Title: Ten Ways Arts Teachers Can Solidify the Place of the Arts in their School Article

Word Count: about 1500 words

Abstract:

A recent report from the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) warns that the arts are increasingly at risk of being lost as part of the core curriculum in the nation’s schools. As a teacher of the arts, you understand the numerous benefits of providing children with arts education. But others who are making decisions about where to focus limited education resources may not. How can you help to solidify the place of arts education in your school? This article provides ten ideas every arts teacher can use to secure the future of arts education.

Excerpt:

Pablo Picasso once said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” Teachers, schools and parents have tremendous influence on whether children retain their innate artistic spirit as they grow up.

As a teacher of the arts, you understand the numerous benefits of providing children with arts education. But others who are making decisions about where to focus limited education resources may not. A recent report from the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) warns that the arts are increasingly at risk of being lost as part of the core curriculum in the nation’s schools.

“Perhaps most alarming,” says the NASBE report, “are current education reforms, which have inadvertently placed the arts at risk as policy-makers and administrators, as they comply with new federal requirements, choose to narrow the curriculum in order to reach higher student achievement results in a few subjects.”

A key reform putting the arts at risk is the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001. While NCLB includes the arts as a core subject, the law’s major focus is on achievement in reading, math and science, measured by frequent, systematic testing. Education experts fear this focus in NCLB, combined with drastic reductions in state and local school funding, will pressure school administrators to channel time and resources to these three subjects, at the expense of other subjects, including the arts.

You may already be seeing these changes in the arts programs in your school in the form of arts education budget cuts, reductions in arts education staffing and conversion of arts classrooms into regular classrooms – relegating art class to an “art on a cart” program conducted in the regular classroom.

Here are ten ways you can solidify the place of arts education in your school . . .