The U.S. Department of Education has awarded a grant of more than $1 million to ARTS FIRST Hawai'i to fund arts education and research in Hawai'i schools.

The grant, worth $275,000 a year for four years, will finance research to be conducted in four Hawai'i schools on the effects of arts education on the overall academic experience of students, said Marilyn Cristofori, chief executive officer of the Hawai'i Arts Alliance.

Grant research will be conducted by the College of Education at the University of Hawai'i, said Cristofori. The grant will fund the Arts and Literacy for All project, in which researchers will observe how arts education is integrated into the four participating schools, how teachers change their teaching habits through art and how other academic areas are affected by arts education, she said. The main goal is to develop an arts education curriculum, she said.

"We're hoping to gain further quantitative evidence that art improves all learning," Cristofori said. "Teachers and principals will be able to observe the positive effects of arts, and hopefully they will make an extra effort to include the arts in their curriculum."

Schools eligible for participation in the project have already been notified. Four will be selected from those that choose to apply.

Cristofori said she is "pleased with the high degree of interests from the elementary schools."

Arts and Literacy for All is a project of the Hawai'i Arts Alliance, the state Department of Education, the University of Hawai'i College of Education, the University of Hawai'i College of Arts and Humanities, Hawai'i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts and the Hawai'i Association of Independent Schools.