Too many California schools fail to provide mandated arts education; let’s fix that

Courtesy: Create CA

California law mandates standards-based instruction from kindergarten through high school in dance, music, theater and visual art.

Yet, according to a recent report by SRI Education, nearly 90% of our public schools are failing to align their educational offerings with state standards.

Arts education is essential for student well-being as well as for academic success. Access to the full range of visual and performing arts is proven to prepare students for well-paying 21st-century jobs in a wide variety of fields and encourages engagement in civic and community activities.

Students with access to arts education are five times less likely to drop out of school, four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement and four times more likely to receive a bachelor’s degree. And in this particular moment, arts classes can also play a critical role in helping students recover from “the dual traumas of systemic racism and a global pandemic,” according to Julie Baker, executive director of California Arts Advocates.

As the Covid-19 pandemic lingers, social and emotional learning has become a top priority for educators. Giving students access to culturally appropriate arts education is one way to support students’ sense of connection to their peers, their schools and their place in their community. Just as important, standards-based, sequential education in music, dance, theater and visual arts allows kids to engage with learning in new ways and promotes collaboration and creative thinking that they carry far beyond classes in performing and visual arts.

For example, Chula Vista Elementary School District in the southernmost part of California recently made an audacious commitment to the arts. After years of under-investing in arts instruction in reaction to high-stakes testing requirements, the district changed course.

In 2015, the district invested $15 million over three years in hiring visual and performing arts teachers to provide sequential, standards-based arts education to every child during the school day. The students with the most exposure to high-quality arts instruction showed improvement in myriad ways. They believed themselves to be more creative and demonstrated greater cognitive flexibility. They were also better at controlling their emotions and expressing empathy. This effort shows that quality arts education develops soft and hard skills that prepare students for success.

Nevertheless, some school and district leaders still don’t treat the arts as essential academic subjects. And persistent inequalities continue to leave low-income students and students of color facing the most significant barriers to accessing the quality arts instruction mandated in state law. And that’s more than just a shame — it’s a significant opportunity lost for our students as individuals and for the future of our state’s economy and civic institutions.

The new report, Creativity Challenge, includes recommendations ranging from expanding the pool of qualified arts teachers to leveraging new approaches to school funding to ensure kids receive the quality arts education mandated in state law. It highlights the success of efforts to help schools tap federal education monies to support arts education, pointing to resources like the website www.title1arts.org for Title 1 schools motivated to expand arts education offerings.

Teachers need training and materials to integrate the arts into everyday learning. For elementary school teachers, who often integrate both visual and performing arts into other areas of teaching and learning, professional development must be prioritized.

Schools working with students of all income levels need sufficient funding and dedicated classroom space to support robust visual and performing arts instruction. The report also points to significant growth in the trend of schools partnering with local arts organizations to enhance access and exposure to visual and performing arts; 73% of schools reported taking advantage of such partnerships in 2020, representing a 20-point increase since 2006. Such partnerships enable schools to enhance the quality of and student exposure to a wide variety of disciplines — including arts modalities that might be particularly culturally relevant to their student population — without needing to train and hire full-time arts teachers.

Some of these fixes require dedicated funding, while others require new state policies and establishing relationships with arts organizations at the local and state levels. What they all require is an understanding of the value of the arts in supporting the development of the whole student. With this report, we have a much clearer picture of what needs to be done to harmonize the arts with other core academic subjects. So let’s get to work.

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Jeannine Flores is the arts and STEAM coordinator with the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

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