National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Acting Chairman Joan Shigekawa announced that the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's OrchKids™ program has received a $100,000 National Endowment for the Arts Art Works grant. The grant will support and sustain all initiatives of the OrchKids program including a full symphonic orchestra, choir classes, chamber music coaching, musicianship instruction and academic tutoring. This is the second consecutive year in which OrchKids has achieved the highest NEA Art Works grant in the category of Arts Education.
Under Music Director Marin Alsop's artistic leadership and direction, this year-round program is designed to create social change and nurture promising futures for youth in Baltimore City's neighborhoods. Modeled after Venezuela's El Sistema, the music program that in 30 years has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of children, OrchKids provides music education, instruments and tutoring to Baltimore's neediest youngsters at no cost. Since its start in 2008, the program has grown to more than 750 student participants, and is now in four elementary and one middle school in West and East Baltimore.Students who have been in the OrchKids program for three years or more have demonstrated higher academic achievement and improved test scores (84% of students scored "proficient" or "advanced" on Math assessments, compared to 76% city-wide), improved attendance records for OrchKids (chronic absenteeism is down 52% since OrchKids launched in 2009), and decreased student withdrawals from Baltimore City Public Schools (OrchKids withdrawal rates were 0%, down from 6.9% in 2010).
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