NOTE: THIS IS A WORK IN PROCESS.
I am the parent of an extremely creative boy. He thrives on arts. In fact one of his goals for the school year was to increase his own school’s arts-focus.
As murmurings of budget cuts threaten to land in the arts arena, I run to the multitude of arts resources that exist. And there ARE many.
Questions to organize the information are as follows:
- what are schools REQUIRED to provide in terms of curriculum?
- what flexibility do schools and school districts have?
- how do arts enter into the curriculum requirements?
- are the arts assessed in meaningful ways? National Core Arts Standards ;
- what do the arts do for students? Americans for the Arts Summary
- what kinds of arts education or opportunities are available? possible?
- how do these arts education options differ in terms of value?
- what kinds of funding are available for schools? musicians taking initiative with instrument drives,
- what is being done to increase chances of arts provision in schools? one-year requirement in high school for entrance into MASS State university. and this is part of an initiative, “The Arts for All Massachusetts Initiative“
“The ARTS for All Initiative calls for thedevelopment and implementation of acomprehensive statewide arts strategic planestablishing arts education as integral to everyschool district’s curriculum.”