The Arts Achieve: Impacting Student Success in the Arts project involves a partnership between the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) and five of the city’s premier arts organizations. Arts Achieve provides intensive and targeted professional development to arts teachers over a three-year period. The goal of the project is to improve the quality of arts teachers’ instruction through in-service professional development on the use of balanced (formative and summative) assessment, leading to increases in students’ arts achievement. Starting in the 2011-2012 school year, arts teachers formed art discipline-based professional learning communities (PLCs) to work together, using a process of inquiry and action research that focuses on reviewing student data and examining impact on current instructional practice. Additionally, each arts teacher was paired with a facilitator from the arts organizations to support them over the course of the project. The specific professional development activities included: on-site consultancies, assessment retreats, inter-visitations, and an online community. Arts Achieve also provides participating arts teachers with resources to support this work, such as units of study and technology bundles.

To measure the impact of the Arts Achieve project on arts teachers and students, Metis Associates designed a cluster randomized control trial study, whereby 77 schools were assigned to treatment or status-quo control conditions by arts discipline (dance, music, theater, visual arts) and school level (elementary, middle, high). In the planning year of the project, Benchmark Arts Assessments were developed in each arts discipline and school level to measure students’ arts achievement.  Findings from Year 1 indicate that, while there were not statistically significant differences between the growth of treatment and control teachers, the students of treatment teachers demonstrated significantly greater growth in arts achievement from the students of control teachers. The results suggest that a more sensitive tool for detecting change in teachers is needed. Successes and challenges of project implementation are discussed, and potential areas for additional inquiry in the coming years of the grant also are recommended.