Every year in late spring, my daughter’s school spends a week rehearsing, dancing and performing for their World Dance Festival. Frankly, I wish dance was part of their year-round curriculum, because aside from the obvious physical benefits, it’s been shown that students who are dancers are not only better students, more confident, but they gain higher test scores. . Coincidentally, that’s one of the biggest motivators in today’s school system, so shouldn’t more schools consider implementing a dance program?

The potential benefits range from physical, emotional, social and academic range. Here are some factual tidbits to chew on (compiled from a National Assembly of State Art Agencies study titled: “Critical Evidence: How ARTS Benefits Student Achievement”):

• In a well-documented national study using a federal database of more than 25,000 middle and high school students, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles found that students with a high involvement in the arts performed better in the arts. standardized achievement tests that students with little participation in the arts. Additionally, high-performing arts-related students also watched fewer hours of television, participated more in community service, and reported less boredom at school.

• In an experimental research study of high school students, those who studied dance scored higher than non-dancers on measures of creative thinking, especially in the categories of fluency, originality, and abstract thinking.

• Dancing can also affect the way juvenile delinquents and other disenfranchised youth feel about themselves. One study showed that when a group of 60 of these teens, ages 13 to 17, participated in jazz and hip hop dance classes twice a week for 10 weeks, they reported significant gains in confidence, tolerance, and persistence related to the dance experience.

• Dance has been used to develop reading readiness in very young children.

• According to the Center for the Development of Fine Arts Educators, higher academic scores, higher self-esteem, stronger social skills, and greater content knowledge can be attributed to students who participate in groups in dance classes.

Dance utilizes the left and right hemispheres of the brain as dancers learn and memorize combinations of movements as they express concepts and emotions, focus and count each beat of the music while inhabiting a different world besides the monotony of rote repetition that school can often be. Spatial awareness, motor coordination, strength, and flexibility also come into play, and the end result is…stronger, more confident human beings who possess greater cognitive abilities.

Isn’t that what education is supposed to be about?