School Arts Support Initiative
With generous support to The Center for Arts Education (CAE) from the United States Department of Education Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination Grant Program (AEMDD), The Center for Arts Education’s SASI program seeks to help nine New York City middle schools to develop sustainable education in and through the arts in place of limited, fragmentary and sporadic arts education programming.
SASI is a research program that enables middle schools with little or no arts programming to provide rich and multi-faceted arts instruction to all their students. SASI 1 schools, organized during the 2008-9 academic year, have begun to demonstrate how the arts affect the artistic, academic and psychological well-being of middle school students. SASI 2 schools are now involved in replicating and adapting the transformative model created by SASI 1 in the expectation that research findings will be significant and that the SASI model will be replicable nationwide.
Nine New York City middle schools are committed to the structural, curricular and pedagogical policies as they pertain to the arts in their schools. CAE’s team of external evaluators is tracking both qualitative and quantitative data throughout the four years of this AEMDD program. Each school has both common and unique features enabling SASI to model different approaches to achieve their arts education visions. Each school principal has been provided with an experienced arts educator/administrator who acts as coach to the School Leadership Team and other members of the staff and parent group. Cross site and on site professional development regarding curriculum enhancements and innovations is integral to the SASI program. An ongoing dissemination aspect of the project enables SASI to share the results of these efforts in conferences, meeting and published reports in print and on the internet.
SASI was initially developed with support from The New York Times Company Foundation, working with The Center for Arts Education and the New York City Department of Education.
A year after its launch in 2007, SASI was awarded a U.S. Department of Education Arts Education Model Development and Dissemination Grant. In 2010, an additional USDOE grant was awarded to expand the program to include 6 new schools.
Additional project support for SASI has been provided by The National Endowment for the Arts, The New York State Council on the Arts, the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation, and the Lisa and John Pritzker Family Fund.
Watch a video about the first two years of success at MS 223, a SASI school in the Bronx.
PARTICIPATING SCHOOLS
The nine SASI schools are:
| SASI 1 Schools | SASI 2 Schools |
| JHS 231Q Magnetch/Tri-Community Jr. High School MS 223X Laboratory School of Finance and Technology MS 57K The Ron Brown Academy School PS/IS 208Q |
MS 421M West Prep Academy MS 584K Granville T. Woods MS 534K The Upper School at PS 25 IS 347K School of Humanities JHS 291K The Roland Hayes School |
MOVING FORWARD
SASI is now the recipient of two highly competitive USDOE AEMDD grants. These important grants enable CAE to investigate the impact a comprehensive arts education program has on a student’s achievement. We look forward to the conclusion of the first research study in 2012 and will disseminate the findings to the field and to the public soon thereafter. We are eager to see that the positive results of SASI 1 will be repeated for the SASI 2 schools.
