We have heard many ideas for what schools should look like after the pandemic, or if they reopen while the pandemic is still around. Most of those ideas are centered on distance learning. Nancy Bailey has a different concept: Bring back the arts education that was sacrificed to high-stakes testing.
She writes:
Teachers teach remotely, and parents are helping students at home. Hopefully, children and teens are doing art. Self-expression is important, and art calms and leads to self-discovery. When public schools reopen, when it’s safe to do so, parents and teachers must demand a return of art education with qualified art teachers! Music and drama are critical too, but this post focuses on art classes.
Due to high stakes testing and the no excuses agenda, teaching art became obsolete especially in poor schools. Underfunded school districts removed art classes from the curriculum years ago. They pushed more reading and test preparation.
Nina Rees is President and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Rees was once a senior education policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation and helped develop NCLB. Once asked “Do you consider art and music ‘frills,’ or would you say they are necessary to good elementary education?” she answered:
It depends. If a student is attending an affluent school that has the budget to invest in such things, then I see many benefits to adding art and music courses. What I object to is focusing the attention of poor school systems on these activities. Schools should be in the business of teaching students the basics. If they fail to teach students how to read and write, it makes no sense to ask them to offer music! In a perfect world, these are decisions that I wish parents could make and pay for.
Rees implies that the arts are only for children in wealthy schools! Educators know that the arts and academics complement one another. It’s detrimental to get rid of the arts in poor schools. Children in underfunded schools deserve art as much as students in rich schools.
All children deserve access to art classes. Dedicated public school art classes bring children together. Art is important for children with disabilities, gifted, twice exceptional students, and children and teens who have anxiety or depression.
Bailey goes on to describe the many ways that art helps students, the lessons and values they impart.
Yes, the arts are for everyone.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Oh my god stop reimagining education!
Hello everyone,
I’m hearing that some schools are considering paring down course offerings and just giving basic core courses if schools reopen in person. I’m wondering if this might affect arts, music and other elective courses.
Yes. And a contributing “reason” to make cuts will be the “per-pupil” cost reporting at the school level required in ESSA.
Instrumental music is too expensive, or if provided, is irregular and based on grants. Each student must have an instrument or one not damaged by Covid-19 killing cleaners. Vocal music is a different matter.
The visual arts can be high cost or relatively low cost, depending on the materials for “studio” projects.
Dance and theater are relatively low cost IF the school has a decent auditorium planned for on-stage performances by groups. Some Gyms are convertable for these performaing arts.
You should also know that AP courses generally are regarded as high-expense, primarily from teacher salaries also for studio arts.
A 2009 study on Nancy’s blog shows that traditional schools had been offering more instruction that charter schools and that offerings were more frequent in larger schools.That data did not capture the influence of the 2008-2009 depression or these latest impulses to pare down instruction.
The “Forums” on the National Art Education Website are filled with tricks that visual and media arts teachers are figuring out for low cost materials, tools and special software, because the pandemic means materials and tools cannot be shared, or must be purchased for home use by parents or caregivers.
Hello Laura,
Thank you. I was thinking that I just put in a supply order of office and other supplies to use if we go back to school in person. I had $260 to spend. I would have given all that money for the art and music teachers to buy supplies that they could give to students to pick up at the beginning of the year. But there’s no plan yet whether we are reopening. It seems that money for supplies could come from sources like this if there were a plan in place.
our poorest schools where testing has become king already have cut so much of what is considered “frivolous” in days of reform
That’s right, ciedie. Consider also the many schools with mixed populations that have combined tracking policies with experimental scheduling, where — within the school — students with high test scores and grades get extra enrichment classes, but students with low test scores and poor grades get extra test prep intervention classes and no arts. That’s what seven- and eight-period bell schedules do. Additionally, with students likely going to school in the fall fewer than five days a week, the disparity will likely be exacerbated by the use of CBE programs and data. There is only one way to diminish such unfair practices, and that’s to remove the pressure to test prep by ending the federal testing mandate.
I am in total agreement with re-imagining education. Unlike yesteryear, schools have a lot of competition for mindshare and ultimately market share. Teaching the arts and career tech will help schools compete for students who may not want the typical college route. It will also motivate others and foster creativity in all students. I have learned that if a child finds his/her passion they will do exceptionally well; consequently making a positive contribution to society.
As a former administrator in a challenging area, it was important that equity existed. Not funding arts in schools in poorer errors exacerbates the existing racial and class gap. It provides further evidence of systemic discrimination.
Yet another vision for the future of public education. When I designed a public school I put the arts under the heading of communication skills. because that is what they are.
Not only did that lock the arts into the curriculum, it gave a base for a wide range of skills built into an activity that enhances the joy of learning.
For young people that have been living with the uncertainties of a pandemic, the arts can help heal the soul and elevate the spirit. Many families are living on the edge with food insecurity and unstable living arrangements. We know that self expression and creatively have therapeutic value. At this time we should embrace the arts, not eliminate them. The arts should always be an essential component of a comprehensive whole child education.
At this moment in time, classical music is balm for the soul.
Oh yes
When you engage kids, that’s when the magic happens. The arts are engaging. Therefore, we need more arts in schools. QED
I was fortunate, a couple years ago, to teach alongside an extraordinarily talented art teacher. This man had to deal with having forty + kids shoved into his classes, but he had a superpower: he taught kids, systematically, step-by-step, specific procedures that they could use to create artistic effects. Kids walked out of his classes with a very big toolbox.
Most teachers could learn from him.
And because he taught specific procedures, step-by-step, kids could actually perform them. And because they could actually perform them, they were able to produce excellent work. And because they had produced excellent work, they were hooked, because nothing succeeds like success.
Specific procedures: shading using lines, exercise 1, closer or further apart; exercise 2, thicker; exercise 3, using lighter or darker styluses. Using a Durer grid. Drawing the negative space. Perspective lines. Focus via color. Focus via geometrical placement. Focus via size. Focus via lead lines. I won’t go on. There are thousands and thousands of these. Tricks of the trade.
Here: 34 Suggestions for Composing the Frame, something I put together for my film students: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/art/
Of course, arts are wasted on Prole children. They should spend their days doing Common Core worksheets on a screen. Important to inure them to mindless, alienating, subservient tasks early on. Otherwise, they might start thinking of themselves as mattering, like Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos.
Thank you Diane for posting, and for everyone’s comments. Every time I write about art I always mention Nina Rees comment. I find it so troubling. Art for wealthy children but not for the poor. Does she look at charter schools as education for the poor?
Such a boneheaded response by Nina Rees. Is she an educator? Has she done even an iota of research? [A couple hours of google research might be revealing as to the effects of music and art training on academic achievement.]
Or worse– is she simply your garden-variety racist/ classist? Her response can be translated as, “Yes, the arts are important for a good education, but since poor folks can’t fund a good education, tough nookies for them.”
Nina Rees was education advisor to VP Dick Cheney, then worked for Michael Milken.
My millennial sons give instrument lessons – one-on-one & group – through a private extracurricular school. (Students range in age from 6-early 20’s; piano-teaching son’s studs are mostly young, while guitar-teaching son’s studs mostly teens). Their pandemic-era experience might be informative for pubsch music teachers. Most interesting to me is that they’ve lost very few students in the switch from in-person to remote – at most 8-10%. It’s not an easy transition, in fact it’s challenging/ difficult, but the great majority have stuck it out. Parents are paying a pretty penny for this & obviously would w/dw in a hurry if kids weren’t onboard.
So mainly what I pass along is that individual instrumental lessons [via zoom or similar] is a green light, where pubschs can do. Like everything else in remote-teaching, it requires extra $/ staff.
But part of the draw for these students is, the school goes to great lengths to keep them on board, w/ innovative, freebie lessons & performances by teachers at the school website [w/live chat-comments]. Seems like something pubsch music depts could do.
The group lessons are not happening yet – this is a tech challenge. But just throwing out there: one of my husband’s bands has been working for a month on creating one of those group performances like we’ve seen done remotely by various pandemic-era professional groups. And it’s coming together. The main challenge is, all members have to acquire an app that works for this. Basically it requires one member, usually a percussionist, (this could be a teacher) sending around an initial video that sets the pace, say playing drums to a faint background audio of the arrangement. Then other players, one by one, record themselves playing along & attach it. It’s a great project & probably could be undertaken by midsch/ hisch jazz bands & the like.
I should have added, the music school’s transition to remote was easier than for pubschs because they already had a remote platform for vacations away, snow days etc. They had to spend a mad week scaling it up & training every teacher on it, but the turnaround was quick enough to retain most students.
Haven’t any remote art-lesson info, but there’s this: during pandemic, the PreK enrichment service that sends me around to schools has been most successful remotely w/its “science/ math” classes. I lost half my Spanish students, but they retained everyone. For 3-5y.o.’s “STEM” means experimenting & building things w/
materials found around house or outside (or legos, blocks). One teacher sends out short videos using her own kids to demo. Another does live zoom classes for as many as 15 kids. The students are always making something, hands-on – so, like art classes.
Guess my main point in this ramble: hands-on music & art make school worthwhile for many students. Schools should lead with the arts, not sideline them. They can even make remote learning enjoyable.
I agree. The arts are especially critical for students with disabilities.
Yes! This is the crux of my work and writing on Artfully Learning! Integrating contemporary art-centered learning across the curriculum helps students develop strong cognition and social and emotional skills! https://theartsandeducation.wordpress.com/