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Education Dive
As budget cuts loom, sustaining the arts is among K-12 challenges
Lauren Barack
Sept. 2, 2020
Dive Brief:
Ingenuity, which examines arts education in Chicago Public Schools,
found a 97% increase in regular access to arts education over seven
years as of the 2018-19 school year, the group wrote in its annual
progress report. Still, 35% of students, predominantly those who are
Black and also economically disadvantaged, remain “without consistent
access to high-quality arts education,” according to the findings.
The number of minutes elementary school students had of arts
instruction also dropped from 70% in 2017-18 to 68% for 2018-19. So too
the breadth and depth of arts instruction in high schools declined,
from 64% in 2017-18 to just 60% for 2018-19. Furthermore, 81% of
schools reported they had a dedicated arts budget for students for the
2018-19 school year — a significant drop from the 89% for the 2017-18
school year.
Art teachers, too, had less support year-to-year, with 81% of schools
reporting resources available for the 2017-18 year, but only 71%
reporting the same for the 2018-19 school year. These findings led
Ingenuity to report that, in Chicago Public Schools, “the arts
education gap persists.”
Dive Insight:
The Ingenuity findings were gathered prior to the coronavirus pandemic
disrupting the delivery of arts education for districts nationwide. The
resulting transition to virtual learning moved what has traditionally
been a hands-on experience to a virtual space, and arts curriculum may
additionally face financial constraints, with education funding likely
to be tightened by states facing budget concerns exacerbated by the
pandemic.
While the findings in Chicago Public Schools are mostly positive when
looking at the 2018-19 year as a whole, with 97% of students getting
regular access to arts education over the seven years prior, it’s
unclear that kind of growth is sustainable in light of the budget
concerns ahead. Administrators and educators may want to look into
other resources to protect arts and music programs from budget cuts.
That’s the path the School District of University City took in
Missouri, working with a teen outreach group, Wyman, to try and collect
art supplies to supply K-5 students with materials. And kindergartners
at BIA Charter School in Norcross, Georgia, were even given art
assignments that made use of materials they could find freely at home
and in their own backyards. In Cortez, Colorado, teacher Andrew Campo
turned to the community, asking for musical instrument donations, from
flutes to saxophones, when his budget could not support all of the
students who wanted to join band.
Schools and districts may also want to consider linking arts with other
academic areas unlikely to face cuts to ensure arts education remains
available to students. The shift from STEM to STEAM, which integrates
the arts into science, technology, engineering and mathematics, looks
at the way creative thinking can impact these other disciplines.
At Boston Arts Academy, that means students can explore the arts
through their computer science classes, leading to one project that
examined the link between John Coltrane and quantum physics. English
Language Arts classes too can be linked to the arts, particularly
theater. That’s actually the focus of the Folger Shakespeare Library in
Washington, D.C., which works with English teachers to bring the Bard’s
works into schools and maintains an online site, Forsooth!, stocked
with instruction manuals and more.
Arts educators can tap into these resources and methods to help
supplement the way they bring creative lessons to students and prepare
for potential budget cuts.
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