Arts Education Increasing in California Schools?

Does new research reveal a surprising trend?

There are two truths arts advocates have long taken for granted:

• Arts education is in decline in public schools.
• When budgets tighten, art is usually the first to get the ax.

Attempting to quantify just how arts education has fared over the past 15 years suggests the reality is a lot more difficult to pin down.

In the Age of Big Data, we wanted to put some numbers together to trace the health of arts education in Los Angeles-area public schools. Are there more or fewer classes? How about the number of arts teachers? Or how many students get arts classes? We set out to track arts education spending, looking to compare arts funding levels over the years. We wanted to get some historical perspective, see the kinds of arts classes offered and how they’ve changed over time.