Projects

How Local Systems Of Arts Education Can Deliver High-Quality Arts Learning Opportunities

Sponsor: Wallace Foundation

With the generous support of the Wallace Foundation, the RAND Corporation will provide a descriptive analysis of system-wide collaborative attempts to provide high-quality arts learning experiences across local geographic areas. Diverse organizations within some locales are working together to improve arts learning for all children. Local system-building efforts are defined geographically within states, cities, counties, or districts and include efforts where multiple arts and education actors and organizations work together to improve the learning experiences of children. The organizations involved in these system-wide efforts can include, but are not limited to, public schools, out-of-school providers, arts organizations, artist's groups, community-based organizations as well as funders, governments, standards groups, and accountability agencies.

RAND will describe, compare, and contrast six local system-wide attempts to build and/or improve local arts education provision for children. The study will examine how collaborative and coordinated system-wide efforts develop, aspire toward, deliver, and sustain high-quality arts learning experiences across communities. It will pay particular attention to the way local arts systems deal with the challenges and the opportunities within their environments and the way they creatively address the diversity of organizational cultures and missions. The focus will not be on collaboration per se, but on community-based, system-wide approaches that are reputed or proven to produce important outcomes and results in children.

Based on the case study analyses, RAND will develop working models of important interactions among the components of well-functioning local arts education systems. The models can demonstrate to others how such systems can enhance arts education in their communities.

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