Arts in Middle School Predict High School Academic Outcomes: More Years of Arts are Better

• In Event: Longitudinal, Experimental, and Population-Based Studies on the Impact of Arts Engagement on Child Development

Abstract

Much research shows that students with arts experience perform better academically than their non-artistic peers. It is important, though, to control for the many ways arts-takers are different from non-arts-takers before self-selecting into the arts, to understand if the arts themselves play a causal role for such outcomes. Our prior work, rigorously controlling for selection effects with a long-term, longitudinal quasi-experimental design, showed that enrollment in arts elective courses in middle school was associated concurrently and prospectively with higher academic outcomes in middle school. The current study builds off of this work by exploring whether 1) middle school arts enrollment has lasting effects on later academic performance at the start of high school (9th grade), and 2) whether more years of middle school arts enrollment are linked to even better high school academic outcomes.
Our data come from a large-scale, longitudinal university-community project involving children who received childcare subsidies or attended public school pre-K programs at age four who were followed as they went through local urban public schools. Out of our large (n = 27,420), low-income (83% free/reduced lunch), and ethnically diverse (60% Hispanic, 33% Black) sample of students, 49% took at least one arts elective (music, dance, drama, visual art) in 6th, 7th, and/or 8th grade according to student transcripts/records, with 9% taking one, 22% taking two, and 18% taking three years of arts electives. Multiple regression analyses predicted academic outcomes in 9th grade (GPA and standardized reading scores) controlling for all significant predictors of selecting into the arts (gender, ethnicity, poverty status, disability status, ELL status, prior retention, school readiness skills at age 4, and prior academic performance). The first model examined if a student was ever enrolled (1 = enrolled at least once, 0 = never) in a middle school arts elective as our main IV of interest (see Table 1) and our second model examined, just within arts takers (n = 13,304), whether the number of years enrolled (1 = one year, 2 = two years, 3 = three years) in middle school arts electives matters for later high school outcomes (see Table 2).
As seen in the tables, many selection effects related to arts enrollment were also positively related to academic achievement (being White, female, not in poverty, ELL status, better language, motor, and behavioral skills at age 4). However, controlling for all those variables, taking at least one arts elective course in 6-8th grade still uniquely predicted GPA and reading in 9th grade. Effect sizes for taking arts were comparable to race/ethnicity and poverty status which is notable. Table 2 reveals that dosage/duration of the arts matters as well, since after limiting the subsample to just the arts takers, the number of years that the student took arts electives (1, 2, or 3) significantly predicted academic outcomes with similar if not larger effect sizes than the yes/no indicator. These results suggest that any arts enrollment in middle school is related to positive academic outcomes and the more years of arts exposure the better.

Authors

• Adam Winsler, George Mason University
  Presenting Author

• Alenamie Alegrado, George Mason University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tevis Lee Tucker, George Mason University
  Non-Presenting Author