CONCERT CURRICULUM > For Students > For Schools > For Orchestras > For the Community > How it works > Concert > Curriculum > History > Accolades > How to Participate

"An extraordinary year that culminated in an event so spectacular, it brought together families, teachers, and students, and rallied the whole community."

- Thomas Rabone, Principal, Maple Hill Middle School, Castleton, N.Y.

The Concert Curriculum provides schools with access to rich resources, boosts overall student achievement, and enhances the life of the school.

Orchestras and performing arts organizations often exist within close proximity to schools with whom they would love to connect, but lack a means for genuine partnership. The Concert Curriculum provides the means.

With superlative arts-learning, extended collaboration with established artists, and unprecedented participation in high-level music-making, the Concert Curriculum enhances student and school performance in a number of ways.

Critical Links, a collection of 62 arts education studies and interpretive essays, establishes links between learning in the arts and improvements in reading and language development (basic reading skills, literacy, and writing); mathematics; fundamental cognitive skills and capacities; motivations to learn; effective social behavior; and school environment.

Critical Links was published May 16, 2002, by the Arts Education Partnership, a coalition of more than 100 national education, arts, philanthropic, and government organizations, administered by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Education and the National Endowment for the Arts. Read the report >>

While the research in Critical Links finds that learning in the arts benefits disadvantaged students most of all, they are the ones least likely to have access to it. Through unprecedented partnerships between professional-level orchestras and low-resource schools, and unparalleled collaboration with established artists, the Concert Curriculum is able to provide one of the richest arts-learning experiences in the nation to some of its neediest students.

Teachers benefit as well.

Teachers receive professional development and assistance, a powerful and flexible tool chest of materials and methodology, and recognition from the administration, students, and community for their accomplishment.

Learn more about the curriculum >>