An Evaluation of the Right Brain Initiative, Arts Education Research and Program Development
Team: Dennie Palmer Wolf
The Right Brain Initiative is a program of the Portland-based Regional Arts and Creativity Council (RACC) designed to close the “imagination gap” in education: the distance between traditional instruction and instruction that emphasizes critical and creative thought. In 2009, the RACC asked WolfBrown to evaluate the impacts of the Right Brain Initiative on teacher behaviors and student learning. Our findings revealed that teachers reported using the Initiative’s suggested strategies and techniques on a regular basis to enliven their classroom instruction, and that students attending a school participating in the Initiative earned significantly higher scores on their state proficiency exams. Perhaps most interesting, was that these differences became more pronounced as schools became more deeply involved in the Initiative.
Read the Initative’s 2009 Progress Report here.
And see more of their reports here.