Milwaukie Academy of the Arts
College preparation for students who think like artists.
Founded in 2005 the Milwaukie Academy of the Arts is a free public charter school embedded within Milwaukie High School. The Charter was formed to sustain a high quality art presence on the Milwaukie campus. In addition to a broad spectrum of arts courses, including visual and performing arts, all core classes of social studies, language arts, science and math are taught using the arts to enhance student learning. The results speak for themselves. The State of Oregon has consistently ranked MAA as “Outstanding” and MAA’s students consistently meet or exceed Oregon State benchmarks. MAA students and parents report high levels of satisfaction with their school experience and MAA’s caring and dedicated teachers.
Studies also show that there is something about the arts that engage young minds. Youth who consistently participate in comprehensive, sequential, and rigorous arts programs are: -
4 times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement -
3 times more likely to be elected to class office within their schools -
4 times more likely to participate in a math and science fair -
3 times more likely to win an award for school attendance -
4 times more likely to win an award for writing an essay or poem*
MAA curriculum focuses on preparing students for college and for the current job market. Creative skills, often called “right brain” skills, are now the most needed for the jobs of today. The arts teach youth to make good judgments about qualitative relationships and complex forms of problem solving. Learning in the arts also requires the ability and willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds. Research shows that these skills are the most crucial, and most sought after by employers, in a new age of innovation and globalization.
Contact us to learn more about enrollment, to arrange a tour or talk with a school administrator or parent. Tim Taylor, Director 503-353-5843 taylorti@nclack.k12.or.us
http://www.nclack.k12.or.us/maa
* Living the Arts through Language + Learning: A Report on Community-based Youth Organizations, Shirley Brice Heath, Stanford University and Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Americans for the Arts Monograph, November 1998.
Online Resources about the Arts, Learning and Education: Americans for the Arts Education Resource Center Arts Education Partnership: What School Leaders Can Do To Increase Arts Education and database of education research materials. The 2008 study from the Center for Arts Education, shows the link between the arts and high school graduation rates. ArtsEd Washington has hundreds of studies regarding the arts and learning. The Center for Arts Education has several Parent Guides. Elliott Eisner, a Professor of Education at Stanford University, has identified 10 lessons which are clarified through the study of art in schools. ***** 1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail. 2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer. 3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world. 4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem-solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds. 5. The arts make vivid the fact that words do not, in their literal form or number, exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition. 6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties. 7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real. 8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job. 9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling. 10. The arts’ position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important. | 
