By Ellie Ashford
8/24/04 -- At a time when many school boards are facing increasing pressures to shift scarce resources from arts education to math and reading, there's also a movement among some school districts and education leaders to strengthen arts programs.
"No Child Left Behind and states' economies are having an impact," says Sara Goldhawk, senior project associate for partnership development at the Arts Education Partnership. "We are hearing that time might be taken away from the arts for reading and math. But we don't have hard data that arts budgets are being cut."
Lack of incentives
Sharon Wuorenmaa, arts and humanities specialist for the Jefferson County, Ky., school district, acknowledges "the arts get short shrift when there is limited money and, with NCLB, there's a huge push for reading and math."
An elementary school principal with low reading scores, for example, is more likely to hire a reading teacher rather than a certified art teacher, she says.
A recent report by the Council for Basic Education, Academic Atrophy: The Condition of the Liberal Arts in America's Public Schools, found that schools are spending substantially less time on the arts -- as well as social studies, civics, and foreign languages -- since NCLB was enacted.
The Complete Curriculum, a report issued last year by the National Association of State Boards of Education, expresses concerns about the de-emphasis of arts and foreign languages as an unintended consequence of NCLB. "As educators and policymakers focus on leaving no child behind," it says, "many are wondering whether our nation's schools may inadvertently leave half of the child's education behind."
Jennifer Chowning, arts education coordinator for Americans for the Arts, adds "there is little incentive to offer the arts when it's not tested, especially since arts education is expensive and requires a long-term commitment and special facilities."
In response to such concerns, U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige sent a letter to school superintendents in July underscoring the importance of arts education.
"As I travel the country, I often hear that arts education programs are endangered because of [NCLB]," Paige writes. This message is both "disturbing and just plain wrong," because NCLB includes the arts as a core academic subject and school districts can use Title I and other federal funding to support arts education activities.
"The arts have a significant role in education both for their intrinsic value and for the ways in which they can enhance general academic achievement and improve students' social and emotional development," Paige states.
The secretary also recently hired Doug Herbert, formerly of the National Endowment for the Arts, as a special assistant to serve as an adviser on arts education issues.
Paige's letter "makes the case that many of us have made for years: that schools can improve teaching and learning by using the arts and that schools should therefore use their regular funding to support arts education," states a letter to state and local arts education advocates from Andy Finch, senior director of government affairs at Americans for the Arts.
Yet, he continues, "We all know that NCLB provides a disincentive for schools to invest in the arts unless school officials take the time and trouble to investigate how the arts help them meet their reading and math goals."
The Education Department's Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination program is designed to overcome that obstacle, he adds, but the department did not request funding for it.
NSBA is working with Americans for the Arts on a survey of National Affiliate school districts on arts education and a toolkit for school board members to help them become better advocates for the arts in their communities.
Strong policies needed
In light of the pressures to de-emphasize the arts, it takes strong state or local policies for school districts to push for comprehensive arts education programs.
Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who took over as chair of the Education Commission of the States in July, says his top priority at ECS is "integrating the arts into the K-12 curriculum as a way to improve student achievement and train students for the knowledge-based work force."
"The governor believes an education that doesn't include the arts isn't a complete education," says spokesperson Jim Harris. "Music is particularly important because studies have shown that students who learn music do better on math and other academic subjects."
Denver's arts education programs got a boost last year, when voters passed a $20 million property tax increase that included $6.5 million for elementary school arts programs.
The new money will allow Denver to hire 97 new art and music teachers -- an average of one per elementary school -- along with supplies and funds to start new programs, says district spokesperson Tanya Caughey.
The district's goal is to provide elementary students with a standards-driven level of arts awareness and experiences in visual arts, vocal music, instrumental music, drama, and dance.
"Art should be used as a way to get at content, not as icing on the cake, but part of the cake," says Peter Sherman, principal of Park Hill Elementary School, which has had to rely heavily on community resources to supplement its arts programs.
In California, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission worked with 82 school districts and other organizations to develop a vision for arts education and a series of strategies to accomplish its goals.
The group's report, Arts for All, recommends that the arts should be part of the core curriculum of every K-12 student. It says sequential instruction in multiple arts disciplines should be scheduled into the school day and included in the budget of every school district in the county.
The Pasadena Unified School District, one of five districts chosen by Los Angeles County to come up with an exemplary arts education program, worked with a group of community members, teachers, parents, administrators, and representatives of arts organizations to develop a plan. In June, the school board approved a comprehensive plan to strengthen arts education and boost funding to 5 percent of the district's budget in 10 years.
"There is a lot of support for the arts in this district and in the community," says Deputy Superintendent Kathleen Duba. Pasadena has many active arts groups, and the city has also approved a cultural plan for the community that includes arts education, she says, so "there is a real synergy there."
With so many movie and music companies based in Southern California, she says, the arts are extremely important to the local economy. In fact, the school district is using money generated from allowing schools to serve as locations in movies and videos to support the arts education effort.
Focusing on arts education while the district must devote resources to complying with NCLB is a "struggle," Duba says, but "we feel the arts is part of the core curriculum. We want to be sure every single child has access to the arts."
Private funding sources
In districts where tight budgets threaten arts programs, school leaders have sought private funding.
In New York City, the nonprofit Center for Arts Education has provided more than $28 million to the city's public schools since it was founded in 1996 with support from the Annenberg Foundation.
In addition, arts education is one of the key priorities of the Fund for Public Schools, a nonprofit fund-raising organization affiliated with the New York City school system. Last year, the fund helped organize the AOL Concert for the Schools, which raised more than $1 million for music education.
On a much smaller scale, in Louisville, Ky., the Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership, a component of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, a statewide advocacy organization, has trained 12 parents to help start art enrichment projects in Jefferson County schools.
"Parents can do things teachers can't do, such as provide supplies and arrange for performances," says Kerry Zack, manager of the institute.
The Catoosa County, Ga., school district, which has a limited arts budget, has gotten help from Allied Arts, a group based in nearby Chattanooga, Tenn., to subsidize the cost of field trips for lower-income students to concerts and museums in Chattanooga, reports Superintendent Beth Kellerhals.
In addition, she notes, Larry Burch, the head art instructor at Ringgold High School, and his students have developed "art boxes" for elementary school teachers. The boxes are loaded with information on the geography and history of a particular cultural area, along enough materials for every student in a class to make at least one art project related to that area.
Benefits of arts
"We know that when children have music and art in their lives, they perform better academically," says Stephen Gonzalez, manager of the Denver school district's music program. "Arts education teaches kids to express themselves creatively and be more tolerant and open. It promotes individuality and bolsters self-confidence in addition to improving overall academic performance."
Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development, a compendium of studies published by the Arts Education Partnership in 2002, suggests that "the interrelationships between learning in certain forms of music instruction and the development of cognitive skills, such as spatial reasoning, appear incontrovertible."
Other reports cite additional benefits: The arts can motivate youths who are disengaged from school, connect students to themselves and one another, and connect learning experiences to the world of real work.
And Arkansas Gov. Huckabee notes that the arts give children a long-term benefit. He says none of his former high school football teammates are still playing the sport, but youths who learn to paint or play an instrument can do it for the rest of their lives.