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KRIS Pinot Grigio “Art of Education” program returns
All across the country, students are back in school and this month, and Americans for the Arts and KRIS Wine are teaming up again to support arts education. The arts can positively impact the entire school culture—especially student motivation, attitudes, and attendance— and research further demonstrates the myriad benefits of an education in the arts. Recognizing these facts, Americans for the Arts and KRIS Wine are proud to announce the launch of the sixth annual “Art of Education” contest. Through this program, KRIS will award 16 winning schools a total of $25,000 in grants to support their arts programs.
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Arts Education is Essential to Cultivating the Creative Economy
Creative Many is headquartered in TechTown, Detroit’s self-styled “business innovation hub.” Our office in Michigan’s capital city is co-located with The Runway, an incubator helping startup fashion designers produce and market their collections. Both TechTown and The Runway are emblematic of the exploding creative sector in Michigan.
According to the Creative State Michigan 2014: Creative Industries Report, in FY 2011, the creative sector accounted for over $3.6 billion in wages to 74,049 employees in more than 9,700 businesses in the Great Lakes State. This accounts for nearly 3 percent of Michigan’s employment totals, more than 3 percent of total wages and 4.6 percent of total state businesses in leading core industries such as advertising, publishing and printing industry, design, film/media and broadcasting and architecture.
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Words... Words... Wonderful Words
To me, words are quite wonderful. Some are even paintings in the sense that you look at the words and get an immediate visual. So the sadness and unintended consequences conveyed by the words "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) are quite visceral to me. Initiating a movement away from the negative ramifications of NCLB on student achievement, Congress is now transforming this legislation, which had caused an emphasis on testing and an imperative to teach to the test. This, in turn, lessened time for process-oriented subjects like the arts. Happily, the legislation is well on its way to transforming NCLB into the inspirational "Every Child Achieves" Act, which focuses on a more holistic approach to a comprehensive education for all students. To me, that holds the promise of meaningful change in our schools and positive academic outcomes for students.
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Life without the U.S. Department of Education!
Just imagine how our lives in the arts would really be impacted if we didn’t have a U.S Department of Education (USDOE). This does not necessarily mean we would not have an ESEA, as the ESEA predates the U.S Department of Education (1965 and 1980 respectively), but they are fundamentally linked. So consider, if the USDOE was dissolved, how would that impact the reauthorization of the ESEA, and the arts in your locale?
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Every Child Achieves: It’s Time for the Second Act
Anyone who has ever watched a play or a musical knows that there are two acts. This summer, legislation moved forward to transform the current Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) for the first time in over 14 years. The storyline from the first act has been filled with twists and turns with the arts seemingly being a cautionary tale in its wake. So, what can we expect in the second?
Setting the Scene
We opened our story in 1965 with the groundbreaking Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). This original law was meant to provide more equity to schools across the country. In 2002, we saw the revamp known as No Child Left Behind enter the scene with an “era of accountability” at its core. Testing - lots of testing - became the new normal. Schools were required to issue testing in reading and math so that we could get a measurement of their success or failure. And ever since, the law has received nothing more than patches along the way.
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How do we get the arts to young people?
The essential question that needs to be asked as Congress moves to complete the first substantive reauthorization of federal education legislation since 2001 is different than the one we may instinctively pose. It always seems that simplest truths are the most powerful and, in this case, the one thing that binds everyone reading this, is this: We believe in the arts as a powerful way to enhance the lives of young people. Young people need the arts.
With that simple seed, our guiding question in looking at federal legislation needs embrace that fundamental idea. When we look at the reauthorization of the ESEA, we need to broaden the question beyond ‘How do we get arts into schools?’ to ‘How do we get the arts to young people?’
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From ESEA to CPS: Arts are at the Core
It has been 20 years since Americans for the Arts and others worked diligently to ensure that the arts were included as core subjects in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). As we celebrate Arts in Education Week in Chicago, I am reminded of how important the arts’ inclusion in ESEA truly is to not only our schools but to our community partners.
For more than 30 years, Chicago’s arts and culture community filled educational gaps, encouraged youth participation in the arts, and worked with CPS to incorporate the arts where it could given budgetary and instructional time constraints. My arts education for example, came largely from a gifted program offered by two community partners; the Art Institute of Chicago and Lyric Opera of Chicago.
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ESEA THOUGHTS: The Law of Unintended Consequences
I became aware of the recent flurry of activity around the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) almost accidentally; the acronym ESEA was hardly familiar when I first heard it. I was at a California Arts Council meeting, our discussion in full view of the public, and the tape was rolling for posterity. I had been riffing on the entire NCLB experience as it had affected arts education, especially the past nine years (!!) of non-authorized, non-replaced limbo, when a staff member mentioned optimism about the upcoming Senate vote on the new bill, the Every Child Can Achieve Act. Later it passed by an 81-17 margin and now we await a House vote and most likely a bill on President Obama’s desk this fall.
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A Pivotal Moment for Arts Education
Here in New York City, and around the nation, this is a pivotal moment for arts education.
Fifteen years after the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, which many credit with a pronounced narrowing of the curriculum in public schools across the country, an earnest effort to reduce the most onerous mandates of the law is underway.
The conversation around school accountability is beginning to shift from a test-based model to a more holistic view of what we expect of our public schools. And advocates are making the case for a more robust role for arts education in the debate over reauthorization of NCLB.
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Reauthorization of ESEA and the National Core Arts Standards
How does the Reauthorization of ESEA connect to the 2014 National Core Arts Standards?
The Senate “Every Child Achieves Act” version of ESEA contains language which is supportive of the intent and the content of the National Core Arts Standards.
1. The Senate bill includes a listing of core academic subjects which funding in the bill can support, including Title I, the largest allocation of education funding at the federal level. The arts and music are listed as core academic subjects in the Senate version of the bill, allowing federal funds to support learning in all the arts (see page 549).
2. The Senate bill includes language which is supportive of states creating rigorous academic content standards in all (core) academic subjects, including the arts and music. The National Core Arts Standards were written with that intent in mind – that states would utilize the new national, voluntary arts education standards to create standards of their own.
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Title I and the Arts – how does reauthorization impact this relationship?
Can Title I funds be used to support arts education?
Yes - Title I funds have had the ability to support supplemental arts education programs in our nation’s public schools since the current bill (No Child Left Behind) became law in 2002. The arts are listed as a core academic subject in Title IX of the law, and Title I supports this by requesting schools to create research-based Title I programs linked to quality standards in core academic subjects.
