The Impact of Integrated Arts Instruction on Student Achievement of Fourth Grade Urban Students in English Language Arts and Mathematics

This study is a quantitative study of the impact of arts integration on the academic achievement in English language arts and mathematics of urban fourth-grade students. The data were the results of a federally funded Arts Education Model Development and Dissemination (AEMDD) grant project from 2006-2009 implemented in a large urban school district. This secondary analysis used the data from 2009, the third and final year of the AEMDD study. The analysis used the New York State ELA and mathematics test scores of fourth graders as the measure to determine if arts integration had an effect on student achievement in these two content areas. Additionally, this analysis was conducted to determine which art form, music, visual art, theater, or dance had the greatest impact. Data were analyzed using SPSS 16.0. The ANOVA results indicate that integrated arts instruction has a positive impact on student achievement in ELA and mathematics at grade four. The Pairwise Comparison with the Bonferroni Correction was used to determine the effect of the specific art form used as the intervention to determine which of the arts forms had the greatest effect on fourth grade student achievement in ELA and mathematics. It was determined that visual art had a significant effect on the fourth-grade students’ performance in mathematics and that music had a significant effect on the academic achievement of urban fourth graders in ELA. Teachers, school and policy makers need to support arts integration as a means of increasing student achievement