 26 percent, was No. 4 lowest in the state among about 700 schools serving elementary grades.

Lame Deer Middle School, a small seventh- and eighth-grade Montana school where 99 percent of the students are Native American, also failed to fully adopt an arts-based approach to instruction and also showed stagnant or decreased student achievement, the report found.

Researchers concluded that weak implementation of the arts education strategies led to disappointing results. “Generally, we saw a pattern in which schools that were higher on the implementation continuum also showed greater improvement in terms of school improvement indicators,” they wrote.

Over the past three school years, the eight schools chosen for the federal Turnaround Arts initiative received arts education resources and expertise, officials said. They hired new art, music, dance and theater teachers, brought in teaching artists, art supplies and music instruments and were coached to integrate arts into core subjects such as reading, math and science.

In May, program officials announced a four-fold expansion, bringing it to 35 schools in 25 school districts. Backers of the program hailed the study as proof it works.

“The new research findings from Turnaround Arts schools reaffirm the power of the arts in elevating students’ entire educational experience and the overall ‘success climate’ of schools,” said Mary Luehrsen, executive director of the National Association of Music Merchants Foundation, which helped fund the program.

– Betsy Hammond


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