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The State of Critical Race Theory in Education

• Posted February 23, 2022
• By Jill Anderson
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
• Moral, Civic, and Ethical Education

When Gloria Ladson-Billings set out in the 1990s to adapt critical race theory from law to education, she couldn’t have predicted that it would become the focus of heated school debates today.

Over the past couple years, the scrutiny of critical race theory — a theory she pioneered to help explain racial inequities in education — has become heavily politicized in school communities and by legislators. Along the way, it has also been grossly misunderstood and used as a lump term about many things that are not actually critical race theory, Ladson-Billings says. 

“It's like if I hate it, it must be critical race theory,” Ladson-Billings says. “You know, that could be anything from any discussions about diversity or equity. And now it's spread into LGBTQA things. Talk about gender, then that's critical race theory. Social-emotional learning has now gotten lumped into it. And so it is fascinating to me how the term has been literally sucked of all of its meaning and has now become 'anything I don't like.'”

In this week’s Harvard EdCast, Ladson-Billings discusses how she pioneered critical race theory, the current politicization and tension around teaching about race in the classroom, and offers a path forward for educators eager to engage in work that deals with the truth about America’s history. 

TRANSCRIPT:

Jill Anderson:   I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast.

Gloria Ladson-Billings never imagined a day when the words critical race theory would make the daily news, be argued over at school board meetings, or targeted by legislators. She pioneered an adaptation of critical race theory from law to education back in the 1990s. She's an educational researcher focused on theory and pedagogy who at the time was looking for a better way to explain racial disparities in education.

Today the theory is widely misunderstood and being used as an umbrella term for anything tied to race and education. I wondered what Gloria sees as a path forward from here. First, I wanted to know what she was thinking in this moment of increased tension and politicization around critical race theory and education.

Well, if I go back and look at the strategy that's been employed to attack critical race theory, it actually is pretty brilliant from a strategic point of view. The first time that I think that general public really hears this is in September of '20 when then president and candidate Donald Trump, who incidentally is behind in the polls, says that we're not going to have it because it's going to destroy democracy. It's going to tear the country apart. I'm not going to fund any training that even mentions critical race theory.

And what's interesting, he says, "And anti-racism." Now he's now paired two things together that were not really paired together in the literature and in practice. But if you dig a little deeper, you will find on the Twitter feed of Christopher Rufo, who is from the Manhattan Institute, two really I think powerful tweets. One in which he says, "We're going to render this brand toxic." Essentially what we're going to do is make you think, whenever you hear anything negative, you will think critical race theory. And it will destroy all of the, quote, cultural insanities. I think that's his term that Americans despise. There's a lot to be unpacked there, which Americans? Who is he talking about? What are these cultural insanities? And then there's another tweet in which he says, "We have effectively frozen the brand." So anytime you think of anything crazy, you think critical race theory. So he's done this very effective job of rendering the term, in some ways without meaning. It's like if I hate it, it must be critical race theory.

You know, that could be anything from any discussions about diversity or equity. And now it's spread into LGBTQA things. Talk about gender, then that's critical race theory. Social emotional learning has now got lumped into it. And so it is fascinating to me how the term has been literally sucked of all of its meaning and has now become anything I don't like.

Jill Anderson:  Can you break it down? What is critical race theory? What isn't it?

Gloria Ladson-Billings: Let me be pretty elemental here. Critical race theory is a theoretical tool that began in legal studies, in law schools, in an attempt to explain racial inequity. It serves the same function in education. How do you explain the inequity of achievement, the racial inequity of achievement in our schools?

Now let's be clear. The nation has always had an explanation for inequity. Since 1619, it's always had a explanation. And indeed from 1619 to the mid 20th century, that explanation was biogenetic. Those people are just not smart enough. Those people are just not worthy enough. Those people are not moral enough.

In fact across the country, we had on college and university campuses, programs and departments in eugenics. If you went to the World's Fair or the World Expositions back in the turn of the 20th century, you could see exhibits with, quote, groups of people from the best group who was always white and typically blonde and blue eyed, to the worst group, which is typically a group of Africans, generally pygmies. So the idea is you can rank people. So we've always had an explanation for why we thought inequity exists.

Somewhere around the mid 20th century, 1950s, you'll get a switch that says, well, no, it's really not genetic it's that some groups haven't had an equal opportunity. That was a powerful explanation. So one of the things that you begin to see around mid 1950s is legislation and court decisions, Brown versus Board of Education. You start to see the Voters Rights Act. You see the Civil Rights Act. You see affirmative action going into the 1960s. And yeah, I think that's a pretty good, powerful explanatory model.

Except they all get rolled back. 1954, Brown v. Board of Education . How many of our kids are still in segregated schools in 2022? So that didn't hold. Affirmative action. The court's about to hear that, right? Because of actually the case that's coming out of Harvard. Voters rights. How many of our states have rolled back voters rights? You can't give a person a bottle of water who was waiting in line in Georgia. We're shrinking the window for when people can vote.

So all of the things that were a part of the equality of opportunity explanation have rolled away. Critical race theory's explanation for racial inequality is that it is baked into the way we have organized the society. It is not aberrant. It's not one of those things that we all clutch our pearls and say, "Oh my God, I can't believe that happened." It happens on a regular basis all the time. And so that's really one of the tenets that people are uncomfortable hearing. That it's not abnormal behavior in our society for people to react in racist ways.

Jill Anderson: My understanding is that critical race theory is not something that is taught in schools. This is an older, like graduate school level, understanding and learning in education, not something for K–12 kids, not something my kid's going to learn in elementary school.

Gloria Ladson-Billings: You're exactly right. It is not. First of all, kids in K12 don't need theory. They need some very practical hands-on experiences. So no, it's not taught in K12 schools. I never even taught it as a professor at the University of Wisconsin. I didn't even teach it to my undergraduates. They had no use for it. My undergraduates were going to be teachers. So what would they do with it? I only taught it in graduate courses. And I have students who will tell you, "I talked with Professor Ladson-billings about using critical race theory for my research," and she looked at what I was doing and said, "It doesn't apply. Don't use it."

So I haven't been this sort of proselytizer. I've said to students, if what you're looking at needs an explanation for the inequality, you have a lot of theories that you can choose from. You can choose from feminist theory. That often looks at inequality across gender. You could look at Marx's theory. That looks at inequality across class. There are lots of theories to explain inequality. Critical race theory is trying to explain it across race and its intersections.

Jill Anderson:  We're seeing this lump definition falling under critical race theory, where it could be anything. It could be anti-racism, diversity and equity, multicultural education, anti-racism, cultural [inaudible 00:09:15]. All of it's being lumped together. It's not all the same thing.

Gloria Ladson-Billings: Well, and in some ways it's proving the point of the critical race theorists, right? That it's kind normal. It's going to keep coming up because that's the way you see the world. I mean, here's an interesting lumping together that I think people have just bought whole cloth. That somehow Nikole Hannah-Jones' 1619 is critical race theory. No, it's not.

No. It. Is. Not. It is a journalist's attempt to pull together strands of a date that we tend to gloss over and say, here are all the things were happening and how the things that happened at this time influenced who we became. It's really interesting that people have jumped on that. And there is another book that came out, and it also came out of a newspaper special from the Hartford Courant years ago called Complicity. That book is set in New England and it talks about how the North essentially kept slavery going.

And when it was published by the Hartford Courant, Connecticut, and particularly Hartford said, we want a copy of this in every one of our middle and high schools to look out at what our role has been. Because the way we typically tell you our history is to say, the noble and good North and then the backward and racist South. Well, no, the entire country was engaged in the slave trade. And it benefited folks across the nation.

That particular special issue, which got turned into a book hasn't raised an eyebrow. But here comes Nikole Hannah-Jones. And initially, of course, she won a Pulitzer for it and people were celebrating her. But it's gotten lumped into this discussion that essentially says you cannot have a conversation about race.

What I find the most egregious about this situation is we are taking books out of classrooms, which is very anti-democratic. It is not, quote, the American way. And so you're saying that kids can't read the story of Ruby Bridges. It's okay for Ruby Bridges at six years old to have to have been escorted by federal marshals and have racial epithets spewed at her. It's just not okay for a six year old today to know that happened to her. I mean, one of the rationales for not talking about race, I don't even say critical race theory, but not talking about race in the classroom is we don't want white children to feel bad.

My response is, well great, but what were you guys in the 1950s and sixties when I was in school. Because I had to sit there in a mostly white classroom in Philadelphia and read Huckleberry Finn , with Mark Twain with a very liberal use of the n-word. And most of my classmates just snickering. I'd take it. I'd read it. It didn't make me feel good. I had to read Robinson Crusoe . I had to read Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind . I had to read Heart Of Darkness .

All of these books which we have canonized, are books of their time. And they often make us feel a particular kind way about who we are in this society. But all of a sudden one group is protected. We can't let white children feel bad about what they read.

Jill Anderson: I was reading your most recent book, Critical Race Theory in Education, a Scholars Journey , and I was struck by when you started to do this work and this research, and adapt it from law back in the early 1990s. You talked about presenting this for the first time, or one of the first times. And there was obviously a group excited by it, a group annoyed by it. I look at what's happening now and I see parents and educators. Some are excited by a movement to teach children more openly and honestly about race. And then there's going to be those who are annoyed by it. You've been navigating these two sides your whole life, your whole career. So what do you tell educators who are eager, and open, and want to do this work, but they're afraid of the opposition?

Gloria Ladson-Billings:  Well, I think there's a difference between essentially forcing one's ideas and agenda on students, and having kids develop the criticality that they will need to participate in democracy. And whenever we have pitched battles, we've been talking about race, but we've had the same kind of conversation around the environment, right? That you cannot be in coal country telling people that coal is bad, because people are making their living off of that coal. So we've been down this road before.

What I suggest to teachers is, number one, they have to have good relationships with the parents and community that they are serving, and they need to be transparent. I've taught US History for eighth graders and 11th graders before going into academe, and we've had to deal with hard questions. But there's a degree to which the community has always trusted that I had their students' best interests at heart, that I want them to be successful, that I want them to be able to make good decisions as citizens.

That's the bigger mission, I think, of education. That we are not just preparing people to go into the workplace. We are preparing people to go into voting booths, and to participate in healthy debate. The problem I'm having with critical race theory is I'm having a debate with people who don't know what we're debating. You know, I told one interview, I said, "It's like debating a toddler over bedtime. That's not a good debate." You can't win that debate. The toddler doesn't understand the concept. It's just that I don't want to do it.

I will say following the news coverage that I don't believe that all of these people out there are parents. I believe that there is a large number of operatives whose job it is to gin up sentiment against any forward movement and progress around racial equality, and equity, and diversity.

You know, to me, what should be incensing people was what they saw in Charlottesville, with those people, with those Tiki torches. What should be incensing people is what they saw January 6th. People lost their lives in both of those incidents. Nobody's lost their lives in a critical race theory discussion. You know?

I'm someone who believes that debate is healthy. And in fact debate is the only thing that you can have in a true democracy. The minute you start shutting off debate, the minute you say that's not even discussable, then you're moving towards totalitarianism. You know? That's what happened in the former Soviet Union and probably now in Russia. That's what has happened in regimes that say, no other idea is permitted, is discussable. And that's not a road that I think we should be walking here.

Jill Anderson: I feel like we're getting lost in the terminology, which we've talked about. And for school leaders, I wonder if the conversation needs to start with local districts in their communities debunking, or demystifying, or telling the truth about what critical race theory is, that kids aren't learning it in the schools. That that's not what it's about. Does it not even matter at this point because people are always going to be resistant to the things that you just even mentioned?

Gloria Ladson-Billings:  I'm a bit of a sports junkie, so I'll use a sports metaphor here. I'm just someone who would rather play offense than defense. I think if you get into this debate, you are on the defensive from the start. For me, I want to be on the offense. I want to say, as a school district, here are our core values. Here's what we stand for. Many, many years ago when I began my academic career, I started it at Santa Clara University, which is a private Catholic Jesuit university. And students would sometimes bristle at the discussions we would have about race and ethnicity, and diversity and equality.

And I'd always pull out the university's mission statement. And I'd say, "You see these words right here around social justice? That's where I am with this work. I don't know what they're doing at the business school on social justice, but I can tell you that the university has essentially made a commitment it to this particular issue. Now we can debate whether or not you agree with me, but I haven't pulled this out of thin air."

So if I'm a school superintendent, I want to say, "Here are core values that we have." I'm reminded of many years ago. I was supervising a student teacher. It was a second grade. And she had a little boy in a classroom and they were doing something for Martin Luther King. It might have been just coloring in a picture of him with some iconic statement. And this one little boy put a big X on it. And she said, "Why did you do that?" And his response was, "We don't believe in Martin Luther King in my house." So she said, "Wow, okay, well, why not?" And he really couldn't articulate. She says, "Well, tell me, who's your friend in this classroom?" And one of the first names out of his mouth was a little Black boy.

And she said, "Do you know that he's a lot like Martin Luther King? You know, he's a little boy. He's Black." She was worried about where this was headed and didn't know what to do as a student teacher, because she's not officially licensed to teach at this point. And I shared with her our strategy. I said, "Why don't you talk with your cooperating teacher about what happens and see what she says. If she doesn't seem to want to do anything, casually mention, don't go marching to the principal's office. But when you have a chance to interact with the principal, you might say something I had the strangest encounter the other day and then share it." Well, she did that.

The principal called the parents in and said, "Your child is not in trouble, but here's what you need to know about who we are and what we stand for."

Jill Anderson:  Wow.

Gloria Ladson-Billings:  You know? And so again, it wasn't like let's have a big school board meeting. Let's string up somebody for saying something. It wasn't tearing this child down. But it was reiterating, here are our core values. I think schools can stand on this. They can say, "This is what we stand for. This is who we are." They don't ever have to mention the word critical race theory.

The retrenchment we are seeing in some states, I think it was a textbook that they were going to use in Texas that essentially described enslaved people as workers. That's just wrong. That's absolutely wrong. And I can tell you that if we don't teach our children the truth, what happens when they show up in classes at the college level and they are exposed to the truth, they are incensed. They are angry and they cannot understand, why are we telling these lies?

We don't have to make up lies about the American story. It is a story of both triumph and defeat. It is a story of both valor and, some cases, shame. Slavery actually happened. We trafficked with human beings, and there's a consequence to that. But it doesn't mean we didn't get past it. It doesn't mean we didn't fight a war over it, and decide that's not who we want to be.

Jill Anderson:  What's the path forward? What can we do to make sure that students are supported and learning about their own history so that they are prepared to go out into a diverse global society?

Gloria Ladson-Billings:  I'm perhaps an unrepentant optimist, because I think that these young people are not fooled by this. You know, when they started, quote, passing bans and saying, "We can't have this and we won't have this," I said, "Nobody who's doing this understands anything about child and adolescent development." Because how do you get kids to do something? You tell them they can't do.

So I have had more outreach from young people asking me, tell me about this. What is this? These young people are burning up Google looking for what is this they're trying to keep from us? So I have a lot of faith in our youth that they are not going to allow us to censor that. Everything you tell them, they can't read, those are the books they go look for. You know, I have not seen a spate in reading like this in a very long time.

So I think it's interesting that people don't even understand something as basic as child development and adolescent development. But I do think that the engagement of young people, which we literally saw in the midst of the pandemic and the post George Floyd, the incredible access to information that young people have will save us. You know, it's almost like people feel like this is their last bastion and they're not going to let people take whatever privilege they see themselves having away from them. It's not sustainable. Young people will not stand for it.

Jill Anderson:  Well, I love that. And it's such a great note to end on because it feels good to think that there is a path forward, because right now things are looking very scary. Thank you so much.

Gloria Ladson-Billings:  Well, you're quite welcome. And I will tell you, again sports metaphor, I'm an, again, unrepentant 76ers fan. I realize you're in Massachusetts with those Celtics. But trust me, the 76ers. Okay? One of my favorite former 76ers is Allen Iverson and he has a wonderful line, I believe when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame. He said, "My haters have made me great."

Well, I will tell you that I had conceived of that book on critical race theory well before Donald Trump made his statement in September of 2020. And I thought, "Okay, here's another book which will sell a modest number of copies to academics." The book is flying off the shelves. Y'all keep talking about it. You're just making me great.

Jill Anderson:  Maybe it will start the revolution that we need.

Gloria Ladson-Billings: Well, thank you so much.

Jill Anderson:  Thank you. Gloria Ladson-billings is a professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She is the author of many books, including the recent Critical Race Theory in Education, a Scholar's Journey . I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast produced by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Thanks for listening.

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Artificial intelligence in K-12 education

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is heralded as a technology holding many unique affordances to K-12 teaching and learning. The purpose of this study was to examine how AI has been used to support teaching and learning in the K-12 context. Specifically examining the affordances for K-12 educators and students. A thematic systematic review methodology was used with PRISMA principles to examine peer review journal articles from 2010 to 2020. This thematic systematic review revealed four themes of how AI was being used by educators to support student learning: Student Monitoring, Group Management, Automated Grading, and Data-Driven Decisions. The Group Management theme included three sub-themes as AI specifically supported educators with group formation, group moderation, and group facilitation. In the examination of affordances for students, three overarching themes emerged. AI was used for AI tutors, to extend student thinking and Just-for-You-Learning which provided a bespoke learning experience built on students’ strengths and weaknesses, preferences, and interests.

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New evidence of the benefits of arts education

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, brian kisida and bk brian kisida assistant professor, truman school of public affairs - university of missouri @briankisida daniel h. bowen dhb daniel h. bowen assistant professor, college of education and human development - texas a&m university @_dhbowen.

February 12, 2019

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. Yet, while we recognize art’s transformative impacts, its place in K-12 education has become increasingly tenuous.

A critical challenge for arts education has been a lack of empirical evidence that demonstrates its educational value. Though few would deny that the arts confer intrinsic benefits, advocating “art for art’s sake” has been insufficient for preserving the arts in schools—despite national surveys showing an overwhelming majority of the public agrees that the arts are a necessary part of a well-rounded education.

Over the last few decades, the proportion of students receiving arts education has shrunk drastically . This trend is primarily attributable to the expansion of standardized-test-based accountability, which has pressured schools to focus resources on tested subjects. As the saying goes, what gets measured gets done. These pressures have disproportionately affected access to the arts in a negative way for students from historically underserved communities. For example, a federal government report found that schools designated under No Child Left Behind as needing improvement and schools with higher percentages of minority students were more likely to experience decreases in time spent on arts education.

We recently conducted the first ever large-scale, randomized controlled trial study of a city’s collective efforts to restore arts education through community partnerships and investments. Building on our previous investigations of the impacts of enriching arts field trip experiences, this study examines the effects of a sustained reinvigoration of schoolwide arts education. Specifically, our study focuses on the initial two years of Houston’s Arts Access Initiative and includes 42 elementary and middle schools with over 10,000 third- through eighth-grade students. Our study was made possible by generous support of the Houston Endowment , the National Endowment for the Arts , and the Spencer Foundation .

Due to the program’s gradual rollout and oversubscription, we implemented a lottery to randomly assign which schools initially participated. Half of these schools received substantial influxes of funding earmarked to provide students with a vast array of arts educational experiences throughout the school year. Participating schools were required to commit a monetary match to provide arts experiences. Including matched funds from the Houston Endowment, schools in the treatment group had an average of $14.67 annually per student to facilitate and enhance partnerships with arts organizations and institutions. In addition to arts education professional development for school leaders and teachers, students at the 21 treatment schools received, on average, 10 enriching arts educational experiences across dance, music, theater, and visual arts disciplines. Schools partnered with cultural organizations and institutions that provided these arts learning opportunities through before- and after-school programs, field trips, in-school performances from professional artists, and teaching-artist residencies. Principals worked with the Arts Access Initiative director and staff to help guide arts program selections that aligned with their schools’ goals.

Our research efforts were part of a multisector collaboration that united district administrators, cultural organizations and institutions, philanthropists, government officials, and researchers. Collective efforts similar to Houston’s Arts Access Initiative have become increasingly common means for supplementing arts education opportunities through school-community partnerships. Other examples include Boston’s Arts Expansion Initiative , Chicago’s Creative Schools Initiative , and Seattle’s Creative Advantage .

Through our partnership with the Houston Education Research Consortium, we obtained access to student-level demographics, attendance and disciplinary records, and test score achievement, as well as the ability to collect original survey data from all 42 schools on students’ school engagement and social and emotional-related outcomes.

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. In terms of our measure of compassion for others, students who received more arts education experiences are more interested in how other people feel and more likely to want to help people who are treated badly.

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. In terms of school engagement, students in the treatment group were more likely to agree that school work is enjoyable, makes them think about things in new ways, and that their school offers programs, classes, and activities that keep them interested in school. We generally did not find evidence to suggest significant impacts on students’ math, reading, or science achievement, attendance, or our other survey outcomes, which we discuss in our full report .

As education policymakers increasingly rely on empirical evidence to guide and justify decisions, advocates struggle to make the case for the preservation and restoration of K-12 arts education. To date, there is a remarkable lack of large-scale experimental studies that investigate the educational impacts of the arts. One problem is that U.S. school systems rarely collect and report basic data that researchers could use to assess students’ access and participation in arts educational programs. Moreover, the most promising outcomes associated with arts education learning objectives extend beyond commonly reported outcomes such as math and reading test scores. There are strong reasons to suspect that engagement in arts education can improve school climate, empower students with a sense of purpose and ownership, and enhance mutual respect for their teachers and peers. Yet, as educators and policymakers have come to recognize the importance of expanding the measures we use to assess educational effectiveness, data measuring social and emotional benefits are not widely collected. Future efforts should continue to expand on the types of measures used to assess educational program and policy effectiveness.

These findings provide strong evidence that arts educational experiences can produce significant positive impacts on academic and social development. Because schools play a pivotal role in cultivating the next generation of citizens and leaders, it is imperative that we reflect on the fundamental purpose of a well-rounded education. This mission is critical in a time of heightened intolerance and pressing threats to our core democratic values. As policymakers begin to collect and value outcome measures beyond test scores, we are likely to further recognize the value of the arts in the fundamental mission of education.

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• Our Mission

Equity in Schools Begins With Changing Mindsets

A new book explores how school leaders can foster equity by building a culture where teachers and students see their purpose and experience success.

The single variable that best predicts students’ sense of belonging is their relationship with teachers. This is more important than their race, socioeconomic status, academic achievement, and their relationships with peers. Strong teacher-​student relationships can mitigate the cumulative effects of misbehavior, apathy, and failure due to poor teacher-​student relationships. By improving students’ motivation, engagement, academic self-​regulation, and overall achievement, teacher-​student relationships offer schools continual opportunities to support students’ learning.

Such support is both interpersonal and instructional. Qualitative interviews reveal students’ preferences for teachers who respect them (i.e., don’t yell, pronounce their names properly), trust them, and don’t police minor behaviors (e.g., head on desk, sitting sideways in a chair). They like it when teachers initiate help so that they don’t have to ask questions and risk embarrassment in front of peers. When they perform well, they expect positive feedback. When they are not doing well, they appreciate teachers who communicate about their progress and offer opportunities to improve.

Teachers who fail to connect with students interpersonally or instructionally may be disengaged from their teacher role. While teachers report leaving schools because of a lack of administrative leadership, they also report job dissatisfaction because of students. Student tardiness, student absenteeism, class cutting, student dropouts, poor student health, and student apathy contribute to teachers’ lack of professional enthusiasm. These factors are compounded by teachers’ complaints about high poverty and low family involvement. Because of the correlation between race and income in the United States, these variables are present in most schools serving minoritized youth where cultural mismatch between teachers and students further complicates the development of strong teacher-​student bonds (discussed in Chapter 5). This is not to say that students from underserved communities will never experience a strong sense of belonging. On the contrary, students whose schools are committed to inclusion will naturally feel welcomed and appreciated.

Framing Equity

Cultivating a school climate for equity requires careful attention to the creation of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral spaces throughout the school. It is useful to think of the climate through three lenses (L.S. Shulman, “Signature Pedagogies in the Professions,” 2005):

• Habits of heart—​core values; why do you teach?
• Habits of head—​ways of thinking and knowing; what do you believe?
• Habits of hand—​what you do; how do you practice your values and beliefs?

These habits will be enacted differently through interactions with students versus staff, but for each, the goal is to foster their motivation to perform to the best of their abilities by creating an environment where they want to be, where they see the purpose in being, and where they experience success. An expectancy-​value theory of motivation (J. Eccles et al., “Expectancies, Values, and Academic Behaviors,” 1983) offers four suggestions for increasing intrinsic motivation:

1. Create a space where people enjoy themselves and can do things that interest them. For students, this means a variety of course options, multiple extracurricular activities, and innovative, hands-on learning experiences. For teachers this may mean variety in teaching assignments, autonomous decision-​making, and opportunities to develop new classes.

2. Keep your revised equity-​focused vision and mission at the core of school functioning. Clearly and consistently communicate your vision and explain how every decision contributes to the realization of the vision. The key here is transparency and honesty when explaining the utility of a particular assignment or class to students, and a new policy to staff.

3. Affirm everyone’s contribution to the school community. This could be asking students to facilitate lessons or be peer mentors. You might invite staff to lead an initiative or promote them into a new position.

4. Minimize emotional costs by making sure that role expectations are reasonable (i.e., that the outcome will be worth the effort), that they leave time for other enjoyable tasks, and that they do not engender negative emotions. Students and staff should not be given busywork, be overworked, or be asked to do things which they are not capable of doing.

Each of these contributes to a positive school climate because it recognizes and leverages individuality, acknowledges accomplishments, and encourages continual engagement in the school community. School leaders can mistakenly put the climate on autopilot thinking that it will run on its own once people understand their role and are given their scripts. But a school climate is dynamic, open to influence from a variety of sources, so it must be consistently monitored and adjusted. Most importantly, because it is largely people who both shape and are shaped by the school climate, they too must be nurtured.

School Policies

Conversations about educational equity begin with policies because they determine what is and what is not allowed in schools. Many educators, students, and families interpret policies as if they are laws when, in fact, they are not. Policies are guidelines used to achieve specific goals. They are locally determined and implemented at the discretion of relevant decision-​makers. In the United States, education is overseen by individual states that pass most decision-​making to local educational agencies (LEAs) or school districts. Most education policies originate from school districts overseen by a school board composed of 4–​10 elected or appointed volunteers. School leaders have flexibility about when and how to implement district policies.

The problem with policies is that they are written as one-​size-​fits-​all guidelines, which, while equal, is not equitable. Inequities are exacerbated by school staff’s inconsistent application of policies such that implicit biases and explicit prejudices mean some students are disproportionately subject to school policies whereas others are not. The most frequently cited policy that is inequitably enforced is zero tolerance school discipline policies. Though initially proposed at the national level in response to school shootings, since its inception in 1994, zero tolerance has expanded beyond weapons to minor infractions such as dress-​code violations and subjective offenses like disrupting class, offensive language, and disrespectful behavior. In schools designed according to White sociocultural norms, it is BISOC—Black, Indigenous, and students of color—who experience disproportionate rates of detention, suspension, and expulsion.

Consequently, racially minoritized students, especially Black and Latinx students, miss critical learning opportunities. The Civil Rights Project (2020) found that in one academic year, U.S. students lost 11 million days of instruction due to suspensions. When suspension data is disaggregated by race and gender, Black boys lost 132 days per 100 students enrolled and Black girls lost 77 days per 100 students, 7 times higher than White girls.

It is important to emphasize that discipline policies themselves are not automatically inequitable. The biased implementation of them is what creates discipline gaps that sustain opportunity gaps. This is true of most education policies, especially academic ones. For instance, tracking and sorting dictate students’ opportunities to learn (OTLs) by placing them on an educational path that restricts the courses in which they can enroll in the future. The existence of academic courses with varying levels of rigor is not in itself problematic. The issue lies in how students are placed into certain courses.

It is common for individual teachers to use their discretion to decide which students can succeed in which tracks and make recommendations for placements. Teachers’ perceptions are informed by their observations and interpretations of students’ behavior, and their assessment of their academic work compared to other students. Academic sorting methods are exceedingly subjective and worrisome. As with discipline policies, teachers’ biases against BISOC, students with disabilities, and boys means that White and Asian girls are those most often enrolled in gifted programs. Even when school policies require academic testing for course placement, students can be incorrectly sorted because standardized tests are culturally biased, lack predictive validity, and do not account for children’s cognitive variability.

This is especially true for English language learners (ELLs), who, after being assessed in English, are frequently sorted into academic tracks that do not reflect their true capabilities. Some multilingual students are mainstreamed into courses with English-​speaking students and are pulled out for intensive English instruction. Others experience full English immersion and receive no English instruction. In both cases, students are given far fewer OTLs because they are not receiving instruction in their heritage language and, in the case of pull-​out programs, are missing content area instruction while receiving English language instruction.

Academic policies should enhance educational opportunities, not limit them. Whether students experience reduced OTLs because their school simply does not offer certain courses, they are prevented from enrolling in courses, or because they are absent from class, has long-​term implications for their educational achievement. For example, certain courses (e.g., Algebra 1, Biology, Chemistry 1) function as prerequisites for future courses, so without the opportunity to enroll in early courses, students will never be able to advance in that subject area. Even for the same course, content variation can greatly differ across academic tracks, resulting in unequal preparation for future learning.

The cumulative nature of learning means that students’ early school experiences can and do predict future OTLs, but they do not predict students’ future abilities. It is never too late to disrupt the cycle of educational inequity by expanding students’ OTLs through equitable school policies.

Excerpted from   Public School Equity: Educational Leadership for Justice , © 2022 by Manya Whitaker. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Editor’s note: Edutopia readers will receive a discount when using the link above in 2022.

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Sustaining the Hyphens

From reproducing to restructuring teacher education.

• Puvithira Balasubramaniam University of Ottawa

With Canada’s growing population of multi-ethnic identities, fostering excellence in equity, diversity, and inclusion has become a critical priority in 21 st century education. The lived experiences of immigrant, first- and second-generation students can provide insight into the structural change that is needed to help create, sustain, and support their hyphenated identities within the higher education system. As a first-generation Tamil-Canadian, the researcher uses currere , a life writing research methodology, to analyze and synthesize their lived experience in relation to the K-12 education system and within an Ontario Teacher Education certification program. Additionally, a systematic literature review is conducted on the existing life writing works of Indigenous, Black, and/or racialized and hyphenated first and/or second-generation immigrant educators to identify patterns and trends within those lived experiences. The results yield commonalities within their educational experiences including assimilation into Western norms, misrepresentation, or erasure of non-white historical narratives and/or contributions, and an irrelevancy between academic content and students lived experiences. The research suggests that Teacher Education programs play a pivotal role in cultivating spaces that sustain future educators hyphenated identities that will later inform their teaching practices, thus, impacting healthy identity formations for their students as well.

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Arts in Education: A Systematic Review of Competency Outcomes in Quasi-Experimental and Experimental Studies

Associated data.

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/ Supplementary Material , further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author/s.

Arts education in schools frequently experiences the pressure of being validated by demonstrating quantitative impact on academic outcomes. The quantitative evidence to date has been characterized by the application of largely correlational designs and frequently applies a narrow focus on instrumental outcomes such as academically relevant competencies. The present review aims to summarize quantitative evidence from quasi-experimental and experimental studies with pre-test post-test designs on the effects of school-based arts education on a broader range of competency outcomes, including intra- and interindividual competencies. A systematic literature search was conducted to identify relevant evaluation studies. Twenty-four articles reporting on 26 evaluation studies were eligible for inclusion, and their results were reviewed in terms of art domains and outcome categories. Whilst there is some evidence of beneficial effects on some competencies, for example of music education on arithmetic abilities, speech segmentation and processing speed, the evidence across arts domains and for different outcomes is limited due to small sample sizes, small number of studies, and a large range of effect sizes. The review highlights that sufficiently powered (quasi-)experimental studies with pre-test post-test designs evaluating arts education are sparse and that the “gold standard” of experimental research comes at the expense of a number of other study characteristics such as sample size, intervention and follow-up length. By summarizing the limitations of the current (quasi-)experimental research, the application of experimental designs is critically assessed and a combination with qualitative methods in mixed-method designs and choice of relevant outcomes discussed.

Introduction

Can the arts promote the creative skills needed for innovation? What are the beneficial effects of music training on computation skills, spatial performance, memory and reading skills? Do actors have better verbal and emotional skills? Can dance promote a sense of belonging? Does arts education improve educational attainment, attention and motivation?

Questions about effects of arts education on outcomes such as academic achievement and competencies have inspired much research in an effort to defend the arts' position in curricula. Qualitative, mixed-method and quantitative research support the notion that engagement in the arts can contribute to positive outcomes such as academic achievement, attainment, social behavior and social transformation alongside health benefits such as wellbeing (Deasy, 2002 ; Ewing, 2010 ; McLellan et al., 2012a , 2015 ; Winner et al., 2013 ; Fancourt and Finn, 2019 ). However, the so-called “gold standard” experimental research designs are rare, and findings on the causal impact on academically relevant outcomes have frequently been limited or inconclusive (e.g., Winner et al., 2013 ). Yet, experimental designs are often not suitable for educational evaluation studies and their ability to capture the complex experiences in arts learning have been questioned (Ewing, 2010 ). Further, small sample sizes and short follow-up periods are common in experimental studies and preclude confidence in conclusions. Finally, while the choice of instrumental outcomes such as children's performances in other subjects may seem attractive, the implications of an exclusive focus on such outcomes have been critically discussed (Winner et al., 2013 ). The current review therefore seeks, first, to summarize the evidence from quasi-experimental and experimental studies on a range of transferrable skills and competency outcomes in school-based arts education. Second, it seeks to describe and evaluate the methodological characteristics of the included studies and implications on conclusions.

According to Oxford University Press ( 2019 ), art is defined as the “expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power” (1st paragraph), and the arts as the “various branches of creative activity, such as painting, music, literature, and dance” (2nd paragraph). These definitions are reflective of the arts as activities which involve creative problem solving and opportunities for expression. Arts engagement can further involve social interaction and collaboration and allow for an exploration of the self in an environment removed from the binary evaluation of performance as either right or wrong. The arts may therefore be well positioned to stimulate the development of intra- and interpersonal outcomes. For example, as McLellan et al. ( 2012b ) argue using the theoretical framework of the self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan, 1985 ), the arts may offer opportunities for experiences of competence, autonomy and relatedness which in turn promote motivation and wellbeing.

State of Research

Research into the impacts of arts education can be categorized by the type of arts experience or engagement. First, research can be categorized whether it evaluates the effects of arts appreciation or that of active arts participation. For example, a long research tradition has examined the so-called Mozart effect, in which Rauscher et al. ( 1993 ) observed that participants showed significantly higher spatial performance after listening to a Mozart sonata. Although, replications and meta-analyses have struggled to confirm these effects (e.g., Pietschnig et al., 2010 ). Second, arts can be taught as a stand-alone subject or be integrated into other subjects or the wider teaching approach. For example, arts integration has been found to be beneficial across art domains, ages and outcomes (e.g., Hardiman et al., 2014 ; Lee et al., 2015 ; Brown et al., 2018 ). However, the term arts integration is often interchangeably used for different approaches (Institute for Arts Integration and STEAM, 2019 ), varying from arts enrichment which uses the arts as a tool of engagement to using science, technology, engineering, the arts and math to guide students' critical thinking (STEAM; Perignat and Katz-Buonincontro, 2019 ). The distinction between different forms of engagement and degree of integration appears important to take account of the very different experiences and aims.

Third, a distinction can be made by the consideration of intrinsic (e.g., express communal meaning, McCarthy et al., 2004 ) vs. instrumental outcomes (e.g., academic outcomes). McCarthy and colleagues note that the former is rarely considered in the literature. In their review of arts and transfer into non-arts domains, Winner et al. ( 2013 ) critically discuss the sole focus on instrumental outcomes as these promote an evaluation of the arts as a means to an end rather than for their own sake. The Reviewing Education and the Arts Project (REAP) (Hetland and Winner, 2001 ; Winner and Hetland, 2001 ) included a series of meta-analyses to assess the relationship between arts engagement and academic outcomes. The results indicated that, despite some positive correlations, the only significant causal claims concerned the effects of music listening and music instruction on spatial reasoning (Hetland, 2000a , b ) and of drama on verbal skills (Podlozny, 2000 ). Music training may also positively affect math outcomes (Vaughn, 2000 ); however, there was a too-large range of effects in a small number of studies to draw definitive conclusions. The same was true for dance, with some evidence found for effects on visual-spatial skills, but again based on a small number of studies (Keinänen et al., 2000 ). Evidence for the effects of the arts on creativity transfer could not be found (Moga et al., 2000 ). In 2013, a review published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) updated and extended the findings of REAP (Winner et al., 2013 ) by including evaluations of behavioral and social outcomes. Evidence from quasi-experimental and experimental studies indicated social and behavioral benefits of drama, such as empathy, emotion regulation, and perspective-taking. Effects of music training were found on academic performance as well as intelligence, word decoding and phonological skills. There were also indications of a beneficial effect of music on language learning, but limited support for an effect on visual-spatial reasoning. Associations between drama or dance and creativity were apparent but based on only a few studies with small sample sizes, therefore limiting the ability to draw conclusions. A further series of reviews of quantitative and qualitative evaluation studies of arts in schools and the community by Jindal-Snape et al. ( 2014a , b , 2018 ) found similarly varied results concerning academic outcomes, with a tendency for effects to be more evident in music and multi-art contexts and more pronounced among pre-school children.

In general, the quantitative research to date provides mixed evidence regarding the effects of the arts on academic outcomes and largely remains on the correlational level. However, there are a few implications when interpreting these results. A difficulty when comparing results from different studies and programs is a lack of a common evaluation approach and programs' unique characteristics, contexts and quality (Ewing, 2010 ). Programs exhibit a substantial heterogeneity with respect to art domains, content, intensity, duration and delivery methods of arts classes or interventions, all across a small number of studies. For example, failing to distinguish between different forms of engagement with the arts (passive or active), how they are integrated into the school curriculum and whether they are offered in the form of a compulsory or extra-curricular activity adds many factors that may affect research results in different ways.

The current review aims to reduce some of the above heterogeneity by synthesizing effects from quasi-experimental or experimental pre-test post-test designs on the impact of arts education on a range of competencies. It seeks to evaluate programs which involve active involvement in the arts and teaching of the arts per se. Further, it aims to critically evaluate the strengths and limitations of the included studies. A wide range of outcomes will be included, and a framework of educational outcomes, the OECD's Definition and Selection of Competencies (DeSeCo; Rychen and Salganik, 2003 ) will be used to group outcomes into broader categories.

A Categorization of Outcomes

We grouped outcomes into categories based on DeSeCo (Rychen and Salganik, 2003 ). The framework was the result of an international, interdisciplinary and collaborative effort led by Switzerland and supported by the OECD. Key competencies were identified in an extensive process bringing together empirical evidence, scholars and experts from different disciplines, including a final consolidation and revision phase. Providing a categorization of educational outcomes, the DeSeCo considers individuals' needs to lead a successful life and the needs of a functioning society. These competencies are summarized into three categories, namely using tools interactively, interacting in socially heterogeneous groups , and acting autonomously . First, using tools interactively encompasses key competencies relating to using the tools of language and symbols, technology, information and knowledge. Second, interacting in socially heterogeneous groups refers to the social skills needed to work collaboratively in a diverse and multicultural society, to be able to control one's emotions and to show empathy when relating to others and dealing with conflict. Third, acting autonomously encompasses the key competencies needed for an individual to make autonomous life choices and feel empowered to do so. Finally, an underlying feature that applies to all categories of competencies is reflectiveness , the ability to go beyond knowledge and skills, to assimilate, change and adapt. Reflectiveness therefore encompasses meta-cognitive skills as well as the cognitive skills essential for creative thinking.

Instrumental perspectives in evaluating arts education have frequently focused on outcomes relating to the DeSeCo category using tools interactively (e.g., by assessing transfer effects to non-arts subjects, linguistic or computational skills). However, given the more process focused, intrinsic experiences of the arts, one may expect stronger effects on the categories relating to the inter- and intra-individual outcomes (i.e., “soft” skills) than on transfer of learning to non-arts subjects (e.g., development of social bonds and empathy; McCarthy et al., 2004 ). While the DeSeCo categories were developed in consideration of competencies which are instrumental to a successful life, they may also contribute to the innate psychological needs for competence, relatedness and autonomy, which are the three key needs proposed in the motivational self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan, 1985 ). The DeSeCo framework was thus chosen as a tool to group a wide range of outcomes into categories and to enable an exploration of effects on similar and dissimilar outcomes.

Research Questions

The current review seeks to systematically review competency-based outcomes and effect sizes in (quasi-) experimental studies of school-based arts education. Further, the review seeks to critically assess the qualities of the included studies in respect to limitations of (quasi-) experimental research in arts education. Research questions and exclusion and inclusion criteria are defined using the PICOS framework (participants, interventions, comparators, outcomes, and study design; Liberati et al., 2009 ). Participants are defined as children or adolescents from the general population attending formal compulsory education post pre-school. This review considers programs in which art is taught as a stand-alone subject with a minimum session duration of twenty minutes, as opposed to arts-integrated teaching within or in combination with other subjects, focusing on four art domains which are most frequently implemented in school curricula, namely the domains of music, drama, dance, and visual arts. Comparators include both active (treated) control groups participating in a non-arts or different arts program as well as untreated control groups following the standard curriculum. Studies reporting effect sizes on outcomes relating to the DeSeCo framework (Rychen and Salganik, 2003 ) are included. The included study designs are natural/quasi-experimental, or experimental with pre-test post-test designs. Based on the above PICOS definitions, the review seeks to answer the following exploratory research questions: (1) How effective is arts education with respect to outcomes in the DeSeCo categories (a) using tools interactively , (b) interacting in socially heterogonous groups , (c) acting autonomously and d) the concept of reflectiveness ? (2) What are the methodological characteristics, strengths and limitations of the included studies?

The initial literature search was conducted in March 2019, following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines (Moher et al., 2009 ). The databases PsycARTICLES, PsycINFO, Behavioral Science Collection, PSYNDEX, Education Source and ERIC were searched with search strings combining terms related to art domains, intervention evaluation, and thesaurus explorations of relevant outcome variables ( Supplementary Table 1 ). Bibliographies of relevant meta-analyses and systematic literature reviews and further publications by authors with relevant studies were searched manually. The total number of search results was 1,807 from the databases and 13 from additional sources, leaving 1,681 search results after the removal of duplicates ( Figure 1 ).

PRISMA flow diagram.

The first author screened the articles' titles, abstracts and full texts against the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Articles were included if they were research articles published in English or German in peer-reviewed journals, were evaluation studies of arts education for children and/or adolescents within the school curriculum, with outcome variables relating to the above DeSeCo categories (Rychen and Salganik, 2003 ) and if they used a quantitative or mixed methods approach with a natural/quasi-experimental or experimental pre- and post-test design. Excluded were studies reporting on extra-curricular programs (e.g., after-school clubs) or implemented in pre-schools, kindergarten, or post-school contexts (e.g., universities), that were integrated as therapeutic interventions or addressed specific populations (e.g., children with autism). Further, due to the risk of bias from other confounding effects, studies reporting on programs in which the arts were just one intervention component out of several (e.g., family counseling) were excluded. Finally, to take account of the problematic interpretation of results based on binary significance results (Siddaway et al., 2019 ), studies that reported neither effect sizes nor sufficient statistics allowing for the extraction and interpretation of effect sizes were also excluded. After title and abstract screening, the full texts of the 54 remaining articles were screened, and 23 articles reporting a total of 25 studies were retained. The search was updated in April 2020 ( Supplementary Table 1 ) and one additional relevant study was identified that had been published after the first search. Ten percent of articles during the title and abstract screening and another ten percent of articles during the full text screening were double-screened by a second independent reviewer. Discrepancies between the two reviewers were resolved through discussion, leading to full agreement on the inclusion and exclusion of articles based on the pre-defined criteria.

Study characteristics relating to randomization, type of control group, sample size, participant age or grade, program intensity and duration, main outcome measures, results and effect sizes were extracted for each study and are summarized in Supplementary Table 2 . Further, theorized mechanisms of change in the included studies were recorded. While the study inclusion was based on effect size estimates, the precision of effect size estimates is dependent on the sample size. To address concerns about the accuracy of effect size estimates from small samples, as well as a possible overestimation bias in eta-squared (Morris, 2008 ; Fritz et al., 2012 ; Lakens and Evers, 2014 ), additional confidence intervals and alternative effect sizes were calculated where possible (Lenhard and Lenhard, 2016 ; Uanhoro, 2017 ; Stangroom, 2019 ). Morris' ( 2008 ) recommendation on the use of effect sizes in pre-test post-test control group designs was applied where possible. These additional calculations were dependent on the availability of information in the papers regarding sample sizes, means and standard deviations of pre- and post-test scores. Furthermore, these calculations were limited to statistical designs that did not include covariates or adjustments for violations of test assumptions. Effect sizes were interpreted as small, medium and large according to Cohen's conventions (Cohen, 1988 ).

The following narrative summary of included studies is structured into two sections. The first section summarizes effects on outcomes relating to the DeSeCo categories using tools interactively , and the second section reports the outcomes on the “soft” skill outcomes in the categories interacting in socially heterogonous groups, acting autonomously and reflectiveness .

Analysis of Studies With Outcomes Relating to the DeSeCo Categories Using Tools Interactively

Music education.

Twelve studies assessing outcomes of music education relating to the DeSeCo category using tools interactively fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Most used quasi-experimental designs, with the exception of two studies with experimental designs (Rickard et al., 2012 , Study 2; Rabinowitch et al., 2013 ), and a treated control group was implemented in seven studies. Study characteristics were very heterogenous, with sample sizes varying between n = 28 and n = 345, and program intensity and duration varying from weekly 20-min classes over an 8-week period (Brodsky and Sulkin, 2011 , Study 3) to 7 h per week over several years (e.g., Degé et al., 2011 ; Supplementary Table 2 ).

Two studies assessed arithmetic skills as an outcome of music education. A large effect size on arithmetic skills was extracted from one study of children receiving music composition classes (Bugos and Jacobs, 2012 ), and a small effect size on computation scores was found among children taking piano lessons (Costa-Giomi, 1999 ). Processing speed was assessed in three studies, revealing a medium effect of music composition training (Bugos and Jacobs, 2012 ) and trivial (Guo et al., 2018 ) to small effects of instrumental music training (Roden et al., 2014b ). Working memory was assessed in five studies, and whilst there was some evidence for medium to large effects of music training on verbal or auditory components of working memory in three studies (Degé et al., 2011 ; Roden et al., 2012 , 2014a ), others had mixed results, with trivial and small effect sizes or even contrary results for the second year of intervention (Rickard et al., 2010 ; Guo et al., 2018 ). In contrast to auditory functions, visual functions, such as visual attention or memory, were generally not expected to be affected by musical education. The range of effect sizes, spanning from small with negative valence (Roden et al., 2014b ) to null or small effects with positive valence (Rickard et al., 2010 ; Bugos and Jacobs, 2012 ; Roden et al., 2012 ) and medium positive effect sizes Degé et al. ( 2011 ), may support the expected absence of effects of music education on visual functions. Furthermore, the effects of music education on vocabulary and verbal learning variables ranged from small effect sizes with negative valence to small effect sizes with positive valence (Rickard et al., 2010 ; Bugos and Jacobs, 2012 ; Guo et al., 2018 ), with the exception of two medium-sized effects on language skills (Costa-Giomi, 1999 ) and verbal learning (Rickard et al., 2010 ). Brodsky and Sulkin ( 2011 , Study 3) reported a large effect size on a composite score of dictation content and technical aspects of handwriting. No effects of music education on overall intelligence were found (Degé et al., 2011 ).

Drama Education

One experimental study with an untreated control group evaluated the effect of a 2-hour long weekly drama class with a total duration of 12 weeks on measures of intelligence (Köksal Akyol, 2018 ). In the sample of 46 first grade children, a medium effect of the drama intervention on the verbal-linguistic intelligence subscale of the Turkish adaptation of the Teele Inventory for Multiple Intelligences (TIMI; adapted by Göǧebakan, 2003 , as cited in Köksal Akyol, 2018 ) did not reach significance. No effects were found on the mathematical-logical or visual-spatial subscales.

Comparisons Between Different Art Domains

Four evaluation studies included in this review compared the effects of an arts program to that of another arts program in a different domain (Rickard et al., 2012 ; François et al., 2013 ; Hogenes et al., 2016 ). Two studies were experimental, and sample sizes ranged from n = 24 to n = 133.

Comparing the verbal learning and verbal intelligence over time of students who received an increased frequency of music or drama lessons (Rickard et al., 2012 , Study 1) revealed no differences in verbal learning and delayed recall. However, a small effect size corresponding to greater improvement among music students was found for measures of immediate recall. When comparing a group of music students to a painting group, music training affected speech segmentation processes with a large effect size (François et al., 2013 ). Regarding non-verbal intelligence, a large extracted effect size indicated that students receiving increased music compared to increased drama classes exhibited greater improvement (Rickard et al., 2012 , Study 1). Finally, Hogenes et al. ( 2016 ) compared the effects of a music composition to a music performance intervention. A medium effect size for the between-group differences on post-test reading comprehension was due to a larger decrease among students in the music performance group when controlling for pre-test scores.

Proposed Mechanisms of Change

Several mechanisms to explain effects of the arts on non-arts outcomes were proposed by the authors of the included studies. For example, it was suggested that the simultaneous processing of multiple sensory cues required when playing music can explain working memory enhancement, specifically enhancement of auditory components, including verbal memory (e.g., componential model of working memory, Baddeley, 2010 ; Roden et al., 2014a ). Others propose that improved attention and mental processing speed due to music engagement may cause effects on academic performance (Roden et al., 2014b ).

Other indirect pathways are proposed by applying motivational, social learning and evolutionary theories to the context of arts learning. Arts engagement may offer opportunities to experience flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975 ) and therefore improved attention and concentration (Bugos and Jacobs, 2012 ). Other pathways involving motivational learning processes have been suggested with respect to collaborative learning in the arts (e.g., Vygotsky, 1977 ). An evolutionary perspective was applied to the domain of childlore and handclapping songs (Brodsky and Sulkin, 2011 , Study 3). The latter was described as a naturally occurring activity in 6–9-year-old children, with evidence of its existence dating back to 2000 BC. Combining sensory-motor, social and verbal/linguistic elements, the study's authors propose an evolutionary developmental purpose predicted to affect development in non-arts domains such as motor and cognitive development (Brodsky and Sulkin, 2011 , Study 3).

Analysis of Studies With Outcomes Relating to the DeSeCo Categories Interacting in Socially Heterogonous Groups, Acting Autonomously and Reflectiveness

Five evaluation studies of musical programs included in this review addressed outcomes relating to the DeSeCo categories interacting in socially heterogonous groups or acting autonomously . Two studies used an experimental design and three studies a treated control group, with sample sizes varying between n = 24 and n = 84. The intensity and duration of interventions ranged from weekly 30–60-min classes over a 3-month to a 3-year period.

Effect sizes regarding social skills and behavior were extracted from four studies (Rickard et al., 2012 , study 2; Rabinowitch et al., 2013 ; Schellenberg et al., 2015 ; Roden et al., 2016 ). Whilst Roden and colleagues found that extended music training buffered against increases in aggressive behavior observed in the control group, an effect of large size, the opposite trend was observed for self-reported aggression in the study by Rickard and colleagues. Rabinowitch and colleagues found that an interactive musical intervention improved empathy in the music group compared to the control group, an effect of medium size. For a subgroup with lower social skills at baseline, Schellenberg and colleagues reported large effects of the group × time interaction on sympathy and prosocial behavior due to significant increases in the music group. Regarding intra-personal outcomes, two studies assessed effects of music education on self-esteem (Costa-Giomi, 1999 ; Rickard et al., 2012 , Study 2), but neither study reported effect sizes. Costa-Giomi ( 1999 ) reported a significant effect on self-esteem among children receiving piano lessons and computations revealed a small effect. However, Rickard et al. ( 2012 ) did not report significant group × time interactions when comparing three groups of music, drama and control students over time.

Five studies assessed drama interventions' effects on social competency outcomes (Walsh-Bowers, 1992 ; Walsh-Bowers and Basso, 1999 ; Rickard et al., 2012 ; Köksal Akyol, 2018 ). Four of these applied a non-treated control group and two randomized group allocation with sample sizes varying from n = 44 to n = 104. Program intensity and duration ranged from one 40-min to five 60-min classes per week over periods of 12–15 weeks.

Köksal Akyol ( 2018 ) reported no experimental effects on intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence measures. In fact, effect sizes calculated from the data provided in the article suggest a small effect on interpersonal intelligence in the opposite direction as expected. Three studies conducted by Walsh-Bowers and colleagues (Walsh-Bowers, 1992 ; Walsh-Bowers and Basso, 1999 ) assessing social skill development in adolescents in a drama program showed mixed results. There were generally no effects on self-rating scales of confidence in social situations, except for one small effect on self-rated cooperation (Walsh-Bowers and Basso, 1999 ; Study 1). Intervention effects on teacher ratings of social skills differed widely between studies, ranging from medium and large effect sizes in support of the drama program to large effects in the opposite direction, and intervention effects on parents' ratings of social skills ranged from small to large across studies in support of the intervention. As with music students, self-rated aggression scores among drama students seemed to increase in comparison to a non-treatment control group over time (Rickard et al., 2012 , Study 2). However, the group × time interaction was only marginally significant, and the effect was only interpreted based on descriptive statistics of the three groups at pre- and post-test.

One experimental study with a treated control group assessed non-verbal divergent thinking after a single drama improvisation session in a sample of 34 ten- and eleven-year-old sixth grade schoolchildren (Sowden et al., 2015a ). Large intervention effect sizes for the originality and elaboration measures from the Incomplete Figures Tasks of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (Torrance, 1974 , as cited in Sowden et al., 2015a ) were found. The effect size for abstractness was non-significant and its size was not reported.

Dance Education

Two studies evaluated the social outcomes of the weekly 90-min dance intervention TanzZeit [time to dance], taught over a period of one or two semesters in quasi-experimental designs using untreated control groups (Zander et al., 2014 ; Kreutzmann et al., 2018 ). The studies employed sizable samples ( n = 606 and n = 361).

Both studies reported significant treatment effects on variables assessing affective and/or collaborative social networks, measured by asking students to indicate how much they liked or liked collaborating with each classmate, and their feelings of social belonging. Small effects of the dance intervention on affective networks were found in one study (Kreutzmann et al., 2018 ), but these were trivial in the study by Zander et al. ( 2014 ). Kreutzmann and colleagues also reported evidence for affective social networks mediating the relationship between the dance intervention and sense of social belonging. However, effect sizes for direct and indirect paths to social belonging remained on the trivial level, and sensitivity analysis revealed that their sizes were dependent on the contrast codes employed. For collaborative networks, Zander and colleagues reported small intervention effects in the subsample of boys, and large intervention effects for boys' opposite-sex nominations. These effects were not observed in the subsample of female participants.

One experimental study assessed the effects of a 20-min folk dance physical activity on creativity outcomes among Indian children (Bollimbala et al., 2019 ). A sample of 34 sixth and seventh grade children were randomly assigned to a 20-min class or a sedentary control group. Pre- and post-tests of divergent and convergent thinking revealed small experimental effects on convergent thinking only, and a small effect in the opposite direction was extracted on flexibility in divergent thinking across the entire sample. However, in the subgroup of children with normal body mass index (BMI), as opposed to the other half of the sample with low BMI, small experimental effects were revealed on all dimensions of the divergent and convergent thinking measures.

Visual Arts Education

One evaluation study assessed the outcomes of two visual arts programs on self-efficacy, self-concept, internal and external success attributions, worldviews and self-reported creativity (Catterall and Peppler, 2007 ). A total of 179 nine to 10-year-old third grade children were assessed in a quasi-experimental design with untreated control groups after 20–30 weeks of weekly 60- to 90-min classes. Significant self-efficacy gains were observed among children in the visual arts groups, an effect of medium size in relation to the changes in the control groups. Differences between groups and over time on self-concept, internal and external success attributions and worldviews were not significant and effect sizes not retrievable. Self-reported creativity measures were based on the dimensions of the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (Abedi, 2002 ). A large treatment effect was extracted for the creativity dimension of originality. No effect sizes could be extracted for the non-significant effects on the creativity dimensions of fluency, flexibility and elaboration.

One experimental (Freeman et al., 2003 ) and one quasi-experimental study (Rickard et al., 2012 , Study 1) comparing the effects of music and drama interventions allowed for the extraction of relevant effect sizes on measures of self-image, self-concepts, self-esteem, and attitudes. Sample sizes ranged from n = 111 to n = 185.

Freeman et al. ( 2003 ) reported no significant post-test differences between music and drama groups. However, small effects according to Morris ( 2008 ) calculated on a subsample with both pre- and post-measures indicate that drama students exhibited greater improvement in self-reported self-image and academic self-concept, and music students' greater improvement in social self-concept. No differences were found in teacher ratings of social skills and problem behavior. Rickard et al. ( 2012 ) did not report significant group × time interaction effects on the respective outcomes. However, small effect sizes according to Morris ( 2008 ) indicate stronger effects of drama education on academic self-esteem, general attitudes and attitudes toward social integration compared to the music group. Similarly, with medium effect sizes, drama had stronger effects on attitudes toward teaching and status among peers and medium to large effect sizes on engagement and motivation in arts class.

It has been proposed that music engagement may promote empathic processes and social cohesion through the experience of rhythmic and movement cohesion (Rabinowitch et al., 2013 ; Schellenberg et al., 2015 ), which can be explained from an evolutionary perspective (Huron, 2001 ; Tarr et al., 2014 ). Similar mechanisms have been proposed for the effects of dance interventions on social outcome variables (Zander et al., 2014 ; Kreutzmann et al., 2018 ), with the additional aspect of physical proximity and opportunity for contact being a possible catalyst for friendships (theory of social impact, Latané et al., 1995 ). According to Kreutzmann and colleagues, dance choreography also creates an interdependency among participants which may foster these social variables (social interdependence theory, Johnson and Johnson, 2009 ). The drama intervention by Walsh and colleagues (structured fantasy approach, Walsh et al., 1991 ) was derived from social development theory and the role of play for becoming competent in social situations (Vygotsky, 1967 ). Similarly, Freeman et al. ( 2003 ) propose that elements of social skills trainings are integral to creative drama and, like Catterall and Peppler ( 2007 ), propose that mastery experiences from the creative classroom can transfer to generalized self-efficacy, as theorized in Bandura's social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986 ).

Catterall and Peppler, 2007 assessed creativity outcomes of visual arts programs and propose that visual arts programs provide the learning environment to engage in metacognitive activities, which are central in Bruner's ( 1966 ) constructivist model, as well as active and collaborative learning (situated learning, Lave and Wenger, 1991 ; distributed learning, Bransford and Schwartz, 1999 ). Sowden et al. ( 2015a ) applied the dual-process theory of creative thinking (Sowden et al., 2015b ) to identify the creativity processes, namely divergent thinking, they expected to be specifically affected by an improvisation class.

Four studies reported mixed method approaches by incorporating observational and interview data (Walsh-Bowers, 1992 ; Walsh-Bowers and Basso, 1999 ; Catterall and Peppler, 2007 ) to understand student's responses to the intervention, their engagement and processes of development.

Risk of Bias

Several common risks of bias were identified across studies. Just over a quarter of the included studies (26.9%) fully randomized participants into groups, thereby minimizing systematic variation not caused by the experimental manipulation. Just over half of the studies (51.9%) included a treated control group. Such a comparison group is important to distinguish a treatment effect from a behavior change merely due to the novelty or increased attention involved in participating in a new program, similar to a placebo effect (Winner et al., 2013 ). Less than a third of studies evaluated intervention durations of more than a year (30.8%), while 15.4% of studies evaluated one-off classes or interventions with a maximum 10 weeks duration.

Only 7.4% of included studies recruited a sample size based on an a priori power analysis. Furthermore, 88.5% of studies employed a sample size smaller than n = 200, which would be sample size required to detect a small time × group interaction effect in a 2 × 2 ANOVA (calculation in G * Power 3; Faul et al., 2007 ; f = 0.10, α = 0.05, 1–β = 0.80, correlation among repeated measures = 0.5, non-sphericity correction = 1). Insufficient statistical power has implications for the reliability of significance tests and effect size estimates. Information on participant attrition could be extracted from 12 studies, of which one study had low attrition (below 5%), five studies medium (5–20%) and six studies large attrition (more than 20%; attrition classification according to Schulz and Grimes, 2002 ). Just over two-thirds of the studies provided reliability information for the instruments used. Of these, half (nine studies) reported acceptable reliability values (≥0.70) for all employed instruments.

Answers to the Research Questions

A systematic review of the literature was conducted in order to answer the following questions: (1) How effective is arts education with respect to outcomes in the DeSeCo categories (a) using tools interactively , (b) interacting in socially heterogonous groups , (c) acting autonomously and (d) the concept of reflectiveness ? (2) What are the methodological characteristics and limitations of the included studies? Regarding the outcome category using tools interactively , most eligible studies reported on outcomes of music education. Wide ranges of effect sizes were found across outcome variables. This variation may be due to generally small sample sizes and unreliable effect size point estimates, as indicated by the large confidence intervals. There was some evidence of the potential benefit of music training on processing speed based on a few studies with small to medium effect sizes. However, no such effects were found in another study (Guo et al., 2018 ). Music students outperformed painting students with a large effect size difference in speech segmentation, as assessed by test performance and event-related potentials (François et al., 2013 ). Inconsistent and trivial effects of music education were observed on vocabulary, visual memory, visual performance, and non-verbal intelligence. There was some support for effects of music training on arithmetic abilities, but this was only based on a few studies and effect sizes ranged from small to large. No effect of music training was found on global or verbal intelligence scores; however, a large effect emerged for non-verbal intelligence compared to a painting group. These mixed findings stand in contrast to previous studies finding that music education increases intelligence. For example, in an evaluation of a free community music program, Schellenberg ( 2004 ) pre-assessed a sample of 6-year-old children before entering first grade. At 1-year follow-up, small to medium-sized effects of music training on intelligence were found when compared to children with drama or no treatment. However, the effects of music education on cognitive outcomes may be moderated by age. Developmental gains and plasticity in younger children could explain differences by age in some cognitive effects of arts education.

Three studies assessed creativity outcomes of drama improvisation, visual arts or dance classes. Large effects were found for divergent thinking, mostly the originality dimension, after drama or visual arts classes. However, effects on divergent thinking were not as clear in an Indian sample of children receiving a twenty-minute folk dance class, where the presence of an effect seemed to be moderated by the children's BMI (Bollimbala et al., 2019 ). It is important to note that two of these studies assessed the children's performance on creativity tests immediately after a single one-off class. Therefore, the effect may represent a momentary state of mind. On the other hand, longer-term effects of regular visual arts classes were only measured using a self-report creativity measure, and comparisons across instruments should be made with caution (Catterall and Peppler, 2007 ). Based on the included studies, conclusions about the sustainability of creativity over time and differential effects of longer-term versus one-off classes cannot be made.

Regarding the outcome categories interacting in socially heterogonous groups and acting autonomously , a small number of studies were eligible for inclusion in this review. These examined a range of different outcomes with often inconclusive or even contrasting results. For interpersonal outcomes, positive results with medium and large effects were reported for music training on the related concepts of empathy and sympathy as well as prosocial behavior. However, these were based on only a few studies. Furthermore, when looking at the effect of music education on reducing unfavorable behavior, such as aggression, the results were mixed across studies. Likewise, the evidence for effects of dance and drama on interpersonal outcomes was uncertain due to a small number of studies and contrasting or trivial effect sizes. Dance effects on some interpersonal outcomes may be moderated by gender, an observation that calls for more research applying moderation analyses. Finally, with respect to intrapersonal outcomes, the suggested positive effects of music on self-esteem and of visual arts on self-efficacy were based only on single studies, which precludes a general conclusion.

The limited support for social-emotional outcomes of arts education in this review contradicts a plausible expectation of such benefits, for instance due to the increased opportunities for social interactions and collaboration which are characteristic of performing arts. For example, previous research found some evidence for social and emotional benefits of drama on empathy, perspective taking and emotional regulation, in line with such expectations (Winner et al., 2013 ). A scoping review of the role of the arts for health and well-being published by the World Health Organization (Fancourt and Finn, 2019 ) delivered further evidence for beneficial effects of the arts on social cohesion among different populations in the community and particularly wide-ranging social-emotional benefits for socio-economically disadvantaged groups. However, the small number of included studies and a number of limitations of these studies discussed below call for caution to draw conclusions. Further, while this review has focused solely on the class level, more subtle individual changes may be missed. The following discussion of the second research question will also debate the choice of outcomes and methods for their assessment.

The second aim of the review was to answer the question: What are the methodological characteristics, strengths and limitations of the included studies? The review's inclusion criteria focused on quasi- and experimental studies with pre-test post-test designs and effect size estimates. While quasi-experimental studies are limited in their ability to provide causal evidence, experimental studies are commonly considered the “gold-standard” to demonstrate causal impact. Pre- and post-measures allow for the control of changes over time and effect sizes and confidence intervals enable an estimation of the size and certainty of effects. However, the restrictive inclusion criteria resulted in a small number of included studies, of which only 27% used randomization into intervention and control groups. The scarcity of the so-called “gold standard” research method in the field may be partly due to practical considerations and financial limitations. Further, it may be a reflection of a controversy between the need of rigorous evaluations, what scientific methods are appropriate for evaluations and the concern that experimental methods may be too reductionist to be suitable for more holistic and complex experiences and impacts of the arts. As discussed in the context of complementary medicine by Mason et al. ( 2002 ), these concerns are not unreasonable and need to be acknowledged in the design of rigorous evaluation studies.

For example, programs evaluated in (quasi-) experimental designs tend to be shorter in duration and/or follow-up compared to correlational research and may not provide long enough exposure and follow-up to uncover meaningful effects (Catterall, 2002 ; McCarthy et al., 2004 ). For example, this review also included studies which only evaluated one-off classes or very short educational programs with short retest intervals. It has been suggested that a minimum intervention duration of one year is required to determine if a transfer effect occurred (Moga et al., 2000 ). Only eight of the included studies met this criterion. Results from short programs therefore need to be interpreted with caution.

Second, sample sizes tend to be smaller in (quasi-) experimental designs. This results in small statistical power and, alongside short follow-up periods and variations in individual experiences, non-significant cohort effects. A majority of the included studies had small sample sizes and would have been insufficiently powered to discover small effects.

Third, arts programs are more difficult to standardize and evaluation research needs to take the impact of the practitioner and participant relationship and adaptations in delivery into account. According to Ewing ( 2010 ), stronger interventions are the ones that can be adapted to the participants and contexts which makes comparison across interventions more difficult.

Finally, outcomes need to be broad enough or appropriate for the respective program. As illustrated in the introduction, the choice of exclusively instrumental outcomes has been critiqued as it disregards the intrinsic outcomes of the arts. While the DeSeCo framework selected for the categorization of outcomes in this review adopts a wider perspective and arguably includes intrinsic processes in intra- and interpersonal level outcomes, the limitations of this perspective will be discussed below. In addition, qualitative research can be illuminating to understand relevant outcomes and complex real-world experiences. As proposed by Paluck ( 2010 ), field experiments do not need to be and should not be exclusively quantitative but can be integrated with qualitative methods. The integration of qualitative data allows to shed light on pathways and outcomes and can strengthen the conclusions from the quantitative data. For example, in an evaluation of the impact of Creative Partnerships (CP) on children's wellbeing, the quantitative survey study with CP and control schools was complemented with qualitative case studies (McLellan et al., 2012b ). While the former did not find statistically significant effects between the schools, the latter illuminated mechanisms in high-wellbeing schools which can be fostered through arts integration and differences between the CP and control school (Galton and Page, 2014 ; McLellan and Steward, 2014 ). In another example in one of the here included studies, Catterall and Peppler ( 2007 ) conducted observations of the visual arts and home classrooms in both intervention and control schools. The results of the observations complemented their survey-based data by suggesting how the arts classes may have produced the observed effects. They observed higher student engagement in arts classes, more positive relations between peers and with adults, a change in how teachers viewed students and significant improvements in the integration of two case study students. Thus, the insights from the qualitative data can inform the design of future studies to test processes and help theory building.

Hence, the integration of qualitative methods into field experiments seems to be a promising approach. As the above examples illustrate, the combination of observation of classroom sessions and interviews of students and teachers within a field experiment enables a fuller elaboration of the mechanisms and complexities in arts education. First, observations allow the study of processes in the classroom, the in-depth analysis of program characteristics and nuances in the delivery, engagement and relationships in the classroom. Thus, the nature of experiences and specific ingredients of programs can be more fully understood and compared. Second, interviews with students and teachers in intervention and control groups can help to understand the complex experiences in and outside the respective classroom. For example, in an evaluation of the impact of a music orchestral program on collaborative skills, students may be asked about how they like collaborative work and to comment on experiences that created their like or dislike. Further, they could be asked questions about their collaborative relationships with peers at school and to give examples of when they feel collaboration went well or not so well. Interviews also enable a wider exploration of outcomes than what has been pre-specified in the quantitative data collection method. Therefore, rich data from qualitative research can help to support quantitative (experimental) research by illuminating important program characteristics, experiences, pathways and outcomes which are difficult to uncover in exclusively quantitative group level analysis.

As discussed above, there is a controversy about the appropriateness of experimental designs in the evaluation of the arts and holistic interventions. It may be fruitful to shift the focus of the discussion away from the experimental design and toward the limitations of associated shortcomings, such as the concern of being reductionist. Whilst a critical discussion of the “gold standard” is reasonable, the experimental design is not incompatible with some of the solutions discussed above, including qualitative research.

Strengths and Limitations

One of the key objectives of the current review was to provide an overview of (quasi-)experimental evaluation studies of school-based arts education with pre-test post-test designs in order to identify what can be concluded from the evidence so far. Given the small sample sizes prevalent in this research field, this review focused on available and retrievable effect size estimates and confidence intervals. While the focus on effect sizes has significantly reduced the number of included studies, it allowed for a non-binary interpretation of the results, and the application of caution in consideration of the (un)certainty of evidence. From the narrative synthesis of the included studies, the review was able to summarize the limitations and gaps in the (quasi-)experimental research.

Yet, this review has also some limitations that should be considered. The formulation of the search strings may have missed relevant studies. However, by screening previous reviews and additional publications by the authors of included papers, potential bias due to the search strategy was minimized as much as possible.

Furthermore, the selected inclusion and exclusion criteria pose some limitations with implications for the interpretation of the results. First, the small number of quantitative evaluation studies in the field made it impractical to further narrow the selection down based on additional, albeit important design (e.g., randomization, sample size, follow-up duration) or context characteristics (e.g., age group). Consequently, the heterogeneity of the included studies with regard to these aspects limited the conclusions that could be drawn across them. Additionally, the criteria generated only a very small number of eligible studies for most art domains except music. These were insufficient to answer the research questions in this review, highlighting the need for further experimental research with sufficient sample sizes in the field, especially in the domains of drama, dance and visual arts. Second, the limitation to studies in peer-reviewed journals meant that the review excluded unpublished literature. Risk of publication bias cannot be ruled out. Third, while the exclusion of after-school clubs or programs outside of the school context attempted to minimize biases due to accessibility and self-selection, not all included studies delivered programs within the mandatory curriculum and thus, some self-selection biases cannot be excluded. Fourth, the choice of the DeSeCo framework and exclusion of studies in therapeutic setting will have excluded intrinsic outcomes of arts education not covered by the criteria. The results of this review should thus not be understood as a generalizable claim about the impact of the arts in general and rather be considered as an overview and critical analysis of the limitations of the available (quasi-)experimental research in terms of its outcomes and methodological characteristics.

The current review focused on universal effects on the group level, whilst the elaboration of moderators was not an objective. However, it is important to note that some effects may be stronger for different subgroups. For example, age has been shown to be related to intervention effect sizes, with greater effects for pre-school interventions compared to school-based interventions (e.g., Campbell and Ramey, 1994 ; Ulubey, 2018 ). Similarly, other characteristics such as gender should be part of future moderator considerations. A few studies included in this review assessed gender effects (e.g., Zander et al., 2014 ), (mal-)nutrition (Bollimbala et al., 2019 ) and baseline levels of the outcome variable as moderators (Schellenberg et al., 2015 ).

The present review systematically searched and summarized the evidence on the effects of arts education (namely music, drama, dance, and visual arts) from quasi-experimental and experimental studies and critically discussed the evidence to date. Most included studies evaluated music programs, while the evidence base for drama, dance and visual arts is sparse. Largely, the number of studies and methodological characteristics did not justify definite conclusions. Whereas experimental designs are considered the “gold standard” to demonstrate causal impact, the present review has demonstrated that the “gold standard” is often associated with a range of methodological limitations which create uncertainty in the conclusions. To support hypothesized mechanisms and theory building, the inclusion of qualitative methods into field experiments seems a promising method as illustrated by a few examples.

Data Availability Statement

Author contributions.

AR and VS designed the review. VS was responsible for writing the initial and final version of the paper, conducting the systematic searches, and completing data extraction. AR supervised the study and contributed to the discussion and during the paper writing process. Both authors contributed to and approved the final manuscript for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

The systematic review was conducted as part of the bachelor thesis of the VS under the supervision of the AR.

Funding. We thank FernUniversität in Hagen for support of this work and its publication.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.623935/full#supplementary-material

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Lessons in leadership: Transforming struggling US K–12 schools

In the early 2000s, Washington, DC, had the lowest math and reading achievement scores of any major metropolitan school district in the United States and had suffered years of declining enrollments. 1 Washington, DC, lagged every other large city that took the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 4th grade reading and math in 2003, 2005, and 2007. See “Mathematics and Reading Report Cards at Grades 4 and 8,” Nation’s Report Card, accessed March 2023; Total public school enrollment in Washington, DC, declined from the 1990s until the 2010s, even with the growing charter-school sector. As the charter-school sector grew, DCPS schools continued to shrink. See “Public school enrollment over time,” Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education, accessed March 2023; DCPS enrollment data prior to the mid-2000s is limited and counts may have been inaccurate; enrollment in the mid-1990s was recorded at between 72,000 and 81,000, down from a high of 150,000 in 1970. See C hildren in crisis: The failure of public education in the district , District of Columbia Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority, posted by Washington Post , November 12, 1996. Fast-forward to 2017, and enrollments were increasing along with student performance. During that time, reforms were initiated under two school chancellors, Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson. Rhee was the first chancellor to serve District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) after the system was placed under mayoral control in 2007. Henderson joined as her deputy chancellor and went on to serve as chancellor from 2010 to 2016.

Under the leadership of both women, DCPS made significant improvements in basic operations, overhauled its talent strategy, implemented new curriculum that aligned to Common Core State Standards and spoke to the whole child, and streamlined accountability. Along the way, Henderson overcame common implementation challenges to successfully sustain momentum from Rhee’s tenure by motivating staff at all levels, engaging stakeholders throughout the city, and maintaining clarity of focus. In an interview with McKinsey’s Emma Dorn, Henderson shares her experiences with achieving lasting improvements in K–12 student outcomes (Exhibit 1). 2 Even with post-COVID-19 declines, academic achievement in Washington, DC, remains well above the early 2000 levels across all National Assessment of Educational Progress tests. See “District of Columbia overview,” Nation’s Report Card, accessed March 2023.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Emma Dorn: What was the state of the DC public school system when you were appointed deputy chancellor under Chancellor Michelle Rhee back in June 2007, and what were your priorities as you came into the system?

Kaya Henderson: At the time, DC Public Schools was the lowest-performing urban school district in the country. 3 “Mathematics and Reading Report Cards at Grades 4 and 8,” accessed March 2023. We were losing thousands of students each year. Public education in DC was in a death spiral, partly because of poor performance but also because of a very robust charter market here in Washington. The public school system had not been innovating, and students were fleeing to charter schools.

There was only one priority in the early days, and that was changing every policy possible to allow us to get, grow, and keep great people.

We created the first office of human capital in any school system in the country. We understood that human resources does one set of things, which is transactional, but nobody in a school district was stepping back to look at the human-capital continuum: recruitment, selection, onboarding, induction, professional development, career ladders, and exits.

We negotiated a teachers’ union contract that completely changed how we were able to hire. We eliminated tenure and seniority, we created a pay-for-performance system, and we created a new teacher evaluation system, called IMPACT. 4 IMPACT: The DCPS Evaluation and Feedback System for School-Based Personnel, District of Columbia Public Schools, accessed March 2023.

Emma Dorn: Did you encounter opposition?

Kaya Henderson: We had a level of political cover that allowed us to be bold. Michelle did a really good job of communicating the narrative: why we were doing what we were doing, engaging in a broader conversation around teacher evaluation, getting national support for what we were doing—and raising money for it.

I was able to then work with our team within the district to hammer out the actual nuts and bolts of the policies and the union contract. Eighty percent of the teachers’ vote ratified the contract. People wanted change.

Eighty percent of the teachers’ vote ratified the contract. People wanted change.

We also had a leadership structure that allowed us to do all those things. I had been working with DC Public Schools for seven years before we came on. None of these people were new to me. I had positive working relationships with folks. In any other school district, it would have taken people a while to build the kinds of relationships that we had already, and that enabled us to just skate and go.

Emma Dorn: In 2010, you were named interim chancellor, then appointed permanently to the job in 2011. Was that a planned evolution?

Kaya Henderson: The interesting thing is, I refused the job, maybe fifty times. I said I would stay as interim chancellor, but my plan was not to be the chancellor of DC Public Schools. They were doing a national search.

Ultimately, I said yes, not because I wanted to, but because a lot of the great teachers and principals who I had spent three and a half years getting, growing, and retaining were literally telling me, “If you stay, we’ll stay.” So, I felt like it was really important for me to stay to maintain the work that we did and to keep our foot on the gas.

Emma Dorn: How did you maintain momentum from Michelle’s tenure as chancellor to yours, and what critical shifts did you make?

Kaya Henderson: When we got to DCPS in 2007, it was a mess and needed to be dismantled. We had 29 data systems and none of them talked to one another. We were paying people who were dead. We needed to break this whole thing apart and put it back together in a new way. And Michelle was a very good leader to help break it up. She’s a fighter and we needed a fighter at that point.

We needed to break this whole thing apart and put it back together in a new way.

The first thing that we did when I transitioned into the role was called the Hopes and Dreams campaign. 5 Kaya Henderson rolled out the “Hopes and Dreams” campaign in 2011 as acting chancellor. See “Collecting ‘Hopes and Dreams’ at DCPS,” blog post by Bill Turque, Washington Post , May 25, 2011. We asked people, “Ten years from now, what should DCPS look like? What are your hopes and your dreams for the district and for your students?” We had an online portal. We had boxes in barbershops, and beauty parlors, and laundromats. And 10,000 people told us what they wanted to see. We took that, crafted a strategic plan and then went back to the community and said, “Is this what you want to do?” And that’s how we did everything in my tenure, with community engagement at the center—even with hard decisions such as the school closings we decided to do in 2013.

The community understood the hard decisions that we had to make, in part because I spent a year communicating the mismatch of resources. After a year of helping people understand resource misalignment, some said, “Then, let’s just close schools.” At that point, I knew we were ready to do it. And we did it with the community. We had no protests, no drama. And we did not lose children that year. In fact, from 2010 to 2016, which was my tenure, we saw six consecutive years of enrollment growth, which hadn’t happened in 40 years in DC Public Schools (Exhibit 2).

Emma Dorn: You remained chancellor until 2016. How did your priorities shift and evolve across your tenure?

Kaya Henderson: My job was to listen to people, to be in constant communication with our teachers, our principals, and our central office staff to know what they needed to be successful.

While we continued to do human-capital work, it became very clear that we also needed to do curricular work. I characterize it as an equity floor. What is the least that we are going to guarantee to every single kid across the district? If people want to add to it, great. But it has to be at a high enough standard that you would be happy sending your kid to any school in the district.

Armed with the information from the evaluation system, which told us who our best teachers were, we pulled those people together and asked them to develop curriculum with us. We had some lofty goals. We wanted it to be rigorous. We wanted it to be joyful. We wanted our young people to see windows and mirrors, and see other communities, but also see themselves mightily reflected in the things that they were learning. And that was very different for us. We wanted to ensure that it wasn't just around the core subjects, but that we were creating an interdisciplinary curriculum. We were creating curriculum to develop the whole child. And our teachers were super on fire about it.

We were creating curriculum to develop the whole child. And our teachers were super on fire about it.

We engaged the city. We had a project called “City as our Classroom,” where after we released the curriculum, we then went to institutions in the city and asked, “Where does your content overlap with our curriculum, and how can we create field trips so that parents can take kids to places that align with what they’re learning?”

The third priority was, again, community engagement—co-creating solutions with our students, our parents, and our community members. So when people ask, “How did you do it at DC Public Schools?” it’s those three things: its human capital, its curriculum, and its family and community engagement. That was the cocktail.

Emma Dorn: How did you align different stakeholders around these initiatives?

Kaya Henderson: We spent a lot of time on alignment, making sure that every single person in the district knew what the priorities were as well as all the programs and initiatives that we were doing, and how they lined up to these goals. We set five big goals. We called it a “capital commitment.” It was our five-year strategic plan. And everybody knew what the five goals were. They could recite them. Everybody knew how their job contributed to one of the goals. Every single employee’s strategic plan, their department’s strategic plan, their division’s strategic plan all rolled up to those five goals.

We only chose two or three big things to do each year because you can’t do everything. But if you choose the right few things, and you do them well, and you continue to do them well, you create a flywheel effect. And we were able to catch that momentum and do a lot more than, I think, anybody expected.

Emma Dorn: How did you manage to motivate the department, to engage it in a new way, and attract top-caliber talent?

Kaya Henderson: I believe if you’re doing really hard work, you should do it with people who you’re inspired by and who challenge you.

I am no educational expert. I don’t have conviction about a whole lot of things. But I know how to find people who are experts. And I’m OK to let them do their thing. I’ve always been a collector of talented people. And I feel like, if we’re going to be doing really hard stuff, then we should have fun doing it. I think it’s important for you to help people remember why they are doing this stuff, to celebrate people when things are going well or when they do good things.

I know how to find people who are experts. And I’m okay to let them do their thing.

One of the things that we were noted for was our Standing Ovation Awards for DC teachers. We did a huge celebration at the Kennedy Center, honoring our best teachers.

Emma Dorn: Were there new capabilities or capacities that you discovered you needed at each level of the system?

Kaya Henderson: This was the beginning of publicly available data in school systems, so there was a level of transparency into school districts that you never had before. We needed to replace probably 80 to 90 percent of our principal corps, and I was like, “OK, let’s go find us some good principals.”

We scoured the school district websites of our surrounding jurisdictions to figure out which principals had really turned around a low-performing school. We called those people. We sent them emails saying, “Hi. I’m Kaya Henderson. I’m the deputy chancellor of DC Public Schools. We see you’re doing amazing work at your elementary school and wanted to say congratulations. We know how hard this is, and we’re sure you’re probably not even thinking about moving, but if you ever want to have a conversation about opportunities at DCPS, I personally would love to talk to you.”

Nobody ever says “congratulations” to principals. Nobody says “thank you.” The number of people who responded was astounding. Every single person that we reached out to said that they weren’t thinking about moving but would love to talk about positions at DC Public Schools.

The other thing that we did—and I can’t even tell you how much it paid off—was to create an internship program. We hired undergraduate students and graduate students to work for us for a semester, or a summer, or a year. And we gave them meaningful projects. We had interns from the best colleges and universities in America because we were the hotbed of education innovation, and everybody was looking at DC.

We were the hotbed of education innovation, and everybody was looking at DC.

Emma Dorn: Education leaders across the country are struggling right now with a host of challenges. What needs to happen to support them?

Kaya Henderson: What’s unfortunate to me is that many educational leaders and educators, in general, are so tired and so beaten down from the last three years that it is tough to rustle up the innovation. And nobody wants to come behind them and do this work because our narrative on public education is so terrible. I would love to reframe that narrative. This is a dynamic industry, where you are able to do amazing work. And we don’t sell it that way.

Emma Dorn: You’re currently CEO of Reconstruction, an education tech company that provides supplemental curricula for Black K–12 students. What inspired you to go in that direction, and what’s next for you?

Kaya Henderson: Reconstruction came directly out of my curricular work at DC Public Schools. We wanted kids to see themselves, and we built curriculum where kids’ communities were featured prominently. We watched kids attach to this stuff and engage in ways that I had never seen before.

I started thinking, what would a national Black curriculum look like? What are all the books that I want Black kids to read before they graduate from high school so that they know who they are and they know the history of Black excellence, resilience, and creativity in the United States?

We are just starting our third year at Reconstruction. We’ve served over 12,000 kids in the last two years and are in major school districts all across the country, working with community-based organizations, working with individuals. And it’s been a dream come true. I’ve got an amazing, talented team who has a lot of fun together. We built a product that is in tremendous demand. We’ve produced over 150 courses. And I cannot create content fast enough. Figuring out what the next phase of Reconstruction looks like is the big thing that I’m noodling on right now.

Kaya Henderson is the CEO of Reconstruction and the former chancellor of District of Columbia Public Schools. Emma Dorn is an associate partner in McKinsey’s Bay Area office.

The authors wish to thank Jake Bryant, Emmy Liss, Stephanie McBride, Jimmy Sarakatsannis, Doug Scott, and Laurie Sztejnberg for their contributions to this article.

The authors also wish to thank former District of Columbia Public Schools staff members for their contributions to this article, including Michelle Hudacsko, Jeanie Lee, Brian Pick, and Pete Weber.

Comments and opinions expressed by interviewees are their own and do not represent or reflect the opinions, policies, or positions of McKinsey & Company or have its endorsement.

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The National Science Foundation has awarded Rice University $90 million to build what is being described as a first-of-its-kind education research hub that will leverage data from an array  of major digital learning platforms currently serving tens of millions of students. 

The university recently announced the investment as its largest ever federal research grant. OpenStax at Rice, a major publisher of open education resources, will build the research and development hub known as SafeInsights .

The project will focus on producing “research-informed insights about teaching and learning for educators, institutions and learning platforms to use to create tailored programs, pedagogies and policies that will equip learners to thrive.”

“Just like there are bigger telescopes that let astronomers see deeper into the night, SafeInsights’ goal is to have this large student population that will enable researchers to see deeper into the student learning experience,” Slavinsky said in an interview. 

The SafeInsights hub will take five years to build, he said, with early research projects b eginning in 16 to 18 months, and full-scale research operations starting in 2029. 

School districts’ commitment to seeking and using research-based educational strategies is uneven at best. Many district officials complain that academic and other scientifically based research is too abstract, disconnected from their work, and outdated to be of practical use in their decision-making.

When surveyed recently by EdWeek Market Brief on what sorts of research they value most when choosing products and services, district and school leaders were much more likely to point to data on student outcomes, or product usage data than they were rigorous, experimental research.

Data Security in Focus 

At $90 million, the award is NSF’s largest investment in research and development infrastructure for education at a national scale, the university said.

In the past, education research has been hampered by small study groups and short time frames, but the recent boom in digital learning can provide researchers with a plethora of data needed to better understand academic outcomes, Slavinsky said. 

SafeInsights’ goal is to have this large student population that will enable researchers to see deeper into the student learning experience. J.P. Slavinsky, Executive Director, SafeInsights

And research will not be limited to only STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) areas. Schools, education companies, and researchers participating in SafeInsights will bring their own research agenda, Slavinsky said.

Protecting student data is a major concern within school districts, particularly as  schools’ and students’ reliance on technology  has steadily grown.

The data collected as part of the new project will remain secure, Slavinsky said. No student information will be revealed to researchers. 

Instead, researchers will submit their inquiries to SafeInsights, and the research hub will have the data in question analyzed where it is originally stored — by schools or on a digital platform — and provide researchers with aggregate results. 

The research and development project will be a central hub for 80 partners and collaborating institutions. That number is expected to grow, Slavinsky said. 

“One of the great things about SafeInsights is that it is very scalable,” he said. “And we want to build this community, so we can get a better and better picture of the students and the teachers we’re trying to help.” 

Follow  EdWeek Market Brief  on Twitter  @EdMarketBrief  or connect with us on  LinkedIn .

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The Mind-Expanding Value of Arts Education

As funding for arts education declines worldwide, experts ponder what students — and the world at large — are losing in the process.

By Ginanne Brownell

This article is part of our special report on the Art for Tomorrow conference that was held in Florence, Italy.

Awuor Onguru says that if it were not for her continued exposure to arts education as a child, she never would have gotten into Yale University.

Growing up in a lower-middle-class family in Nairobi, Kenya, Ms. Onguru, now a 20-year-old junior majoring in English and French, started taking music lessons at the age of four. By 12, she was playing violin in the string quartet at her primary school, where every student was required to play an instrument. As a high school student on scholarship at the International School of Kenya, she was not only being taught Bach concertos, she also became part of Nairobi’s music scene, playing first violin in a number of local orchestras.

During her high school summer breaks, Ms. Onguru — who also has a strong interest in creative writing and poetry — went to the United States, attending the Interlochen Center for the Arts ’ creative writing camp, in Michigan, and the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio . Ms. Onguru, who recently returned to campus after helping organize Yale Glee Club’s spring tour in Kenya, hopes to become a journalist after graduation. She has already made progress toward that goal, serving as the opinion editor for the Yale Daily News, and getting her work published in Teen Vogue and the literary journal Menacing Hedge.

“Whether you’re in sports, whether you end up in STEM, whether you end up in government, seeing my peers — who had different interests in arts — not everyone wanted to be an artist,” she said in a video interview. “But they found places to express themselves, found places to be creative, found places to say things that they didn’t know how else to say them.”

Ms. Onguru’s path shows what a pivotal role arts education can play in a young person’s development. Yet, while the arts and culture space accounts for a significant amount of gross domestic product across the globe — in the United Kingdom in 2021, the arts contributed £109 billion to the economy , while in the U.S., it brought in over $1 trillion that year — arts education budgets in schools continue to get slashed. (In 2021, for instance, the spending on arts education in the U.K. came to an average of just £9.40 per pupil for the year .)

While experts have long espoused the idea that exposure to the arts plays a critical role in primary and secondary schooling, education systems globally have continually failed to hold it in high regard. As Eric Booth, a U.S.-based arts educator and a co-author of “Playing for Their Lives: The Global El Sistema Movement for Social Change Through Music,” said: “There are a whole lot of countries in the world that don’t have the arts in the school, it just isn’t a thing, and it never has been.”

That has led to the arts education trajectory heading in a “dark downward spiral,” said Jelena Trkulja, senior adviser for academic and cultural affairs at Qatar Museums , who moderated a panel entitled “When Arts Education is a Luxury: New Ecosystems” at the Art for Tomorrow conference in Florence, Italy, organized by the Democracy & Culture Foundation, with panels moderated by New York Times journalists.

Part of why that is happening, she said, is that societies still don’t have a sufficient and nuanced understanding of the benefits arts education can bring, in terms of young people’s development. “Arts education is still perceived as an add-on, rather than an essential field creating essential 21st-century skills that are defined as the four C’s of collaboration, creativity, communication and critical thinking,” Dr. Trkulja said in a video interview, “and those skills are being developed in arts education.”

Dennie Palmer Wolf, principal researcher at the U.S.-based arts research consultancy WolfBrown , agreed. “We have to learn to make a much broader argument about arts education,” she said. “It isn’t only playing the cello.”

It is largely through the arts that we as humans understand our own history, from a cave painting in Indonesia thought to be 45,000 years old to “The Tale of Genji,” a book that’s often called the world’s first novel , written by an 11th-century Japanese woman, Murasaki Shikibu; from the art of Michelangelo and Picasso to the music of Mozart and Miriam Makeba and Taylor Swift.

“The arts are one of the fundamental ways that we try to make sense of the world,” said Brian Kisida, an assistant professor at the University of Missouri’s Truman School of Public Affairs and a co-director of the National Endowment for the Arts-sponsored Arts, Humanities & Civic Engagement Lab . “People use the arts to offer a critical perspective of their exploration of the human condition, and that’s what the root of education is in some ways.”

And yet, the arts don’t lend themselves well to hard data, something educators and policymakers need to justify classes in those disciplines in their budgets. “Arts is this visceral thing, this thing inside you, the collective moment of a crescendo,” said Heddy Lahmann , an assistant professor of international education at New York University, who is conducting a global study examining arts education in public schools for the Community Arts Network. “But it’s really hard to qualify what that is.”

Dr. Lahmann’s early research into the decrease in spending by public schools in arts education points to everything from the lack of trained teachers in the arts — partly because those educators are worried about their own job security — to the challenges of teaching arts remotely in the early days of the Covid pandemic. And, of course, standardized tests like the Program for International Student Assessment, which covers reading, math and science, where countries compete on outcomes. “There’s a race to get those indicators,” Dr. Lahmann said, “and arts don’t readily fit into that.” In part, that is because standardized tests don’t cover arts education .

“It’s that unattractive truth that what gets measured gets attended to,” said Mr. Booth, the arts educator who co-authored “Playing for Their Lives.”

While studies over the years have underscored the ways that arts education can lead to better student achievement — in the way that musical skills support literacy, say, and arts activities lead to improved vocabulary, what have traditionally been lacking are large-scale randomized control studies. But a recent research project done in 42 elementary and middle schools in Houston, which was co-directed by Dr. Kisida and Daniel H. Bowen, a professor who teaches education policy at Texas A&M, is the first of its kind to do just that. Their research found that students who had increased arts education experiences saw improvements in writing achievement, emotional and cognitive empathy, school engagement and higher education aspirations, while they had a lower incidence of disciplinary infractions.

As young people are now, more than ever, inundated with images on social media and businesses are increasingly using A.I., it has become even more relevant for students these days to learn how to think more critically and creatively. “Because what is required of us in this coming century is an imaginative capacity that goes far beyond what we have deliberately cultivated in the schooling environment over the last 25 years,” said Mariko Silver, the chief executive of the Henry Luce Foundation, “and that requires truly deep arts education for everyone.”