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Home › Articles › Back to School Headquarters › Advocating for the Arts

Advocating for the Arts

Building Morale, Attendance and Educational Skills With the Arts

Part One

By Kim Byrum Skinner

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, she's not confident such good intentions will emerge.

"I have some fear that the arts may be less valued in a 'No Child Left Behind' environment, because value and test results are often confused," she says. "I would hate to see the evolution of an arts proficiency test. Rather, I suggest that those of us who advocate for the arts in schools stress that not everything that matters can be measured, and that not everything that can be measured counts in learning or in life. The arts matter in both big-time."

The 35th-annual "Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools," published in September 2003, asked responders to rate their concern about No Child Left Behind and its emphasis on English and math testing only as a means to judge school performance.

Specifically, the survey asked if such emphasis would mean less attention given to art, music, history and other subjects. Eighty percent of those questioned said they have "a great deal" or a "fair amount" of concern, with just 14 percent responding "not much" and 6 percent "not at all."

While Katz has no data at his disposal indicating that No Child Left Behind is harming arts programs because of its inordinate focus on reading and math, word on the street isn't positive, he says.

"The feedback that I get from teachers and administrators is that the program is hollow," Katz says. "It imposes a certain kind of hardship on school systems without providing the [financial] support to follow through. It is quite underfunded, and it's putting a heavy burden on states that they are not in a position to assume. School districts are really hurting. Now, whether that's specifically harming arts programming, I don't have any hard evidence to know if that's true."

The arts are fully mandated in 38 states (74.5 percent), mandated on a limited basis in five (9.8 percent) and not mandated at all in eight (15.7 percent), according to the 2002-2003 State Arts Education Policy Database: Arts Education Partnership.

Despite lingering recession and the added financial strain of No Child Left Behind, arts education remains healthy in some states, such as Ohio, particularly within Franklin County, Katz reports.

A two-

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