THE COMPLETE CURRICULUM Ensuring a Place for the Arts and ...

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NASBETHE COMPLETE CURRICULUMand based the assessment questionson the state’s standards and curriculumframeworks. Unfortunately, dueto budget constraints, the test is not apart of the statewide accountabilitysystem, leaving local districts toshoulder the cost if they choose tooffer the assessment.The state of policy for artseducation is also mixed. Currently, allbut one state has standards in place forwhat students should be able to learnand know in the arts. More than half ofthe states require arts education inorder to graduate, while three-quartersmandate some form of arts educationin the schools. However, theserequirements fall far below those ofother core subjects. In many states,only 1/2 credit may be required ofstudents in order to graduate fromhigh school, and in some cases relatedcoursework (such as industrial arts)may be substituted. Moving frompolicy to practice, many in the artseducation field note the limitedamount of instructional time that isdevoted to the arts in comparison withother parts of the curriculum—despitewhat appears, at face value to be a fairlystrong policy framework.Furthering the marginalization,the federal testing requirementsunder NCLB have focused state andlocal policymakers on improvingstudent achievement results inreading and math, and in doing somaking decisions that increaseinstructional time for these specificsubject areas at the expense of others.In New York City, for example, theNew York Times reported administratorsare scrambling to comply withthe new standardized curriculumrequired by the state educationagency, which requires more than halfof the instructional periods to bededicated to reading and math. 15 Theunintended consequence of the policyhas been a reduction in arts educationthroughout many schools in the city.It is not just educators but thepublic as well that is concerned aboutthis trend. The 35th Annual Phi DeltaKappa/Gallup Poll of the Public’sAttitudes toward the Public Schools,released in September 2003, found that80 percent of Americans have a greatdeal or a fair amount of concern thatNorth Carolina’s A+ ProgramThe A+ Program is a comprehensive school reform model in NorthCarolina. The program views the arts as fundamental to how teachers teachand how students learn in all subjects. A+ was implemented in 25 schoolsacross the state beginning in 1995. By 2001, 35 schools were participatingin the pilot. The program is based on both curriculum and instructionalstrategies, as well as organizational strategies that focus on: increasing artsinstruction; fostering two-way arts integration; tapping multiple intelligences;emphasizing hands-on learning; taking an integrated, thematicapproach to the curriculum; increasing professional collaboration; andstrengthening schools’ partnerships.Researchers evaluated the program from 1995 until 1999, focusing onthe differences in A+ schools, when compared with schools that had notparticipated in the program, after four years of implementation. Keyfindings are:• For schools as a whole, the program increased channels of communication,as well as organizational capacity.• A+ increased parent affiliation with the school, as well as awareness ofthe curriculum.• Teachers saw instructional change for enhanced learning opportunities,as well as opportunities for collaborative work and new leadershiproles.• For students, A+ enriched the academic environment, improvedattitudes, attendance, and behavior, and garnered assessment results.Initially funded on a year-to-year basis, in 1999 the North Carolinalegislature made the A+ Program a line item in the budget. In addition,the program was approved as an acceptable model under the ComprehensiveSchool Reform Act, which provided funding for four schools toimplement the program in 1999. 18“relying on testing for English andmath only to judge a school’s performancewill mean less emphasis on art,music, history, and other subjects.”In addition, many districts facingrevenue shortfalls are reducing fundingfor the arts or completely eliminatingarts programs in order to meet tightbudgets, sometimes forcing advocatesto mount extraordinary fundraisingcrusades in order to save programs orpositions (see boxes on pages 11 and12
Ensuring a Place for the Arts and Foreign Languages in America’s Schools24). Yet such resources are notavailable in all communities.Despite the struggle for a placeat the table with the other coresubject areas, there are many local—and even some state—initiatives thatare true exemplars of the bestthat arts education can offer,such as in North Carolina,Mississippi, and California(see box on page 12). Yet theoverall place of the arts withinthe curriculum remainsuncertain in many places.Some still question whetherthe arts can truly be captured instandards, or whether studentperformance can be accuratelyassessed in the arts according to suchstandards. Perhaps most troubling,however, are the budget constraintsface by nearly every state in thecountry. For these reasons, states arenot demanding the assessments—and therefore are often not providingthe resources—which would put thearts on equal footing with othersubjects.Foreign LanguagesForeign language education hasfollowed a path similar to artseducation, first having no mentionwhen the National Education Goalswere crafted in 1989, and later beingincluded in the Goals 2000 Act. At firstglance, it also appears that languagestudies have a firm place in publicschool classrooms.The good news is that enrollmentfigures indicate an upward trend overtime in the number of studentsstudying a second language. TheNational Center for EducationStatistics (NCES) estimates that thepercentage of students takinglanguage courses in grades 9-12 nearlydoubled during a 50-year periodbeginning in 1948—from 21 percentto 41 percent. While languageinstruction has traditionally takenplace at the secondary level, in the lastdecade or so there has also been an“...a recent public opinion pollreported that 77 percent ofrespondents felt thata foreign language shouldbe a required subject inhigh school.”increase in instruction for bothelementary and middle schoolstudents. In the late 1990’s, theCenter for Applied Linguistics (CAL)reported an increase of 10 percentover a ten-year period in languageinstruction at the elementary level.However, most foreign languageprograms still introduce languagestudy to students in high school—generally, the ninth grade. Unfortunately,most of these students receiveinstruction for only a two-yearsequence—a problem, given themany years that it takes to master alanguage.The most popular languagecourses by far are Spanish andFrench, usually followed by Germanand Latin. There is a stark contrastbetween the languages that are taughtand those languages most widelyspoken around the world. In a reportreleased by the National Commissionon Asia in the Schools, it was noted,“language instruction did not reflecttoday’s realities.” 19 While only 80million people speak French worldwide,more than a million students inthe United States studied thelanguage. Yet, fewer than 40,000studied Chinese, a language spokenby almost 1.3 billion people. Further,the amount of time spent on secondlanguage study in the United Statesdoes not come close to that of othercountries. For example, manystudents in other parts of theworld are required to take atleast four years of English,while also taking electives in athird language.Most states’ policiesaddress foreign languageinstruction; however, thedegree varies in comparisonwith other content areas.States generally require schools tomerely offer course work tostudents who wish to learn a secondlanguage, usually at the secondarylevel (even though a recent publicopinion poll reported that 77percent of respondents felt that aforeign language should be arequired subject in high school 21 ).A majority of states have alsodeveloped content standards forlanguage study. However, only ahandful have attempted to developstatewide assessments—mostlyadministered on a voluntary basis.Further, while some states havepolicies in place for foreign languageinstruction, reports indicate that inmany places the mandates are notenforced due to a lack of funding,leaving much of the decisionmakingregarding foreign languagestudy to local policymakers andadministrators. Whereas other coresubjects such as mathematics tendto have extensive state policiesfocusing on course requirements,curriculum frameworks, andassessments, in addition to contentfocusedlicensure standards, foreignlanguages have not received the13
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