Winning America's Future Through Creative Schools

"W" is for Winning in the A to Z Challenge

I'm sure many of you will be relieved that this blog has gotten through "V" day and moved on. We've made it to "W" day, and today's post title is drawn from the website pcah.gov, the President's Committee on Arts and the Humanities.

I've been tipped off to a couple of interesting posts because I have a twitter account that is about 18 months old, and I recently started "following" @BarackObama, which is run by the Obama 2012 campaign staff. If you have no earthly idea what I'm talking about, go over to twitter.com and start poking around. Explaining how twitter works is beyond the scope of this post. Anyway, there was a tweet which led me to an article titled Re-Investing Through Art's Education: Winning America's Future through Creative Schools.

If you've been following this blog for any length of time, you know that arts education is a subject near and dear to me. (No, I don't just write about things in an attempt to make you blush in front of your grandmother). This is the blurb from the PCAH link:


"The President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH) announces the release of its landmark report Reinvesting in Arts Education: Winning America's Future Through Creative Schools.  The culmination of 18 months of research, meetings with stakeholders, and site visits all over the country, this report represents an in-depth review of the current condition of arts education, including an update of the current research base about arts education outcomes, and an analysis of the challenges and opportunities in the field that have emerged over the past decade. It also includes a set of recommendations to federal, state and local policymakers. A summary of the report is here."


The link in the word "here" is worth clicking. I'll summarize the summary for you though:

"It has been more than a decade since any federal entity comprehensively examined arts education data in the United States. During this time, there have been important developments in arts education research, as well as major shifts in the landscape of American education—including the impact of No Child Left Behind and increasing economic pressure."

Basically, as I've indicated elsewhere, they've discovered two things:

1)NCLB has resulted in fewer arts programs in schools

2) Kids do better when there are art programs in schools

Wow. What a surprise. I've loathed NCLB and the tyranny of standardized testing ever since my own kids, now 22 and 25, where enrolled in school. With each of these studies that are released, I'm just nodding my head. I'm glad they are finally figuring these things out, but it has been at the expense of an entire generation subjected to a failed experiment.

I'll skip over the details of the findings of the study. (After all, this is a summary of a summary, so I can have time to add parentheticals like this one!) Here are the recommendations of the study:

Recommendation 1: Build robust collaborations among different approaches to arts education
Recommendation 2: Develop the field of arts integration.
Recommendation 3: Expand in-school opportunities for teaching artists.
Recommendation 4: Utilize federal and state policies to reinforce the place of arts in K- 12 education.
Recommendation 5: Widen the focus of evidence gathering about arts education.

Swell. It is about time. But what does that mean in practical terms? How do you start?

How about like this:

The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH) announced the launch of a new arts education initiative to help turn around low-performing schools. Developed in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Education and the White House Domestic Policy Council, the Turnaround Arts initiative is a new public-private partnership designed to narrow the achievement gap and increase student engagement through the arts. Working in some of the nation’s lowest-performing elementary and middle schools, this program will test the hypothesis that high-quality and integrated arts education boosts academic achievement, motivates student learning and improves school culture in the context of overall school reform, announced the committee’s co-chairs, George Stevens Jr. and Margo Lion.

Turnaround Arts will work in eight “turnaround schools” across the country—public schools in the lowest-achieving five percent of their state that are receiving School Improvement Grants through the U.S. Department of Education. Over the course of two years, Turnaround Arts will bring intensive arts education resources and expertise into these schools and support the school leadership in using the arts as a pillar of their reform strategy. An external evaluation of the program will measure the impact and effectiveness of this approach.

Oh wait... I asked what does that mean in practical terms. How about THIS? Pairing these schools with famous artists. Which famous artists? These:

Chuck Close

Yo-Yo Ma

Sarah Jessica-Parker

Kerry Washington

Forest Whitaker

Damian Woetzel

Alfre Woodard

I have no doubt this program will be a success, and will result in funding and regulation for artists across the country to be able get back into schools without smashing their creativity into the bland box of standardized testing curricula.

Here's the link to more info.

W is for Winning, and April is winding down Parkinson's Awareness Month

Funding the Arts

"F" is for Funding in my A to Z Challenge

Yesterday, I put up a couple of posts about Arts Education in Schools vs "Core Standards", including studies in which employers say that the arts make students more employable and give them needed creative skills.

This is my call for those corporations to step on up, and invest in their future. Put their money towards educating those kids, so five to ten years from now they will have a potential employee pool that better meets their needs.

There are two ways to get arts to kids. One is to get the arts back in schools, which can be done if the artist has the patience and time to formulate a program that fits into the mold of the Common Core State Standards. I teach such classes through Great Big Planet. I was in McKenny, Virginia just the other week presenting a program on Rainforests. The presentation utilizes props, video, student volunteers, and I bring a little live music into the mix. The kids learn about endangered species, how rain forests affect climate, indigenous peoples, and how to make a difference. Schools need funding to bring these types of shows to the kids.

The other way to get arts to kids is through after school programs. I have been part of the Ashland Stage Arts Program and Christian Youth Theater, both programs that teach performing arts to kids. My wife is a piano teacher and teaches kids in her studio. She has also taught dance. However, not all families can afford such after school programs. Businesses should make it easy not only for non profits, but also for individual teachers like my wife, to offer free or low cost lessons to kids. As I've mentioned before, there is a lot of talk about supporting the arts, but not that much about supporting the artists. Artists as teachers shouldn't have to struggle so hard to make a living, and kids shouldn't have such limited access to the arts.

Gold Cup trophies awarded to my wife's piano students through the NFMC

Personally, I'd love to have a studio where I could not only make the props and crazy stuff that I do from time to time, but also could produce large scale puppet theater, all the while teaching kids how to make stuff. Engineering as Art.

When Senator Mark Warner was visiting Ashland, Virginia last week, he said that the Fortune 1000 companies had done very well over the last couple of years, and are sitting on about two trillion dollars that needs to be re-invested in America. Arts education is a good place to start.

"F" is for Funding, and April is Parkinson's Awareness Month