Arts Education

"For decades, arts and music education in California has been dying a slow death in many schools, strangled by budget cuts amid an ongoing emphasis on core subjects like reading and math and test scores as the measure of student success," reports Louis Freedberg in EdSource.

Frances Phillips reviews research about an arts education program the Walter & Elise Haas Foundation participated in over the past year responding to the idea of Emily Garvie from the Clarence E. Heller Charitable Foundation "of organizing arts nonprofits to lead subsidized pods for students who lacked access to consistent arts learning and schoolwork support."

The Arts Education for All Act is the broadest arts education policy bill ever introduced in Congress, and is currently working its way through the legislative process. Grantmakers in the Arts, in partnership with Americans for the Arts and National Association of Music Merchants, invites you to join us in formally supporting this legislation. You can learn more about the bill here, and submit this form to express support.

In a recent opinion piece, Misty Copeland, Wynton Marsalis, Jody Gottfried Arnhold, and Russell Granet make a case for the transformational power of arts education.

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On Thursday, March 11, President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act of 2021, a $1.9 trillion package in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Of the more than $122 billion allocated for K-12 schools, at least 90 percent of funds are required to be used by State Education Agencies (SEAs) to make subgrants to Local Educational Agencies (LEAs). Under the bill, SEAs and LEAs are required to allocate a significant percentage of funding towards evidence-based interventions – such as summer learning or summer enrichment, extended day, comprehensive after school programs, or extended school year programs – that address the social, emotional, and academic needs of students, particularly those disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.

The Posse Foundation has launched a new arts initiative, to connect students who are focused on arts and culture from cities across the country to top arts-oriented colleges and universities, in partnership with Lin-Manuel Miranda and the Miranda Family Fund, with CalArts as institutional partner.

GIA recently sent a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to urge the Department of Education to include in its Volume 2 Roadmap to Reopening handbook guidance further clarifying the importance of providing access to the arts for low-income children and children of color with the same quality and rigor as their more advantaged peers.

A post by Jamie Hipp and Margaret-Mary Sulentic Dowell, in collaboration with the Arts Education Partnership Higher Education Working Group, says "offering arts integration coursework for preservice teachers can embolden elementary teachers to embed the arts into the crowded curriculum, leading to benefits for students and teachers alike."

Miguel Cardona, President Joe Biden’s pick to become the next U.S. education secretary, "considered majoring in art education — influenced by an excellent art teacher he had," as The Hechinger Report stated recently.