The Chronicle of Artistic Failure in America

A recent story by Scott Russell called Setting standards, cutting funding for arts education that appeared in the online news aggregator Twin Cities Daily Planet reports that once-vaunted local arts education standards are currently being threatened. 

For many Minnesota art students, the author writes, “arts seem to be a thinning palette.”

This is because while Minnesota state standards in education focus on the value of art in the curriculum, the actual requirements for art, starting this year (and perhaps due to the No Child Left Behind laws) in a student’s education are minimal: only one art credit is needed to graduate from Minnesota high schools.

“Unlike reading, math and science,” Russell writes, “there is no high-stakes state arts test. Each district sets its own measure of art success. If students pass the art class that could be enough to meet the graduation requirement. That means arts can get the brush-off in the budget process, as schools focus resources on reading and math where success is measured by highly publicized, quantitative test scores.”

This means that statewide, according to Michael Hiatt, director of professional development and research at the Perpich Center for Arts Education, in “traditional schools” art teachers are “getting stretched to cover more and more students.” “It is more of a case of the haves and have nots,” in arts education, he said. “The gap is widening.”

Mary Schaefle, executive director of the Minnesota Music Educators Association, studies equity in arts education. From 2000-2006, she found, the number of “public school students dropped 1.5 percent” while the number of “public school music teachers dropped more than 11 percent”–indicating a drop-off in quantity of music lessons provided. In addition, the story sites the replacement, over this time period, of regular school arts instruction with more supplementary guest artist programs. “Obviously it saves some schools some money,” said one such instructor, “rather than hire a full-time teacher.”

One high school art teacher suggested that currently in Minnesota arts funding is “hit and miss, depending on what district you happen to be in, what part of the state you happen to live in, what the resources happen to be at any given moment.” The results, predictably, are a decline in talent levels among kids as they move through the education system, an ongoing deterioration in equipment and facilities for the arts in schools, and a resulting deterioration of interest among students in these subject areas.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 2:22 pm and is filed under Ah Minneapolis..., cutting the arts lifeline (budget), Art is the first thing that goes out the window, Americans pretty much hate artists, Decline of reading, Failure of arts education, Decline of human culture, Artistic failure in America. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.