Metis has partnered with the Center for Educational Innovation (CEI) on the evaluation of its arts education programming since 2018, when CEI received its first of three federal US Department of Education (USED) arts grants. Metis’s work has been integral to the replication and expansion of this initiative from a local, New York City (NYC)-based offering to a well-recognized, national program for teachers of students with individualized education plans (IEPs).
Three Rounds of Federal Funding
In 2018, with assistance from Metis, CEI received its first round of funding from the USED to implement the Education through Art (ETA) program, which was developed by Alexandra Leff, CEI’s executive director of arts education. Over the next four years, ETA was implemented in grades 3-5 self-contained classrooms in 24 NYC District 75 schools, a district that exclusively serves students with disabilities. Through ETA, students engaged in four arts-integrated residencies annually, including one visual arts/math, one music/math, one visual arts/literacy, and one music/literacy. The units, which were implemented by CEI teaching artists, included paired projects designed to teach the same academic skills, one through music and the other through visual art. Additionally, participating classroom teachers engaged in ongoing professional learning activities to learn about ways they could support and extend the arts-integrated learning for their students.
ETA was highly successful (see below for a summary of outcomes for the program), leading to a second round of funding from USED—this time to implement the Meridian program for students in grades K-5. Meridian kept the same core elements of ETA, working solely with teachers of students with disabilities, but expanded the work to not only include schools in NYC’s District 75 but also those in Baltimore, MD; Bridgeport, CT; Rochester, NY; and San Juan, Puerto Rico. Additionally, instead of CEI teaching artists implementing the program, classroom teachers were trained to conducted the implementation under the close guidance of the teaching artists and teacher leaders, who were former teachers in the program. In order to implement with fidelity, classroom teachers participated in a series of workshops and were provided with comprehensive curriculum materials, including maps, lesson plans, slide decks, project resource guides, and project modeling videos. Moreover, they engaged in ongoing professional learning communities (PLCs) facilitated by teacher leaders and supported by CEI teaching artists, allowing implementing teachers to share successes, challenges, and their students’ progress with their peer teachers.
Building on the success of ETA and Meridian, CEI was awarded its most recent grant, MeridianUSA, in 2025. This five-year program is underway and continues to expand the model into additional states, including Texas and Florida. Additionally, MeridianUSA, which focuses on grades 6-8, hones its focus on arts-integration with literacy through social studies, centering its work on history and American artists.
The Three Pillars of the Core Program
While over the years the various funded programs have varied with regard to some aspects of implementation (such as geography, classroom teacher role, and content focus, among others), the core program has remained the same, as guided by the following three pillars:
- Value of an arts-integrated approach. The core program rests on research that indicates that students receive, learn, and understand information and concepts in different ways through their senses. Therefore, students are provided with alternatives to traditional ways of teaching literacy and math by using visual art and music as instructional strategies.
- Teaching the same content through two art modalities. Students learn the same exact academic content in two ways through two art forms. As a result, the possibilities to engage students in academic learning in different ways through the arts are increased.
- Using a Highly Differentiated Approach. The curriculum for each project includes six versions that address a wide range of students’ learning levels by challenging every student at his or her individual level. By selecting the appropriate project versions for their students, teachers easily differentiate instruction at every step of a project to meet each student’s needs.
Key Findings from the First Two Rounds of Grants
Evaluation data for both ETA and Meridian have shown strong outcomes for both participating teachers and students. Specifically, Metis has found the following to date:
Classroom Teacher Outcomes
Across both the ETA and Meridian projects, classroom teachers reported increases in their knowledge, confidence, and plans to use arts-integrated instruction in the future. Notably, the outcomes for Meridian were even stronger than for ETA. The tables below show classroom teacher survey results across four years of ETA and four years of Meridian.
Student Outcomes
Based on pre- and post-assessments administered by classroom teachers, participating students demonstrated statistically significant improvements over the course of both the ETA and Meridian programs. Specifically, statistically significant increases were found in students’:
- Visual Arts Skills, such as cutting, pasting, tracing, and discussing artwork;
- Music Skills, such as identifying rhythm, dynamics, and pitch, as well as behaving appropriately as a performer and audience member; and
- Social-Emotional Learning Skills, such as self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and decision-making.
Student outcome data for the Meridian program are shown in Figure 3:
How Metis Has Supported the Program Expansion
Metis has valued the opportunity to work with CEI since the inception of its first federal arts grant. Over the years, our work has supported the organization’s arts program implementation and subsequent expansion in the following ways:
- Supporting the development of the three winning USED arts education grants;
- Conducting annual evaluations to examine progress toward the grants’ goals and objectives;
- Gathering perception data from participating teachers and teaching artists regarding the successes and challenges of the program;
- Partnering with program staff to discuss program changes based on the evaluation results;
- Assisting in the definition of core program elements in order to allow for clear definitions of aspects of the program that can and cannot be customized with expansion; and
- Disseminating the findings both locally and nationally through conference presentations in order to increase awareness of the program.
Metis’s work with CEI sits at the intersection of two focus areas we care deeply about: inclusive arts instruction and rigorous evaluation. Explore our Arts Education & Engagement work or learn more about our program evaluation services to see how we support programs like this one.