Arts Education Advocates Feel the "glee!"

When co-creator of "glee" Ryan Murphy accepted the Golden Globe's Best TV Comedy Series award, he said "This show is about a lot of things; it's about the importance of arts education." Listen up schools across America because Murphy and advocates like you have something to say!

Are your local education leaders doing enough to ensure arts learning thrives in the district? Do they need you to show up and support them so they can? Your local school board members have big power to shape a well-rounded education infused with the arts.

Just as school boards across the country are preparing their priorities for the next school year, keepartsinschools.org is launching: School Board Support for Arts Learning: A Toolkit for Action.

Just a click away you'll find:

-Compelling data and research to make your case using evidence
-Easy to use tools for harnessing the power of persuasion and using powerful messages
-Voices of experts from around the country
-Ideas, activities and inspiration to fuel your advocacy efforts

This is the third is a series of toolkits created to put tools in your hands to make the case for arts learning as an essential component of a quality education.

So speak up, pass it on, and tell us what you're doing to keep arts in schools!

P.S. And, click here to share in the "glee."

With 1.7 million public school students spread throughout 4,061 square miles in 81 school districts, Los Angeles County is daunting in geography, demographics, and size. To enact arts education reform across one school district is difficult. To enact arts education reform across 81 is Herculean.

Yet that is precisely what Arts for All: LA County Regional Blueprint for Arts Education is doing. It is a strategic plan restoring rigorous, sequential K-12 arts education to every public school student in the County. Its primary strategy is building infrastructure at the school district level: a Board-approved arts education policy and plan, district-wide Arts Coordinator, 5% of general fund dollars for the arts, and a student to credentialed art teacher ratio of no more than 400:1.

Seven years have passed since the initiative's launch. Each year deepens our learning about how to best achieve the goals of the Blueprint. The recently released Arts for All: The Vanguard Districts - Case Studies from the First Five Years grew out of a need for us to take a step back and learn from what was happening within our school districts. Up until that point the initiative was driven by a set of assumptions, including that supporting school districts to engage in community-wide planning for arts education is the key to restoring it to all children, and that building arts education infrastructure is the key to sustaining it through difficult economic circumstances.

The report reveals the strengths and weaknesses of those assumptions. It illustrates that while arts education infrastructure is indeed fundamental, support for school districts cannot end with the close of the planning process. The report also emphasizes that the planning process, and the written, Board-adopted policies and plans that result, is critical - more so than we originally anticipated. The higher the quality of the arts education plan, the more progress made on the ground, and vice versa.

As of this writing, Arts for All is in active partnership with 39 of the 81 school districts in the County. Facing draconian budget cuts, not a single Arts for All school district retreated from its arts education plans. Most committed to maintaining their programs. Some looked the recession square in the eye and chose to take their efforts a step further.

Such success has affirmed many of our strategies. The results of the report has prompted us to rethink others, and led us toward developing new programs. Earlier this year we launched a Leadership Fellows Program for Superintendents and Assistant Superintendents to deepen their understanding of quality arts learning and their roles in moving it forward. We are also offering professional development opportunities for Arts Coordinators, providing community advocacy training, and creating indicators to define and measure quality, access, and equity of arts education in schools. In the coming months we will continue to refine and expand the planning services we offer new Arts for All school districts.

We didn't anticipate any of these strategies when the Blueprint was adopted seven years ago. When these new efforts are assessed, the results will likely lead us in directions that we can't imagine today. Arts for All: The Vanguard Districts - Case Studies from the First Five Years emphasizes the incredibly dynamic nature of this work. It documents sustained, long-term, and large-scale strategies that expand, shift and adjust, all to make quality arts education present in the lives of the 1.7 million students living within Los Angeles County.

-Ayanna Hudson, Director of Arts Education, Arts for All, and Talia Gibas, Arts Education Coordinator, Arts for All, Los Angeles County Arts Commission

Sometimes, hearing it from the horse's mouth is the best way to make the case for arts in the schools. That is what one 6th Grader Joshua Delk from Cleveland School of the Arts proved when he spoke at recent Cleveland Board of Education meeting about why the arts are important. The student emphasized the need for the arts to balance out the school day. Seeing a young student stand behind a podium and speak out about what he believes is a powerful image. Some stories are best told from the voice of those affected.

That's why so many advocates have taken to the blogosphere to find their own podium (and audience) to voice their opinion to. Recent research shows parents, political figures and educators are turning to the Web to voice their opinion on arts learning and education reform. With these groups serving as role models to young advocates, it's no wonder Delk was empowered to speak out on behalf of his fellow classmates who understand that a quality education must include the arts.

National Arts & Humanities Month is like a holiday for the arts. Every October arts education advocates and arts integration advocates put aside their differences to celebrate what ties them together. National Arts and Humanities Month reminds us that celebrating the arts really means celebrating all those who bring arts into our every day lives in its countless forms. Artists, educators, parents, students, we all experience and learn through the arts.

Do we need to dedicate a month to celebrate? Does a day go by where the arts don't enter into our lives? National Arts & Humanities Month should serve as a reminder that we need to include the arts in our every day lives - in our schools, in our communities, and in our homes. The arts are vital to a high quality education, whether you are learning in the arts or through them, and the arts are vital to a high quality life.

Share your arts learning stories with the keepartsinschools.org community.

Arts education advocates have received a call to arms. Now is the time to get out there and gain support for arts learning. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has issued a letter to school and education community leaders that expresses support for arts learning curriculum in public schools. To reinforce his message, he spoke at a NAMM Foundation teleconference and urged communities to think creatively towards strategies that will provide access to high quality learning opportunities that include the arts for all children.

Receiving support from an elected official at the federal level for arts learning is incredibly encouraging and provides opportunity for local-level advocacy efforts. Secretary Duncan stressed the "flexibility" of the No Child Left Behind Act. This means that while arts is one of the core subjects noted in the act, local school districts are able to adapt this in a way they see fit. This makes for the perfect opportunity for arts education advocates to leverage this endorsement to see that arts learning plays an integral role in local school districts.

How would you speak out on behalf of arts learning?

Here are a few ideas:

1. Distribute the Secretary's letter. This letter has been made public in hopes that arts education advocates will pass this on to teachers, parents, community leaders, local policymakers and school administrators.
2. Parents should talk to their children's teachers. With the new school year starting, now is the time to find out what is on your child's agenda for the year. Open houses are just around the corner.
3. Ask your legislator to write a letter that supports Secretary Duncan's. This is a great way to get the message to trickle down to the local level.

It's not just about availability - students deserve high quality arts learning opportunities, too. This is something arts education advocates and arts educators alike can agree on.

It's these commonalities - passion, vision and personal values that are at the heart of the advocacy effort to ensure arts learning opportunities are not just available, but are "quality" learning experiences.

But there are differences in how we define high quality learning experiences, what indicators of success are and who should play what role in delivering arts education.

General educators, arts specialists, and teaching artists can all provide quality arts learning opportunities. Their unique perspectives and personal values add depth to the lessons they teach and can facilitate student engagement. If they work together, students will receive a well-rounded high quality education that infuses the arts.

Recent surveys from the New York Arts in Education Roundtable show that teaching artists may be more prevalent in New York Public Schools than arts specialists. Similarly, reports cite steep cuts in arts specialists' positions in California, as finances are drained. Though the No Child Left Behind Act stipulates that arts specialists are best qualified to deliver arts learning, they are simply not making the cut when it comes down to the budget. Some find that teaching artists can actually offer a more authentic experience and connection to the arts, but often they are in schools only for a short time. Arts education needs to be an ongoing experience to be considered high quality.

At the end of the day, it's important that arts educators are as passionate about arts learning as arts education advocates. This shared passion drives the vision for delivering quality. The arts are about engaging and sharing ideas, so let's work together to ensure that we keep quality arts experiences in schools.

Labels: arts learning, arts specialists, quality education, teaching artists

The most interesting argument I heard (at the Access, Equity, Quality conference I attended in Seattle June 18-20 at Americans for the Arts) was about race, an issue so hard to discuss that it is, unfortunately, often ignored.

What a gift it was to hear the wise words of Dr. Mary Stone Hanley of George Mason University, who presented a new paper she recently co-authored with Dr. George Noblit of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Kudos to The Heinz Endowments for funding this brave and important work.

This work landed on 9 key themes for what, in edu-speak, is called "cultural responsive pedagogy" and what we can think of as teaching every child as though who he or she is really matters. Among the important but not surprising recommendations to "use culture to promote racial identity" and "assume success", I found "educate about racism and racial uplift" a welcome addition.

But it was the #4 recommendation that really grabbed me -- Employ the Arts. Listen up all those out there dedicated to learning in and through the arts - studies from the halls of academe confirm what you know to be true. In their words, "the literature indicates that arts programs that engage a student's culture and racial identity will likely result in the learning of a wide range of competencies."

After years of cringing every time I hear the term "achievement gap," I was enthralled to hear an expert talk about the race and culture of African, Latin, Asian and Native American (ALANA) children as assets. Their literature review revealed data that demonstrate how "many children use their culture and racial identity every day in striving for success in school and life, only to have their race, language and culture disparaged in the process."

So, in other words, if we want ALL our children to become well-rounded, successful students and people, keep arts in schools!

-Jennifer Hahn, Principal
Douglas Gould and Company