Erin Gough

One of the wonderful things about the annual Americans for the Arts’ Annual Convention is that the discussions held there reverberate beyond the days of the conference and beyond the people who were able to participate in person. As someone who was unable to attend, I was so pleased to be able read about, and dig into, some of the dialogues that were held last month in Nashville.

My interest was piqued when I read Devon Smith’s piece on the fate of failing arts organizations. She dives into a debate session held at convention on the controversial but essential argument that as an arts community, we too often distribute scare resources to keep struggling organizations on life-support when it may be more beneficial for the arts ecosystem as a whole to let them die gracefully.

In her thorough exploration about what this could mean for audience access, artist opportunity, and administrative pride and humility, she has a hard time naming any one arts organization she considers to be considered “Too Big to Fail.” This may be the case for individual arts organizations, or even arts education organizations, but I argue that the availability of systemic, standards-based arts education curricula in schools is absolutely the type of enterprise that should be deemed “Too Big to Fail.” When faced with the overwhelming evidence that students who have quality arts education experiences in the classroom are better prepared for school and life compared to students who were denied these opportunities, how can we claim otherwise?

Obviously, there is a ton of good being done through arts education opportunities created by community organizations or teaching artists, but it is access to arts education opportunities that are standards-based, sequential, and of high quality in every school that benefits all students’ futures. These opportunities should not come exclusively from a tapestry of community organizations willing to “pick up the slack” for state legislatures and school boards who aren’t willing to make resources for the arts a priority for every student.

In Smith’s discussion about struggling organizations and those we should allow to fail, she speaks about the difficulties of evaluating failures and successes to determine which organizations might best deserve community resources. However, the arts education world, through political necessity, is already well-versed in the world of evaluations that can prove value and show areas for improvement. For programs within schools, evaluations, when done properly can be valuable tools for teachers and students by uncovering what is working well, discovering areas for improvement, and creating opportunities to replicate learnings across districts and communities.

Smith opens up opportunities for arts education advocates to showcase how far ahead they may be of other areas of the arts when she claims: “For those organizations that are on the brink of failure, we should consider hiring turnaround strategists to evaluate them. These people don’t exist in the arts that I know of.”

Anyone who has been peripherally involved in education policy or arts education in the past few years knows that the White House has been doing exactly that. With the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities Turnaround: Arts Initiative, investments are made in various schools to see exactly what works, why, and how it can be replicated in arts education programs across the country. These programs provide valuable insight and concrete evidence that investment in arts education opportunities create intrinsic and external benefits for students, and the school communities involved in the programs as a whole.

In these difficult financial times when we too often watch resources get cut from state school district budgets, we need to be careful not to fall into the trap of letting arts education be provided for America’s students primarily piece-meal by organizations that may be struggling themselves. Rather, we need to create a culture where arts organizations are available to help to support already-robust programs in schools that already see the arts as a priority for all of their students. The equity of opportunity available to our students is exactly the type of endeavor that should be deemed “Too Big to Fail.”