I once had a colleague complain to me about the disparities in quality among those organizations providing services to schools. Some programs were great; others were terrible. Some artists where thoughtfully developed and supported to work in schools; others were simply booked into the gig. Some organizations spent a great deal of time on reflective practice; others did nothing. You get the point.

My colleague suggested that something should be done to establish and enforce quality. In essence he was talking about the creation of some sort of oversight organization.

Centrally, the discussion was about in-school partnership programs between schools and arts education programs/organizations, rather than youth concerts at a symphony or a visit to an art exhibition by students and teachers.

And, to be even more specific, I believe the biggest concern here was focused on the work of the teaching artist, because the teaching artist tends to be the key point for delivery of such programs and services.

So, what was my response to the idea? I posited that quality is to a large degree something that the marketplace should determine. If schools (the marketplace) know what they want and need from a provider, then the organizations would adapt to the demands of the marketplace. What is more, I said that the issue of quality was ultimately the responsibility of the schools and school system. Focus should be turned towards building such capacities for school leaders, teachers, and parents throughout the system. The rest would follow.

The work should be about the needs of kids, and the fundamental context for such needs should be established by the schools. When a school community has a vision for arts education, has established goals, and a strong understanding of what it wants and needs for its students, teachers, etc., then the work can really take off.

Some simple examples of this are knowing what you want and need in a teaching artist. When a school develops a simple job description, present it to the organization, and goes to the next step of interviewing prospective teaching artists, the likelihood of success is much greater than when organizations and teaching artists are left to probe in order to try and determine the unstated goals of the school.

I spent a number of years as a teaching artist in schools that were not exactly sure what they wanted and needed, preferring to leave it to the teaching artist to develop. It’s not a great way to go about this work.

If we can find ways through policy and practice to strengthen the capacity of administrators, teachers, and parents to develop a strong, achievable vision for arts in their respective schools, so much of what ails this field would melt away. Of course it is not an easy task, considering the lack of arts knowledge for most school leaders and non-arts teachers.

Nevertheless, we need to do a better job in addressing this issue with higher education, with state boards of education, with teacher and administrator unions, and of course, the school districts to establish that sweet spot in as many school communities as possible. The beautiful thing, is that the establishment of such a vision and the capacity to make it happen in the arts, is something that can and should be applied across all domains. It’s a win-win situation across the board.