|
Home > Resources > The Imagine Nation
Voters "Passionate" About Arts in Schools, Survey Finds
WASHINGTON, January 24 – Voters strongly believe that education in the arts should be a core part of every school curriculum and stand ready to punish elected officials who try to cut arts funding, according to survey released here today.
Eighty percent of a national cross-section of voters told pollsters Celinda Lake & Associates that 21st-century jobs will require more than “the basics” now stressed in U.S. schools and said they were worried about a perceived decline in arts education. Lake told a news conference that 30 percent of voters are "passionate" about this, seeing arts schooling as "not the icing on the cake but a fundamental layer of the cake."
"It's a core value and they’re ready to take it to the voting booth," she said.
The December telephone survey of 1,000 voters was sponsored by the Arts Education Partnership, a national coalition of some 140 arts, education, government and business groups supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Department of Education. Partnership director Richard Deasy said the survey was "a gift to policymakers" hesitant about whether to support arts funding.
"The public is way, way ahead of the elites on this issue," Lake said. A bipartisan majority in every demographic group favors instruction in "imagination, innovation and creativity" as a preparation for life, not just for the workforce, she said, even though less than half of likely voters have a child in public school. She said she was "astounded" at the three-to-one support for that concept.
John Wilson, executive director of the National Education Association, said requirements of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act that schools meet standardized testing benchmarks have created an “instructional straitjacket” for teachers who want to teach creativity. Narrowing the curriculum to limit access to the arts in school especially hurts disadvantaged children who may get such exposure nowhere else, he said.
Mary Suhm, city manager of Dallas, Tex., outlined her city's $16 million program to hire 140 new arts teachers and ensure there is one in every public school in the city by next September. Officials there expect "a very direct return" in this investment through more creative and innovative citizens and a stronger tax base as a result, she said.
An Oklahoma Creativity Project focuses on 44 "A-Plus Schools" in that state where arts are integrated into the school curriculum, said Susan McCalmont, executive director of the partner Kirkpatrick Foundation. The schools have showed better standardized test scores, student behavior and general achievement, she said. A pilot program to integrate arts into science, technology, engineering and math courses in four or five Ohio schools is also underway.
Gene Wilhoit, executive director of the Council for Chief State School Officers, said he was surprised by the study finding that most Americans think the United States lags behind other countries in creativity and innovation. He noted that Chinese educators think their country is "catching up" in basic education and working hard on innovation. "The arts ought to be an essential component of the curriculum in every school in the United States," he said.
|
