Kianna Hampton, 10, waits outside for Pedro Reyes to show up. Not necessarily an unusual scene on city streets across the country. But Kianna isn’t waiting for a ride, or a tutor, or something more pernicious in the projects she calls home. Kianna is waiting for art. She’s waiting for her chance to be a film producer, it’s what she does after school.

You see, armed with laptops, Reyes is an Afterschool Resident Artist at Streetside Stories in San Francisco. So he has set up an editing suite for movie-makers in Kianna’s apartment complex, and kids like Kianna can spend those after school hours using art to tell the stories of their lives.

So, rather than falling prey to the housing projects where she lives, Kianna transforms herself into a movie director, and the Westside Court Housing Project becomes a backdrop for her story.

Nonprofits like Streetside Stories serve as a catchall for students like Kianna. Streetside Stories uses art to enrich the learning and lives of students in a way that school just can’t. Because in the high-stakes testing environment of her fourth grade classroom, there is no curriculum like that of Streetside Stories. In fact, there’s very little art in public schools at all anymore.

According to a 2007 study from the Center for Educational Policy, thirty percent of districts with at least one identified school have decreased instruction time for art and music” since the enactment of “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB).”

“Programs like Streetside are not included in public education,” Reyes said. “Schools might have labs for days, but only the good kids who get the good grades get to use them. We end up with the kids who are left behind -- and provide them with one-to-one special attention."

“Many students are not getting the education they deserve and Streetside is reaching out to those schools that are underserved to bring them high quality programs to help them tell the stories of their lives, build literacy skills and get access to the arts that so many young people are not getting these days,” said Linda Johnson, executive director of Streetside.

Why does that matter? Study after study has shown that arts expand children’s learning in both quantitative and qualitative ways. “The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships,” said Elliot Eisner, a professor emeritus of education at Stanford University.

As a case in point, Kianna said that she learned that “telling the truth is the best thing to do instead of lying because lying actually gets you in more trouble” while making her mini-movie, “The Truth Hurts.” ,

Yet empirical evidence does not necessarily show that the arts improve overall academic performance in the 3Rs -- reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic. So art classes are the first to go in the wake of a teacher layoffs and overcrowded classrooms.

An estimated 20,000 teachers, counselors, librarians, nurses, and support staff have been given potential pink slips in California as part of the Governor's proposed plan to cut $4.8 billion from education funding.

In their 2000 study, authors Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland of Project Zero, an arts-education program at Harvard Graduate school of education, found no proof that studying the arts causes academic improvement.

According to their study, “it is implausible to suppose that the arts can be as effective a means of teaching an academic subject as is direct teaching of that subject.”

Instead, Winner and Hetland say “We should make the argument that the arts are good for our children, irrespective of any non-arts benefits that the arts may in some cases have.”

The three statistically significant benefits that Ms. Winner found were unrelated to grades or test scores: listening to music improves spatial-temporal reasoning, the ability to envision and rotate images in the mind; making music in the classroom improves spatial skills in children (3-to-12 years old); and drama (enacting texts) helps to build verbal skills.

On the other side, some educators assert that qualitative gains are measurable too. “A study by James S. Catterall, professor of education at UCLA, found that students who had more involvement in the arts in school and after school scored better on standardized tests,” the New York Times reports.

“Preparation for testing has squeezed a lot of the arts out of the curriculum even though arts have been proven again and again to actually help kids achieve better academically,” Streetside Executive Director Johnson said.

Educators agree that a balanced education requires the study of the arts “to prepare students for success in school, work and life,” according to a 2006 report from the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, a bipartisan assembly of Secretaries of Education, state officials, and business leaders. “The best employers the world over will be looking for the most competent, most creative, and most innovative people on the face of the earth and will be working pay them top dollar for their services,” it says.

Besides just helping to create those competent, creative and innovative individuals, art is also a driving economic engine in most cities.

As for economic activity, “The nonprofit arts industry generates $166.2 billion annually, supports 5.7 million full-time equivalent jobs, and returns $12.6 billion to the federal government in income taxes,” according to Arts & Economic Study III. Given their return-on-investment, activists are urging Congress to increase the budget of the National Endowment of the Arts from $60 million in 2007 to $176 million by 2009.

Students who participate in programs like “Tech Tales” at Streetside Stories have access to technology that prepares them to compete in today’s market. Kianna gained hands-on training in high-end programs like Adobe Photoshop. “I learned how to use the sound effects in movies,” she said.

A resulting surge in confidence inspires initiative, collaboration, and an unyielding commitment to follow through until completion. These life skills prepare students to compete in today’s cutthroat marketplace. After school arts programs like Streetside Stories nourish participants. And improved self-esteem carries over into both the classroom and into the community.

Kianna’s favorite part of the program was showcasing her work in her apartment complex for all her family, friends, and neighbors to see.

Kianna’s movie on truth-telling added to the moral fabric of her community. And that fabric has always been woven one human thread at a time, one story at a time. Programs like Streetside not only help to keep that fabric in tact, they remind us how strong and colorful we all are when we are allowed to shine.