Arts Education in Crisis: The Power of Voices

Written by Melinda Ennis-Roughton Tuesday, June 15 2010

Part 2 of a two-part series

Nancy Habif was celebrating. She had just seen the last of her five children graduate from the fifth grade at Morningside Elementary, a public school in intown Atlanta.

All excel academically, and each started music classes in the third grade. Her older kids have continued music instruction through Iman Park Middle School and Grady High School.

Habif has fought all along the way – first to keep music instruction in the elementary school, and then to keep a jazz band at Grady (which, like most high schools, puts its emphasis on the marching band). She was successful at both efforts through the tactic she calls, “the power of the voice,” speaking up frequently to school leaders and board officials.

So, she cannot fathom why the Fulton County school board would cut band and orchestra instruction in elementary school – a vote that was just made final. The move makes music instruction available only after school and for a fee.

“I don’t get it,” says Habif. “How can we cut music in elementary school? It’s the foundation.”

This sentiment was shared by a vocal group of parents who fought the Fulton school board’s action and lost. And, it is a battle that’s being waged across the nation as the trickle-down effect of state budget deficits hits local school districts.

Arts advocates see the conditions in the public schools as a perfect storm affecting the future of arts education. The emphasis on increased testing, as part of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, allows less time in the classroom for subjects such as arts instruction (including music, visual arts, and drama) while the recession has created huge state budget crunches that result in teacher firings, furloughs, and elimination of programs seen as not vital to the overall curriculum.

“Without arts education, there could be an entire generation not exposed in classrooms, and the fear is they (the audiences) won’t come back,” says John Dow, the press office director for The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. The Kennedy Center started the Arts In Crisis initiative in 2009 as the recessionary environment caused arts organizations throughout the nation to reduce programming, cut their seasons, or, in many cases, close their doors.

The mission of the program is to “provide planning assistance and consulting to struggling arts organizations throughout the United States,” according to its website (www.artsincrisis.org). Assistance includes consultation for fundraising, marketing, technology, and a range of business support disciplines from approved mentors and Kennedy Center staff including President Michael Kaiser. It is open to any nonprofit performing arts organization.

As part of the Arts In Crisis initiative, the Kennedy Center started Any Given Child, a program that coordinates arts education activities by connecting the local government and school boards with local arts organizations. The inaugural program is in Sacramento, Calif., with plans for a second program in Springfield, Mo.

Any Given Child will require no additional funding from the city of Sacramento school districts or from the local arts organizations, Dow says. “The way it works now, you may have a third grade teacher who is passionate for ballet, opera, or the symphony and takes the class to performances,” he says. “But the next year, if the teacher is not engaged with the arts, the child may not be exposed to anything.”

The program is designed to audit what is now offered in the school, formally and informally, and then create a systemized curriculum matched to grade levels. For example, the local symphony may work with third-grade classes on music appreciation, while the local dance company works with another grade on movement.

The qualifications for a city’s schools to enter the program sound simple. “You have to have a local government who is committed to it and schools that want it,” says Dow. But all too often the schools may not even recognize the lack of arts education as an issue when they are focusing so hard on district test scores and money woes.

“The arts have an impact beyond numbers and statistics,” says Nancy Habif. “I’ve seen it with my own kids. It keeps them focused and engaged. You can’t put a quantitative measure on that anymore than you can the importance of kids involved in sports. They need all of it.”

In a 2008 speech at the National Black Arts Festival, Joseph Bankoff, CEO of the Woodruff Arts Center is Atlanta, cited the “3 Cs,” creativity, compassion, and conceptualization” as keys to developing future generations.

And indeed, according to a recent study by The Conference Board, a research firm that conducts and disseminates marketplace trends for business, corporations rank creative attributes as key to hiring effective employees. Eighty-five percent of the employers surveyed said that they are not finding the traits they require to fill creative jobs in today’s prospective candidates.

But despite these numbers and a wealth of data that correlates exposure to the arts with the improvement of key cognitive learning paths, and even improved SAT scores, numbers alone won’t win the war. Public education advocates such as Habif see the real solution as involvement from parents.

“Whenever I raise an issue the people at APS (Atlanta Public Schools) always tell me they need to hear from more parents,” says Habif. “Parents are the customers. You’ve got to start talking – and talking a lot. That’s where the change takes place.”

The “power of voices” came too late for Fulton County elementary school students who gave farewell concerts to their orchestra and band teachers after the recent vote. But passionate advocates have not given up the fight. And, programs such as Any Given Child are providing creative solutions to the thorny issues of time, interest, and – most of all – money.

“We have to figure it out,” says Habif, who adds she would ask the school board to consider what they are sacrificing. “If we don’t, we’re preventing our children from soaring as high as they can go.”

This is Part 2 of a two-part series. Part 1 can be found here.

A veteran of the marketing/advertising business, Melinda Ennis-Roughton is the principal and owner of an Atlanta-based marketing firm called MelWorks Inc., and a freelance writer specializing in women’s issues and film criticism. She was an on-going contributing film critic for the Atlanta Journal Constitution from 2004-2007.

Her career highlights include the position of Executive Director/Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) for Brand Atlanta, which was responsible for marketing the city under Shirley Franklin’s administration. She served as Global CMO for Church's Chicken, supervising marketing direction, from China to Costa Rica. And her career also includes executive positions at Atlanta ad agencies, including Fitzgerald & Co. Ennis-Roughton began her career with Arby’s Restaurants, where she stayed for ten years, eventually rising to the position of senior vice president, marketing and was the first female vice president of the organization.