School Arts Support Initiative

The School Arts Support Initiative (SASI) is a school-based program designed to help underserved New York City middle schools develop, enhance, and sustain instruction in and through the arts. A partnership of The Center for Arts Education (CAE), The New York Times Company Foundation, and the New York City Department of Education, SASI is dedicated to transforming schools that have little or no arts education into "arts rich" schools by:
 

• Integrating standards-based arts programming into the core curriculum
• Demonstrating how the arts affect the artistic, academic, and psychological well-being of middle school students
• Creating an arts-rich school model that can be replicated nationwide

SASI tests the hypothesis that when principals, in consultation with SASI leadership (CAE, NYTF, NYCDOE), become educated consumers, they will make the kinds of critical decisions that guarantee quality arts education throughout an entire middle school and for all students. Bolstering the arts curriculum is professional development work (developed at the Harvard Graduate School of Education) for arts teachers, arts liaisons, classroom teachers, and coordinators. Regular group meetings and coaching sessions with experienced arts partners and school-based leadership teams help SASI schools create and maintain sequential quality arts curricula that meet national and state standards.

Download the SASI brochure.

JHS 231 Tri-Community (Queens), MS 223 Laboratory School of Finance and Technology (South Bronx), JHS 57 The Ron Brown Academy (Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn), and PS/IS 208 (Queens). IS 259 William McKinley (Brooklyn) serves as a model school for the initiative.

Independent researchers found SASI schools have:

• Improved planning for schoolwide programs
• Increased attendance on days when the arts are a central factor in students' programs
• Greater involvement of teachers and parents in support of their children's school activities
• Improved, more multifaceted interaction between teachers and students

SASI is a rarity: Few arts education programs work in underserved schools with little to no arts education—and also seek to build a vibrant whole-school model in which the arts are central to the success of each student. In 2008, a year after it was launched as a pilot program, SASI was awarded a highly competitive, four-year United States Department of Education Arts Education Model Development and Dissemination Grant to expand and deepen the program.

The SASI team believes that the arts can encourage kids to go to school, and it anticipates that students who are provided high quality, sequential instruction in the arts will show a marked increase in their reading comprehension, problem-solving skills, and critical thinking as tested by real-life challenges as well as standardized tests.