Author: The Creative Advantage

In March 2020, schools across the nation closed their doors in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This report examines the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years, and captures the ways The Creative Advantage community of teachers and teaching artists persisted, problem-solved, and innovated to keep arts partnerships afloat despite unprecedented challenges.  

The second in a two-part series, this report gives in-depth context and evidence for arts education strategies that engage young people of color, a significant number of whom are experiencing housing instability.

The first in a two-part series, this report provides foundational research on best practices for Creative Youth Development (CYD) and arts-based learning with unstably housed and homeless youth populations, and other key aspects of project implementation.

During Year 5, the Central Arts Pathway was in its first-year post-implementation, while the South-Southwest Arts Pathway was entering into its fourth and final year of implementation. Additionally, the Southeast Arts Region was engaging in its regional planning. A unique aspect of The Creative Advantage continued to be the importance of empowering each school, pathway, and region to structure the initiative in a way that best met the community’s needs and resources.

The national framework known as creative youth development takes a holistic, asset-based, and artistically rigorous approach to helping young people thrive and actualize their whole selves. Informed by these practices and their vision, this report takes as a starting point that arts and culture matter in the lives of youth for developing other skills and traits.

This Year 4 evaluation focuses on several desired outcomes of The Creative Advantage during the 2016-17 school year, including increasing access to high-quality arts classes, increasing equity across the district, impacting student learning, and supporting teachers in integrating the arts by providing focused professional development opportunities.

The partnership between Seattle Public Schools and the mayor’s
office for arts education began more than a decade ago. Since
that time, our joint efforts have evolved into The Creative Advantage,
a citywide initiative to establish equitable access to arts education
for every student in Seattle Public Schools.

This evaluation focused on three main components of the Creative Advantage for the 2015-16 school year: regional and school arts planning, the impact of the Creative Advantage on student learning, and practice of 21st Century skills and professional development for SPS teachers and teaching artists.