Americans for the Arts

My last blog “The Power of Place: The Importance of Dedicated 3^rd Spaces for Youth to Engage in the Arts” talked about the importance of creating dedicated 3^rd spaces in the community for youth to engage in the arts. I talked about our successes of creating the ARTS Center in National City – a low income, blighted community with high rates of violent crime, poverty, and unemployment. The ARTS Center is a colorful, vibrant, and safe oasis within the community for youth to come after-school and on weekends to be healed, inspired, and empowered through the arts. 

One of my favorite Saturday Night Live characters has always been the upright Church Lady, played by Dana Carvey. An opinionated citizen of the moral majority, she always got her way with guests on her “church chat” show, frequently putting them and the audience in their place with the catch phrase “Isn’t that (or he/she) special.” And in those moments it was special and usually very funny.

There are lots of things that are still special—the inexplicable rise of the Mets, my cat’s ability to sleep on his back, and the enduring appeal of the Muppets, for instance. This week we’re celebrating National Arts in Education Week. That’s special too. But those who teach it are not special, at least not to a vast number of school leadership who continue to see arts educators as extras or, ironically, specials or specialists. 

Does business have any skin in the arts education game? And if they do, can we rally business support to help ensure that all students have access to arts education? After all, business has been in the forefront of other social change movements, such as LGBT marriage rights.  Besides business, can we also make a stronger justification for the role of the arts in strengthening our workforce to educators, policy makers, and governments? 

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.” As we reflect on the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. this week, I was reminded of this one of many, but not often cited, quotes by Dr. King.

Recently, the Arts Education Advisory Council of Americans for the Arts met for its midwinter meeting in Los Angeles. We spent much of our time discussing equity and the need for access to the arts for all students, pre-K through high school. We took a tour of the Colburn School, an outstanding music conservatory with numerous community engagement programs. The mission of the Colburn School is to admit students who have tremendous artistic promise and provide them with full tuition, including room and board, so that they can focus solely on their musical careers.

As a high school student, the guideline I was given to write this blog post, “operationalizing access and equity in arts education,” sounds inaccessible within itself. I won’t lie, I had to look up what equity means (it means fairness). In my life, access to arts education is something I rarely think of as an idea; it’s something I’m accustomed to. I’ve had it for so long that I often forget that I fought for it.

O.David Dietz

In an ARTSblog post by Erin Gough on July 23, 2013, teachers are encouraged to be champions for the arts in ways that are often not a part of college preparatory curriculum. Erin notes that “too often, teachers believe that as long as their students leave their class with a little bit of technical skills and a lot of inspiration, they've done all they can to prove their value.” She then continues to connect the role of student achievement in the arts, in the form of student performances, plays, musicals and visual art presentations, to the role of teachers as advocates for student achievement in the arena of public policy makers.As a retired music educator (one of Erin’s teachers, I’m proud to say!) I would concur that my experience with arts teachers would support the premise that these teachers shy away from the very people and decision-making opportunities that ultimately affect both their art and their ability to be employed. Advocacy for advocacy’s sake is not the realm in which these teachers thrive and provide leadership. However, arts teachers do thrive and provide leadership in a realm that is important to public policy makers at all levels: student achievement.

Current trends in educator effectiveness systems require that evidence of student achievement be attributed to teacher evaluation, often in equal proportion with teacher observation. Arts teachers have long known that student achievement is the primary focus of instruction, and they have provided evidences of that achievement in the ways that Erin describes: student performances, plays, musicals and visual art presentations. However, student achievement must now be examined from the perspective of each individual student that a teacher instructs, and not from the conglomerate success achieved by an art show or a music/theatre/dance performance.