Tennessee: Value Plus Schools Evaluation Report

Dance helps Value Plus Schools students in Covington, Tennessee, learn how sound waves travel. Photo by Kim Leavitt, Tennessee Arts Commission

The Tennessee Arts Commission (TAC) recently announced the release of Changing Tennessee Schools through Arts Integration, the evaluation results of TAC’s Value Plus Schools program. The report synthesizes four years of research about student achievement, educators’ perceptions of the program and common denominators for successfully integrating the arts into all aspects of student instruction and school culture. The study’s headline findings include these:

Value Plus Schools made significant academic gains, based on standardized test scores, in math, science, reading/language arts and social studies.
Although they served higher numbers of economically disadvantaged students than did comparison group schools, Value Plus Schools still significantly outperformed those schools in which the arts were not integrated into instruction.
Achievement increased the most among those schools in which principals were actively involved in implementing the Value Plus program.

The report documents unique aspects of the program and the lessons learned through the initiative’s implementation. The report is deliberately non-academic in its language and design in order to make the information inviting and accessible to multiple audiences. The results are being used to inform future TAC policy and programming, including the agency’s new Arts360 initiative. For more information on the evaluation, contact TAC Director of Arts Education Kim Leavitt.