I hope that everyone will read about Don Rosenberg, the long-term, deeply respected music critic of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, being reassigned so that he will no longer be reviewing The Cleveland Orchestra.The music journalism perspective has been covered very well, very quickly and if you haven't taken a look, you can find it on the pages of artsjournal.com.  However, beyond the question of whether a music journalist or any arts journalist might have to think twice about dishing out negative reviews, there's the simple matter of freedom … [Read more...]

Eduwonkette. She's Babe Ruth, Wayne Gretzky, Diane Ravitch, and Edward Murrow all rolled into one. She's absolutely brilliant as she manages to remain cheeky and friendly, while taking on many of the specious claims connected to testing, accountability, and the powerful propaganda machines claiming great success as a result of test score obsessed reforms.The more I read her blog, the more I see new ammunition forming for arts education advocates to take on the giant machine of tests and purported accountability, the so-called successful reforms … [Read more...]

You hear it all the time, that schools should be accountable same as the workplace. Merit pay, determined by performance evaluations, rewards high performing employees and creates a highly competitive, successful workplace. Conversely, workers that do poorly as measured by their employee evaluations will be weeded out. It all works for the good of the company and its profit line and/or mission. Produce and we will reward; don't produce and we will get rid of you.So, shouldn't this be extended to schools? Would it be just that simple to use … [Read more...]

Many people know Martin Bookspan, the long-term host of Live from Lincoln Center on PBS who retired in 2006. For those of you around long enough, you may even know Martin from his tenure at ASCAP.Janet Bookspan was Martin's wife and I remember her today in this blog because she was one of the first people to prepare artists to work in the community and schools. Essentially, among a handful of people like Janet and my former boss Mitchell Korn, the term "artist training" was most likely born after they began work in this area. Everyone knows … [Read more...]

With city, county, and state tax rolls down, and expenses rising, we're probably looking at the scenario of proposed cuts to arts education budget lines. The following email came my way yesterday from Big Thought of Dallas. It's a great example, from a great organization, of rolling up your sleeves to mobilize constituents against budget cuts to arts education.Email from Big Thought of Dallas:The Dallas arts community needs your help, please...WITHIN THE NEXT 48 HOURS!This is a critical time for the arts in Dallas.  Over the next few days … [Read more...]

Based on some comments and emails to yesterday's blog, I thought it might be helpful to provide a link defining the term "school choice." It's from none other than the foundation run by the very father of school choice, the oracle of free market school systems as well as everything else free market: Milton Friedman.http://www.friedmanfoundation.org/friedman/schoolchoice/ … [Read more...]

Dagnabbit! Just when you think you did a nice blog on where the two major presidential candidates stand on arts education (and education overall), one of the candidates has to go and unveil a new education platform. Yesterday, in Dayton, Ohio, Barack Obama presented his "A New Vision for 21st Century Education."Tops on the list is school choice! For those who were excited by Barack Obama mentioning arts education in his primary speeches and on his platform, well, I have bad news for you. It's not part of this vision for a 21st century. So, … [Read more...]

It's true, Barack Obama has an education platform that includes arts education, and during the primaries he spoke any number of times about the importance of arts education. That being said, if you want to find his platform for arts education, be prepared to click through any number of times until you get to his fact sheet on arts. John McCain has an education platform that doesn't mention arts education specifically, but lists a number of priorities buoyed by vouchers, charter schools, and NCLB.There was a point about six months ago when … [Read more...]