Watch the Arkansas Arts Education Data Project overview video to learn how to use the dashboard.

Goals

The ultimate goal of the Arkansas Arts Education Data Project is for arts education data to be the catalyst to drive changes in arts education that will lead to increased participation for students across the nation. There are approximately 12 states participating in the national project (see https://www.artseddata.org/). Arkansas is part of the first cohort to be offered three years of participation at no cost because of the recognition of the project’s importance by major funders such as the Music Man Association and the Country Music Association Foundation which offered Quadrant Research and the State Education Agency Directors of Arts Education considerable funding for the project in 2019.

Data

Quadrant Research has worked with the data team of the Division of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to pull five years of arts education data already collected by the agency and organizing it into user-friendly interactive dashboards that allow stakeholders to easily obtain information about arts education access and participation in any school in the state. The information is organized by arts discipline (theatre, music, visual art, and dance) and offers information about participation by gender, by geographical region, by free and reduced lunch status, and by ethnicity. The data will be updated each year. This powerful tool will allow DESE to recognize exemplary arts programs and identify critical resources for programs in need of assistance. It will provide evidence for schools that are seeking to improve and supplement their programs. Outside of K-12 education, it will allow higher education programs to pinpoint essential improvements in teacher preparation programs; it will inform the dissemination of resources by organizations such as the Arkansas Arts Council; and it will support the development of partnerships between school arts and community arts programs.

Future

A strong communication plan to accompany the implementation of the Arkansas Arts Education Data Project is critical to its value to stakeholders. A collaboration between DESE, the Arkansas Arts Council, and Arkansans for the Arts is planned for this purpose. As additional supports are developed for implementation and use of these resources they will be added to this page. Please explore the Arkansas Dashboard below to begin seeing how this data can inform your Fine Arts program.