In September 2001, ArtsConnection received a three-year grant from the United States Department of Education's Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination Program for Investigating the Arts and Literacy Connection. This project allowed ArtsConnection to refine and more clearly define the process by which the arts are implemented at Community Elementary School (CES) 53 in the South Bronx, bring the methodologies employed there to two Elementary schools in Community School District 15 in Brooklyn (PS 130 and PS 39), conduct cross-site research and disseminate the processes and findings to the field. Since 1999, ArtsConnection has been working with CES 53, a large school with 1,600 students, and its Community School District, CSD 9, to build a model of arts education for the whole school that provides K-5 sequential learning in dance and in theater arts and integrates the arts and arts processes into the fabric of teaching and learning in all grades. Through ArtsConnection's mutual-adaptation model of professional development for teachers and artists and a management structure that is based on shared goals and responsibilities, the program at CES 53 is changing the teaching practice of teachers and artists and challenging the assumptions of both the school and ArtsConnection about the impact of the arts on children's learning and development.
		By replicating this model in CSD 15, were able to: look separately at the impact of theater arts and dance on student learning by implementing only one art form in each of the new schools; examine the connections between the arts and literacy in two districts with different literacy models; work with children from a wide array of cultural backgrounds; and increase the validity and reliability of the project's results through cross-site research and evaluation. It is not our goal to create a recipe for integrating the arts in education, but to describe a process which can produce a living curriculum and practices that are able to continually adapt through a true partnership between an arts organization and schools.
		This work also advances research begun at Columbia University and published in the report Champions of Change, which identified links between arts learning and several cognitive, personal and social learning dimensions. Our goal is to contribute to the literature on school change in and through the arts by articulating a compelling theory of learning that encompasses areas of competency that are influenced by participation in authentic arts experiences in dance and in theater arts. The results of the project were shared at our 2005 national symposium: Beyond Arts Integration and the Dana Press publication: Partnering Arts Education: A Working Model From ArtsConnection. For more information about our Inquiry-based Partnerships, please contact Carol Morgan, Deputy Director for Education.