General Information

The Arts Education Partnership works with the Ford Foundation and nine community-based collaboratives around the nation in the Ford Foundation Integrating The Arts And Education Reform (Arts Ed) Initiative. The Foundation created the Initiative in 2004 to achieve two interrelated goals:

• Significantly improve outcomes and opportunities for large numbers of urban public school students by fostering integrated arts education practices across school systems
• Help build the public understanding that arts education is, and must be, an essential part of any high quality public school education

AEP’s primary roles include the provision of site-specific and initiative-wide technical assistance and the coordination of the overall initiative. AEP, the Ford Foundation, and the other partner organizations – Douglas Gould and Company and OMG Center for Collaborative Learning – constitute the Ford Arts Ed Management Team.

KeepArtsInSchools.org is a website maintained by Douglas Gould and Company. It has additional information on each site, research and press information on the initiative and its mission.

The Nine Ford Sites

• ACOE Alliance for Arts Learning Leadership
• Arts Education Initiative, California
• Arts for Academic Achievement, Minneapolis, MN
• The Ask for More Arts Collaborative, Jackson, MS
• Arts Every Day
• Big Thought, Dallas, TX
• Cleveland Integrated Arts Collaborative
• DC Arts and Humanities Education Collaborative
• Interchange, St. Louis, MO

Urban Arts Education Initiatives Across the Country

The Ford Arts Ed Initiative is one of several programs around the country that seeks to improve access to high-quality arts education for students in urban school districts. Similar initiatives are sponsored by the Wallace Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Grable Foundation, and the Heinz Endowments. These efforts represent an understanding that arts education possesses unique power to motivate children, reanimate teaching, and transform schools into centers of imagination.

Following is a list of the sites funded under these initiatives.

• Boston Public Schools Arts Expansion Initiative
• Los Angeles County Arts Commission
• Los Angeles Unified School District
• Greater Philadelphia Arts for Youth Initiative
• Pittsburgh, PA
• Santa Clara County Office of Education
• Arts Education Partnership Initiative, Seattle, WA

Project Objectives

Objective 1: Build the capacity of the grantee sites of the Ford Arts Ed Initiative to develop and effectively use new knowledge generated through evaluation, assessment, and research.

Objective 2: Develop a sustainable network to help the grantee sites foster lasting impact on school improvement and student achievement in urban school districts.

Objective 3: Expand the impact of the Initiative by disseminating knowledge that helps to inform the broader education reform movement, particularly as it applies to improving student outcomes in urban areas.