Federal grant to help teach writing Program aims to reach all 3rd-, 4th-graders in CMS within 5 years
STEVE LYTTLE
slyttle@charlotteobserver.com

A local effort to use the arts to improve elementary students' ability to write got a $252,000 boost from the federal government.

Deborah Cooper, executive director of ArtsTeach, said her nonprofit organization recently received the grant from the U.S. Department of Education to fund the ArtStart program.

ArtStart is an effort to use teaching artists and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools arts teachers to integrate the arts into the regular writing curriculum. The program is aimed at reaching all CMS students in the third and fourth grades within five years.

Cooper's organization, based at Spirit Square in Charlotte, launched ArtStart a year ago and has held teacher workshops the past two summers. Among other things, teachers learned how to use drama to spur more descriptive writing.

Those teachers will post lesson plans, beginning later this month, at www.artsteach.org, for other teachers to use.

"ArtStart is working," Cooper said. "We already are seeing improvements in students' test scores at schools where the program is under way."

She pointed to University Park Elementary, where reading scores improved considerably last year, with 93 percent of students scoring at or above grade level on the end-of-grade reading test -- compared to 82 percent a year earlier.

ArtStart is being used this year at 21 of the 30 CMS elementary schools identified as having a large number of at-risk students.

ArtStart currently serves about 4,400 fourth-graders. Cooper said she wants to expand it to more than 21,000 students in third and fourth grades.

"This is a very exciting moment for our organization," said Cooper, who plans to use the grant to expand the program to all third- and fourth-graders, host a special program for principals, and expand teacher training.