Evaluating Career Education in the Arts. The Center for Career Education in the Arts. Providence, Rhode Island.

Policy Studies in Education (a department of the Educational Research Council of America) performed a third-party evaluation of the Career Education in the Arts program for gifted and talented secondary school students. The study focused primarily on a pretest and posttest of twenty-five students' career awareness and attitudes. Eighteen students were female and seven were male. The evaluators also visited the program site twice to discuss objectives and plans, review and revise the questionnaires, and to talk with students. Findings indicated that in both the pretest and posttest, students showed fairly favorable attitudes toward themselves, the arts, and the world of work in the arts. Students showed many positive changes in cognitive items which dealt with knowledge about work in the arts and career decision making. Through site visits and talking with students, it was determined that students' attitudes toward the program were very positive. Through the questionnaire, it was found that slightly over half of the students felt that students who participate in the program could expect to gain enough knowledge to make a final decision about pursuing a career in the arts. The two most pressing needs of the project are (1) rethinking parental involvement in the project, and (2) continuing to develop, revise, and refine the career education component of the program. (LRA)