The Battle for Arts Education: What’s at Risk

Written by Melinda Ennis-Roughton Sunday, May 30 2010

Part 1 of a two-part series

If you are a “gleek,” an avid fan of Glee, a phenomenal TV hit about a high school glee club in Lima, Ohio, you probably saw the episode in which the school’s music program was almost killed by the baby-faced Doogie Howser.

Neil Patrick Harris (of Doogie fame) played a school board member who threatened to eliminate the glee club and other arts programs because of budget cuts. At the end of the show, the glee club, and hence the show, is saved. Unfortunately, life does not always imitate art – or television.

Nevertheless, one part of the show rings all too true, arts education programs are easy targets for the administrative ax. They’re usually the first to fall as state legislators cut once sacrosanct school budgets while desperately seeking solutions to massive shortfalls – that is, without raising taxes. While the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act instituted during the Bush administration includes arts education as part of its core curriculum along with math and language arts, it is usually not viewed as hard core by local school boards.

Arts education in schools has been in decline since the ‘70s and, according to studies, intensified with NCLB. But it’s also a chicken and egg scenario; the continual reduction of arts education results in new political and business leaders, including school board administrators, who have grown up with less arts education and less understanding of its importance. Since the recession, the downward spiral has accelerated.

As schools and school boards scramble to fulfill NCLB testing standards in math and language arts, class time for other core subjects, including science, is increasingly diminished. A 2007 study from the Center on Education Policy found that 30 percent of school districts report a reduction of instruction time in art and music since the implementation of NCLB, and that was before the recession hit. A follow-up study indicated arts education reductions were as high as 50 percent in those same schools, less than the reductions in social studies, science, and physical education.

“Arts education usually competes (for survival) along with other programs that are not considered as essential, including foreign language,” says Tim Mikulski, arts educational program manager for Americans for the Arts, a national arts advocacy organization. “And since the recession, the budgets are so tight even some sports programs are at risk,” he adds.

One of the worst-case scenarios is in California. With a budget catastrophe that has become legendary, the crisis has trickled down to every community. The Los Angeles Unified School District recently cut 50 percent of the teachers from the elementary school Arts Education Plan and eliminated the program all together in the 2011-2012 school year budget. “And that’s in Hollywood,” says Mikulski, “one of our creative capitals.”

In metro Atlanta’s Fulton County, the school board cut the elementary school band and orchestra programs. The programs now are available only on an after-school, fee-based system – a fact that will most affect lower income kids and families.

The funding issues and cuts in arts education are almost always at the very local level, according to Mikulski. “At the national level, arts and arts education funding is at the same level it was last year,” he says. But locally, down to each school board, the budget allocations become more “nuanced,” he says.