By Del Stover
12/16/03 -- Until 10 days ago, young artists, musicians, and athletes in Yonkers, N.Y., did not have much reason to look forward to 2004. School officials were thinking a $20 million budget deficit would force the elimination of most music and arts instruction, interscholastic sports, and extracurricular activities.
State and municipal officials finally stepped forward Dec. 5 with additional funds to save these popular programs. So the budget drama in Yonkers appears to have a happy ending.
But the news isn't so promising elsewhere in the nation. Budget shortfalls -- coupled with the No Child Left Behind Act's (NCLB) focus on such core subjects as reading, writing, math, and science -- is forcing many school officials to make tough choices about the resources and time they devote to art, music, foreign languages, and other non-core programs.
It's unclear just how serious the problem is. Students are still drawing with crayons and paints in most elementary schools, and high school bands are still marching. Football and basketball programs also are in no danger of disappearing from the landscape.
But anecdotal evidence has some educators worried that, with schools under the gun to boost students' basic skills, the arts and other programs might be losing out when resources are limited. Schools are trimming the ranks of art and music teachers. Some schools have eliminated track and wrestling from their athletic programs. Others have reversed efforts to expand foreign language instruction in the lower grades.
Wake-up call
The danger, warns a report from the National Association of State Boards of Education, is that the arts and other programming "have often been marginalized and are increasingly at risk of being lost as part of the core curriculum."
"This is a good time for a wake-up call," says Lori Meyer, author of the report, The Complete Curriculum: Ensuring a Place for the Arts and Foreign Languages in America's Schools. "We're starting to hear a lot of anecdotal evidence that [cuts] are happening. Let's make sure this doesn't get out of hand."
For some school systems, however, cutting these programs is a matter of necessity.
The Carlsbad, Calif., school system, for example, eliminated funding for its elementary school music program and scaled back high school athletics and co-curricular activities because of a budget shortfall. Today, a limited music program is available only because of community fund-raising efforts.
The cuts were unavoidable because reductions in state aid were "just too huge" to ignore, says Superintendent Cheryl Ernst. Something had to go, and "we needed to support our technology program."
The past decade has seen an expansion of foreign language instruction across the nation, particularly in elementary schools. But cuts are being reported in this area, too. In Oklahoma, where the state mandates foreign language instruction in grades 4-8, only 17 percent of schools provide such instruction, down from 42 percent a few years ago.
Some communities are opposing major cuts in programming. In Memphis, where school officials needed to cut $32 million from the budget, there was talk this summer of eliminating a program that provides Spanish, French, or Chinese instruction in 73 of the city's 110 elementary schools. The proposal died after local citizens rose up in protest.
Community support
In Baltimore, where school officials are proud of efforts to expand instrumental music instruction to 54 new schools in recent years, Cassandra W. Jones, chief academic officer for the school system, says the arts have not been disproportionately affected by budget cutbacks. Officials have gone out of their way not to cut any programs in the classroom.
"We're not out of the woods yet," she says. "but we've added positions in the fine arts and we've expanded our [corporate] partnerships to strengthen our programs. It's seen us maintain a solid fine arts program."
Such community support, along with educators' recognition of the value of a rich learning experience, has helped protect art, music, and other programs despite budgetary pressures, says Mike Blakeslee, deputy executive director of the National Association for Music Education. Dramatic cuts and wholesale elimination of programming are rare.
But a more commonplace -- and worrisome -- trend, he says, is where school systems have made modest programming cuts year after year in response to tight budgets. In time, there is a steady erosion of instructional opportunities for students.
"What's happening is there are a lot of situations where the number of class offerings are cut, staffs are cut . . . a lot of small cuts are made that nevertheless have an impact," Blakeslee says.
The phenomenon is being seen in schools across the nation. In Milwaukee, for example, school governance councils were forced to set budget priorities in the face of a $48 million deficit. Once each school's budgets were tallied, the school system lost the equivalent of 45 teachers in art, music, and physical education -- a reduction of nearly 9 percent.
Teachers and principals at each school did their best to shield their programming, says Michelle Nate, chief financial and operations officer for the Milwaukee schools. But they had to look at their standards and the mandates of NCLB. "They simply needed to put resources in places where they would make test scores go up," she says.
Basic skills
And NCLB is definitely on the minds of educators concerned about what's happening with the arts and other programming.
Although state and federal rules clearly highlight the important role of the arts and foreign languages in the core curriculum, some educators worry that local school officials are much more concerned about putting money into students' basic skills and preparing for tests that judge their schools' performance.
That might well prove to be a major unintended consequence of NCLB, Meyer says. And school officials need to recognize the potential harm to students' learning experiences if they fail to ensure a well-rounded school program.
"It's really important that we don't narrow the curriculum down to a few subjects," she says, "because in the long run, we're not going to do kids any good if we don't give them a complete education."