Students who are trained in the arts perform better in school and enjoy a greater chance of success as adults, a study for the National Endowment for the Arts concludes.
“Students who have arts-rich experiences in school do better across-the-board academically, and they also become more active and engaged citizens, voting, volunteering, and generally participating at higher rates than their peers,” states Rocco Landesman, chairman for the National Endowment for the Arts.
The report presents comparative outcomes among children, teenagers and young adults with either minimal or intensive art involvement.
A key finding of academic achievement for students from low-socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds revealed that those “who have a history of in-depth arts involvement show better academic outcomes than do low-SES youths who have less arts involvement,” states the report.
Further findings show that students who have arts-rich experience have exhibited the following commonalities:
1. Completing a calculus course
2. Achieving a higher G.P.A
3. More likely to complete a bachelor’s degree
4. More likely to have higher-paying and professionally rewarding career
5. Exhibiting higher levels of volunteering, voting and engagement with local or school politics.
Students who earned few or no art credits exhibited the following as a cohort:
1. They were five times more likely not to have graduated high school than students who completed more art classes.
2. Have lower test scores in science and writing
3. Are less likely to select a major in college that leads to a professional career.
“These findings suggest that in-school or extracurricular programs offering deep arts involvement may help to narrow the gap in achievement levels among youth of high- versus low-SES,” the report states.
“Even youth from socially and economically advantaged backgrounds may find access to greater civic and social participation via deep arts involvement” — all classes benefit, states the NEA.
The study was authored by James S. Catterall, University of California Los Angeles; Susan A. Dumais, Louisiana State University; and Gillian Hampden-Thompson, University of York, U.K.
