Defining Quality: Strategic Assessment Methods for Arts Partnerships in Education

To counteract fundamental educational reforms and shifts in national economic policy that severely reduced the availability of arts education, public schools have since the late 1980s increasingly relied on external providers, to supplement or complement their arts programming. This thesis will discuss Chicago's and Boston's arts education plans that outline methods for further expanding arts education in schools through partnerships. Integral to activating the plans are recently established external supporting agencies that work in direct collaboration with the public school districts to implement collaboration strategies: EdVestors in Boston, and Ingenuity Incorporated in Chicago. My thesis research will suggest qualitative and quantitative strategies for analytically assessing the quality of partnerships through a variety of proposed filters, with a special focus on directly addressing CPS goals for capacity building in the arts.