Dewey21C

Is There a Silver Bullet to Fix Education?

2008-11-19T21:00:20Z

I can't tell you how many times I have heard supporters of arts education say: "we need a research project that will prove beyond any doubt what we already know about the benefits of arts education. Then we will really make headway."

It's the silver bullet theory. In this case, it's the incontrovertible piece of research that will flip the switch.

The silver bullet theory has been at play in the movements: small schools, charter schools, vouchers, accountability, etc.

Okay, here's Diane Ravitch taking on the silver bullet theory that the Gates Foundation bought into for a cool $2 billion. That not a typo. Yup, $2 billion.

Click her to read Diane Ravitch in Forbes.com on Bill Gates And His Silver Bullet

Update on NYSCA Funding Cuts

2008-11-19T15:51:37Z

Thanks to New York State politics, the cuts to NYSCA as proposed by Governor Patterson will not be taking place. Phew....

With state budget deficits growing, what happened here may be worth noting carefully, very carefully.

It raises the question of exactly how prepared we all are to advocate during a period of budget reductions. In this instance, had the New York State Legislature had a different make-up in terms of the Senate majority, we might have seen a harsh and unfair cut to the NYSCA budget occur on a mid-year basis with barely a week for the arts community to mobilize.

My observation is that the NYSCA constituency was scrambling to address this matter. I believe that we will all need to become much more organized and coordinated, in local communities across the country, in order to provide an adequate and appropriate voice as expected cutbacks are announced, debated, and implemented.

Another interesting observation is that NYSCA's importance varies greatly depending on the size of your budget. For larger institutions, the NYSCA grant is relatively small and may not necessarily get the wheels turning in response. Mid-sized and smaller organizations depend much more heavily on funds from the New York State Council, but don't have the same clout, don't often retain lobbyists, and haven't carved out capacity in the area of advocacy.

Add to this, that many organizations had already received their grants in panels held before October and December, and as I understand it, a large part of the remaining grants which would have been zeroed out were to arts education, it further illustrates the need to connect the dots of the various arts disciplines, size organizations, etc. In other words, the arts field needs to be ready.

Budget cuts will come, but how the cuts are made and what voice the arts field has in the debate will be important for not only the financial health of the field, but in advancing this sector's capacity to influence policy. Word is that the budget process coming up will be bloody...

Are we ready? Are you ready?

A final note: The total NYSCA budget last year was approximately $49 million. When the NYCDOE eliminated the categorical funding line for arts education, known as Project Arts, that funding line, viewed by many as a critical safety net for the arts in schools, was approximately $67 million.

The Bleeding Edge: 20 Percent Mid-Year Cuts to the New York State Council on the Arts

2008-11-14T16:34:14Z

The budget for the State of New York has a big hole in it, this year and next. Governor David Patterson has proposed major cuts, some call it amputations, to the NYSCA budget.

A cut of $2.6 million occurred just a short time ago. Now the Governor has proposed an additional cut of $7 million.

All totaled, this is a near 20 percent cut, reducing the NYSCA budget to $39 million, from $49 million just a short while ago.

And, get a load of how it works: those who received grant awards in panels held before October receive their grants. If you were in the October panel, which was suspended, or the December panel, well, you would simply be SOL.

For my organization, that's a loss of near $50,000.

I have a colleague testifying today at a hearing up in Albany, the State Capitol.. The New York City Arts Coalition is getting the word out to members; the New York State Alliance of Arts Organizations and the New York State Alliance for Arts Education are organizing email campaigns; I am sure there are plenty of others, including lobbyists working to rethink these cuts.

No one can argue that cuts are necessary. However, these cuts are clearly disproportionate, unfair, and penalize grantees on the basis of timing, as in whether or not you were considered during a panel held before October.

More to come...

To Go Where No Public School Teacher Has Gone Before: No Tenure

2008-11-13T15:10:27Z

Michelle Rhee, DC Schools Chancellor, has unveiled non-tenure track pilot program for teachers in the DC public school system. With the help of private foundations, Rhee will offer this non-tenure track for teachers, in exchange for significantly increased pay.

Teacher tenure: it's the boogie-man of school administrators and free marketeers. But you know, it's like anything else: of course there are good and bad teachers, as well as those in the middle. Just as there are good and bad administrators, schools board members, janitors, major automobile companies, insurance companies, and corporate boards of directors.

Teachers will tell you they need the protection from incompetent administrators. Administrators will tell you that the due process afforded a teacher subject to dismissal has made it impossible to effectively manage a school. The free marketeers will tell you that all those bad teachers are holding education hostage.

One thing I have always found interesting about the teaching profession: it's one of the most highly trained workforces in America. Between the degrees required, the post-professional training, and more, I would challenge you to find a more highly educated workforce.

Spend some time around big city schools, or free-marketeers, and you will hear blame assigned to the teachers unions for the challenges facing school systems. If you combine yesterday's news of the Gates Foundation seeking to develop performance-based teacher pay system and the desire of the NYCDOE and others to assess teachers based on standardized tests, well, humm, it sounds like there's going to be a big push to break this key job protection for teachers.

It's actually not all that long since teachers first gained these protections. While there were teachers unions going back to the turn of the 20th century, the right to collective bargaining, which led to such job protections, did not occur until the 1960s. The reason why job protection emerged: principals were hiring and firing at will, without oversight, often tied to patronage and other things that had nothing to do with what was best for the students.

Albert Shanker used to say that teachers should not be held responsible unless the students were also held responsible. As any teacher can tell you, the background of the student: their socio-economic circumstances coupled with any physical and cognitive challenges they face make for something that many teachers struggle to deal with.

Maybe the orchestras will be next....

News Flash: Gates Foundation Announces New Focus in Education

2008-11-12T14:49:24Z

I bet this will be my most viewed blog.

The big news here is that Gates, as many people already knew, will be moving away from its focus on the creation of small schools. It will be interesting to see what happens to the small school movement, particularly those districts that are in the middle or early stages of development.

Here is an excerpt from Liz Green's piece from Gotham Schools. You can view her entire report here.

The plan will transform the foundation's education work from expensive but quiet investments that focus on a relatively small set of schools to higher-profile advocacy work that keeps up the investments in individual schools but also touches on several political hot buttons.

Among the projects the foundation will tackle: a $500 million investment in experimenting with performance-based teacher pay systems; another $500 million toward creating data systems like the ARIS warehouse in New York City; ramped-up advocacy work pushing for national standards; and a research effort to create a national test that would be distributed to states and school districts across the country, free of charge.

So, what does this mean for arts education? On the surface of it, not much. I guess if the arts are part of the national standards and accompanying national test, that might be a doorway, but that's tricky, very tricky.

You can view the Seattle Times's piece here. The Atlanta Journal Constitution has a slightly different take.

More to come on this. Of course, there is no one who sounded the bell for national standards and curriculum more than Diane Ravitch. It will be interesting to see what she has to say.

More to come on this, I am sure.

The New Math: NCLB plus Big Budget Cuts equals??

2008-11-10T14:41:40Z

My colleague said to me that "the arts are a core subject in NCLB and that alerting policy makers of this can have a powerful positive affect."

It's true, NCLB does include arts education as one of the 10 core subjects.

In reality that's a policy fantasy. "Follow the money," said another colleague. Or, "the only accountability is financial accountability," said a senior education administrator. I like that last quote. It rings true to me.

So, what's happened under NCLB? Perhaps the best take on this is from Jack Jennings at the Center on Education Policy: the narrowing of the curriculum is real.

If the curriculum was narrowing during a period of budget growth in most public schools, what do you think will happen if NCLB remains the same or has only minor changes during a period of divestment in education?

In other words, what does NCLB plus big budget cuts equal: a new, hyper-driven back-to-basics movement. Less money will be available to schools, requiring cuts to staff, supplies, funding for external providers, etc. In combination with strict accountability that excludes arts education, these cuts are going to make arts even more vulnerable than ever before.

Will changes to NCLB make a difference? Naturally, it depends on the changes. Full funding of NCLB, as proposed by President Elect Obama isn't going to help arts education. Rethinking the accountability design would help, but that's a tough and uncertain road.

Diane Ravitch's column in today's Forbes.com is a good read if you want to know a bit more about how NCLB doesn't add up and what might be done about it.

My Soundtrack for this Obama/American moment

2008-11-05T15:05:00Z

I thought about it yesterday, what music did I want to listen to, as I was sitting on the train thinking about the election. This morning, I turned to Aaron Copland and his Appalachian Spring, created in 1944 for Martha Graham, with an original set by Noguchi.

It seemed just right for the moment. Our composer from Brooklyn, a gay man who was a true progressive democrat, who worked to make the world a better place for his fellow artists, creating organizations and opportunity, fighting for the rights of artists, while arguing that classical music is and can be created by Americans. His better known works capture an iconic American sound: uplifting, of light and of darkness; anthem-like, while challenging in its own way.

A perfect soundtrack to the promise so many of us feel with the election of Barack Obama as our next president.

It could have been Bruce Springsteen, Woody Guthrie, Louis Armstrong, Randy Newman, Paul Simon, or so many others. Aaron Copland it is, for me, for this Obama/American moment.

Click here for Leonard Bernstein conducting Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring.

The Art of Voting in Maplewood New Jersey

2008-11-04T15:08:59Z

I used to love the old fashioned voting booth, where you pushed down a little thingamabob to your candidate's name, and then when done, you would move the handle from one side to the other, which required a bit of muscle, and then you heard a thump, the sound of the machine registering your vote.

And then, someone from the polling place would move the handle back to reset it, preparing the next person to vote.

That's the sort of machine I used up until recently.

Okay, today, I get to the polling place, and the new fangled machine is broken. (It's a push button machine, that will make no sound.) So, what are they doing, they're handing out paper ballots, along with number two pencils, asking you to fill in a bubble next to your choice!?!

So, we go from older, working machines, to new, busted machines, to a paper ballot that oddly resembles a standardized test! That's progress. Not to mention the loss of the visceral feel of voting in that old machine.

If I lived in a state where the election appeared to be a real horse race I might have made a stink, after all, we were filling out our ballots in PENCIL!!!

How I Learned to Love Steve Reich

2008-10-31T14:12:28Z

Last week I was talking with a middle school principal in one of CAE's programs. A network planning meeting was concluding and we got to talking about quality. At first, I thought he was asking about quality arts instruction, as in "how do you support and measure it?" It's the sort of question you want principals to ask. Very quickly the conversation went to a deeper, more interesting, and entirely affirming place: "how can you tell quality in art?"

It's the mother lode. It's the conversation you point towards, hope for, well beyond the technicalities of a school principal administering an arts education program.

We got to talking about the age old issue of works that have passed the test of time, considered to be masterpieces, versus newer works often by living artists, that are rejected outright or overlooked by those who are guided by a magical catalog of masterpieces.

We talked for a while about the great length of time it took for Mahler's works to enter the mainstream--to be accepted by audiences as masterpieces. These works, written at the turn of the 20th century, took a good 70 years or more to truly enter the classical canon.

We talked about Bach all but disappearing until Mendelssohn resurrected Bach (Mahler pun intended) among classical music enthusiasts of the 19th century.

We talked about the people who still question Jackson Pollock. We talked about Buster Keaton, and the many years his body of works languished, until James Agee's 1949 Life Magazine piece put Buster's genius back on track.

It all got me to thinking about how I learned to love Steve Reich.

The vast majority of Western music has a similar architecture or design. It's there in a Strauss opera, as well as a great song by Gershwin or even a phrase of Woody Guthrie. The music of Steve Reich does not make use of that architecture. Its influence comes from Africa. It has a steady pulse, and phrases that appear to be repeating themselves, over and over. Reich describes it as 'pulsatile." In fact, these repeating phrases contain small, almost imperceptible changes that alter the music subtly over time. I would argue that if you can hear these changes, than you really aren't taking the music in.

Are you still with me? Okay, here's the deal: Reich's music does not employ the narrative that is prototypical to most Western music. If you're looking for the building of phrase, harmony, rhythm to an emotional peak, well, you won't find it in Reich music. If you're listening for that Western narrative, you are SOL. You will find something else which asks you to receive the music in a different way.

In the mid-eighties, one of my dearest friends, freelance trumpeter Terry Szor, gave me a cassette of Music for Eighteen Musicians. He told me that it "changed my life." It's the turn of a phrase I have heard spoken about Reich's music so very, very often. So, I tried it on for size; I hated it.

I was listening for that Western narrative. In arts education, artists and teacher often work with the parallels between the architecture of sentences and paragraphs in literature (English Language Arts) and music. Naturally, settings of literary works to music, such as Schubert lieder, reinforce this relationship. That being said, if you were to compare Reich's music, or Coltrane's Interstellar Space or Sun Ship to such literary works, you might not know where to start. I chose thse examples because Reich was influenced by the later, "experimental" works of John Coltrane, which are rarely mentioned against Coltrane's more traditional works, such as the beloved Blue Train or My Favorite Things.

God, this is a long blog....I hope you'll read it!

So, here I was listening with my Western ears, getting supremely bored (Coltrane pun intended), getting annoyed, and I quickly bailed, wondering what exactly was wrong with my friend Terry. Years later, after I finally learned to love Steve Reich, I played a recording of Drumming for another close friend, who got mad and instructed me in no uncertain terms to turn it off, immediately!

The first time I remember really finding my way with Reich's music was at a dance performance. There was something about following the dance, the visual aspect, that allowed me to take the music in, in an entirely different way. I wasn't listening for a certain progression, a certain phrase, a certain architecture--all the things I had been trained to listen for in music, but instead I felt the music, received it--allowed it to wash over me. Watching the dance made it possible. It was as if a switch was flipped.

This letting go of my intellectual ear, my thinking ear, perhaps better put, led me to a place where the music created a feeling that I could only describe as euphoric and trance-like, if, and only if I really gave in to it. Time and space sort of stopped, and I connected with the genius of Steve Reich. I learned to love Steve Reich.

It's what makes this question of quality difficult to answer in the simple way that an educator might like. Not to mention the question of assessing knowledge. Can't we create a rubric for this? The rubric of genius! How could it be that I moved along a continuum of experience and learning to evolve from someone who wanted Reich's music to stop, to someone who experienced a physical euphoria while listening to the work, wishing the music would never stop?

And, this isn't limited to Reich. To this day, I hear from the people who tell me that John Cage's genius is for his "ideas," not his music. Oh really?

I want to tie this back to education. Arts education, as well as education in general. The complexity of this matter, the kaleidoscope of quality, in so many ways speaks to the complexity of teaching and learning, and of course, how we evaluate, test, measure, and establish systems of accountability.

Is Andy Warhol genius or charlatan? Is Reich a genius or annoying? Can standardized testing ever be an effective measure for understanding a complex world of teaching, learning, and human development? Perhaps when that task force or administrator gives us our rubric of genius we will know for sure. And for those who think I am kidding, believe me, that rubric is being worked on somewhere, someplace.

Pulling a fast one? Arts Education vs Arts Integration

2008-10-30T13:13:17Z

So, I am looking over the agenda, and lo and behold, I see a roundtable discussion titled: "Arts Education vs Arts Integration." It's the second time in the past six months I have seen this odd and infuriating distinction, which appears on the surface to part of an attempt to define learning "through the arts" as something other than arts education. Okay, call me paranoid.

I don't know about you, but I have always understood, rather clearly, that the larger field was arts education, of which arts integration or learning "through the arts" was one approach.

So, what gives? WTH? WTF? WMD?

Have the counterproductive, time wasting, obtuse battles between those who embrace arts integration and those who don't expanded to an attempt to rewrite the lexicon?

I hope not, for it would be another instance of the arts education field shooting itself in the foot, while an economic and accountability storm gathers having the potential to send the arts in the schools back to very dark days.

"Learning in and through the arts." The way it is.

The State of Arts Education in the NYC Public Schools

2008-10-20T15:22:40Z

Buyer beware: this is not a brief blog...

Last Tuesday, the New York City Department of Education released its second Annual Arts in the Schools Report, which is part of a larger initiative called Arts Count.

There were three press articles that covered this report:

NY Times

NY Post

Inside Schools

Here is the press release issued by the NYCDOE

Okay, what are the key points that made it to the press release?

"Among the main findings:

· Forty-five percent of elementary schools offered all four art disciplines in 2007-2008, up from 38 percent in 2006-2007.

o 92 percent of elementary schools offered visual arts

o 89 percent of elementary schools offered music

o percent of elementary schools offered dance

o 56 percent of elementary schools offered theater

· Thirty-three percent of middle schools offered all four art disciplines, up from 17 percent in 2006-2007; and student participation increased in all four disciplines.

o 91 percent participated in visual arts programs, up from 84 percent

o 75 percent participated in music programs, up from 69 percent

o 57 percent participated in dance programs, up from 36 percent

o 56 percent participated in theater programs, up from 49 percent

· A greater percentage of high school students are participating in arts instruction by discipline.

o In the 9^th grade, student participation in dance, theater, and visual arts increased by more than ten percentage points in each discipline.

o In the 10^th grade, student participation in dance, music, theater, and visual arts increased by more than six percentage points in each discipline.

o In the 11^th grade, student participation in dance, music, and theater increased by more than five percentage points in each discipline.

o In the 12^th grade, student participation in dance and theater increased by at least ten percentage points.

The report also shows that despite budget constraints, school leaders reported hiring an additional 152 certified arts teachers. Spending levels remained essentially unchanged.

Last year, the Department of Education used several approaches to enhance access and participation rates. These included:

· Establishing the Arts Education Liaison position in more than 1,200 schools. The Arts Education Liaison assists the principal in planning arts instruction, choosing cultural partners, and completing the Annual Arts Survey;

· Building awareness of the requirements for arts education, resulting in a higher survey response rate. The 2007-2008 response rate was 91 percent, representing 1,307 schools, compared to 75 percent, representing 939 schools, in 2006-2007;

· Offering technical assistance and support to every school. More than 800 schools accepted and received help in implementing arts programming;

· Identifying schools in need of improvement in arts education programs and providing specific support services such as visits to best practice sites, seminars on budgeting and scheduling, and an introduction to the Blueprints for Teaching and Learning in the Arts--a research-based approach to teaching arts implemented under Children First."

Okay, what didn't make it to the press release and what warrants further examination in the report?

The number of schools without any arts teachers jumped from approximately 20% to almost 30%. (There are almost 1500 schools in the system--you can do the math.)

Spending on arts supplies went down by 63% (a reduction in almost $7 million). That's a whole lot of supplies.

Spending on services of cultural organizations went down by over $500,000. If you factor in that cultural organizations match the contributions of schools by two dollars for every one dollar a school spends, you're looking at total reduction in $1.5 million related to services provided by outside organizations. This is particularly important when you consider the dearth of certified arts teachers.

The number of arts teachers at the middle school level declined, as well as overall spending at the middle schools. But, somehow the number of students provided with the minimum state requirements in arts education jumped from 29% in last year's report to 46% in the new report. While it is not impossible for this to have occurred, it's a bit of a head scratcher.

Even after what many believe to be the largest budget increase in the history of New York City public schools, from approximately $12 billion in 2003 to almost $20 billion at present, you have only 8% of all elementary schools even in the position to provide the minimum State requirements, by offering all four art forms in all grades. Granted, last year only 4% met this criterion. Yes, you have a 100% increase. And at that rate, it will take how many years to meet the requirements for all students? The answer is four years. But not so fast. We're talking about offering what amounts to the minimum requirements, not rates of participation. Nevertheless, if this rate of increase could be sustained, that would be a very important win for the children. Wouldn't it be grand if the City of New York pledged to maintain that rate of growth, for even if it doesn't give us 100% participation, it would be a foundational growth in capacity.

The press release indicates that 152 new certified arts teachers were added. Sounds great? Only it's not the whole story, as a review of data in the report indicates an increase of 61 teachers. How is that possible? Well, we surmise they don't factor in the number of positions lost to attrition. In all fairness, that is still 61 new teachers. That being said, these positions were added during the historic budget expansion period. This is also an example of how the data can be misleading. Sixty-one teachers were added while there was a 10% increase in the number of schools without certified arts teachers. Our interpretation is that some arts friendly principals used their increased budgets to hire more arts teachers, while many principals that had one certified arts teacher on staff cut back to zero.

The report indicates that "per capita" spending rose from $308 to $311 per student. (Actually, last year's report states the spending was at $312). Again, it sounds great, doesn't it? Where else in the country are they spending $311 per student? If you consider that there are hundreds of schools without a certified arts teacher, how could the per capita spending be $311? Certainly, if you add up all spending attributable to arts education, and divide it by the number of students, you can calculate such a per capita figure. But this doesn't really tell us much of the story, as to who is provided with what. What is the per capita spending in a school where the kids haven't a single certified arts teacher and spending on cultural providers is being cut, versus spending at the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts High School? This is an area that needs much greater attention.

The section on response rates of schools is another head scratcher. Last year's report stated that only 1078 schools were included in the report, even though the initial response rate was over 1200 schools. This year's reports state that last year's response rate was only 939 schools. If last year's report factored data from 1078 schools, how could it only have 939 responses?

It's also interesting that both this year and last year's report give the impression that all high school students receive the arts education required by the State of New York. This is because one cannot graduate without one year of arts education. That is, roughly speaking, the minimum requirement. However, if you consider graduation rates, as well as alternative pathways to high school diplomas, well, many high school students are not being provided with arts education. It is another area, a significant one, warranting a different methodology.

This is a particularly important area of concern. Upon analysis of last year's report, we determined a clear statistical correlation between those who study the arts, and attendance and graduation rates. In a system struggling to raise graduation rates, it would appear that participation in high quality arts for all high school students on a regular basis would be an important approach to raising the graduation rates.

The report is hobbled by much of what ails many of the similar reports being released elsewhere: it is heavily weighted towards explicating what is "offered," without going the next very hard mile to determine real rates of participation. As long as these reports tell us, in the main, what is "offered" but do not apply more sophisticated and costly methodologies to uncover participation to a much greater degree, a veil will remain over the data and its utility.

Finally, for a report of this importance, most of the researchers I have spoken with have stated that there should be some independent verification of the data provided by the principals. Almost everything is self-reported, with internal verification by the NYCDOE data. Perhaps a sample of schools might have been selected for site visits and detailed auditing of data for verification purposes?

Everyone I know feels that the NYCDOE Office of Arts and Special Projects, led by Interim Acting Executive Director Paul King, is doing the very best job possible under policies they do not control. I certainly feel that way.

You must remember that this report, for all intents and purposes, reflects another time and place, before Wall Street and Main Street started tumbling. What will safeguard the arts in New York City schools, especially when the grade scores given each school, to which principal accountability is based, do not reflect the arts in any real, meaningful, and practical way. When budgets start to tumble, and with the rubber meeting a road paved with ELA and math scores, what will happen to the arts?

All in all, I would have to say this the report has a through the looking glass quality that doesn't provide the real tools we need, namely a detailed understand of what each child receives and what it will take to get us to a well-rounded education that includes the arts for every child, while meeting the minimum requirements required by the State of New York.

Thanks to my colleagues Doug Israel and Kira Raffel at The Center for Arts Education with assistance in putting what should have been a multi-part blog into one post.

Okay, for those who had the patience to read through the entire post, here's a pop quiz: What do you call a watch dog that doesn't bark or bite? Email me with your answer and don't forget your number two pencil.

BIG IDEA: Let's pay students to study arts education!

2008-10-17T13:32:50Z

Okay, I know, it makes no sense. Why would we pay kids to study arts education when they like studying the arts, it has a positive effect on attendance, and in many districts across the nation, kids are denied access to arts instruction?

I was just trying to get your attention.

If you haven't already heard, paying kids to take tests, improve performance, and attend school is the next wave of "school reform." There are also programs to pay parents to make sure their kids attend school, take tests, etc.

Diane Ravitch, the leading education historian in the United States, among other formidable accomplishments, has written a piece on this issue for forbes.com.

Click here to read it. If you do, you'll get a $1.00 check in the mail!

Hey wait, there's one more important debate!

2008-10-16T19:33:21Z

And you thought the debates were over. This will be a good one. Click here to register.

Education and the Election

Two must-see events on edweek.org

Live Debate: Education and the Next President

Exclusive webcast, Tuesday, October 21, 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Eastern time

Live from Teachers College, Columbia University: "Education and the Next President," a debate between Linda Darling-Hammond, education adviser to Democratic nominee Barack Obama, and Lisa Graham Keegan, education adviser to Republican nominee John McCain.

Doctor Atomic: Education/Outreach Gets Rave Review

2008-10-16T13:44:59Z

"Rave review." That's right, by me!

Overlooked among the media coverage on Doctor Atomic is the support provided for those who want to learn more. When it comes to opera, I have long admired John Adams for creating works that have direct relevance to my life and times. Don't get me wrong, I admire John for his music and his increasingly important role as a musical ambassador. In fact, John is a friend of mine. That being said, his operas are about a world I know, my world, and while I always appreciate the universal quality of timeless operas and other musical works, there is something more broadly satisfying when it come to a work that has a true, bulls-eye quality when it comes to cultural relevance.

So, here you have a work with so very many opportunities to explore that cultural relevance: history, science, politics, and more, all connected to some of the most striking figures of the 20th century, including J. Robert Oppenheimer and Harry Truman.

This work was crying out for a broad-based approach to education and outreach, and the Met Opera and Met Opera Guild has done one bang up job.

Click these links to see all that the Met Opera and Met Opera Guild have to offer, including:

Science and Society--Explore the impact of the bomb on science, the arts, current events, and more.

Doctor Atomic Events

The Doctor Atomic Blog

Doctor Atomic Study Guide

"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." J.Robert Oppenheimer as he witnessed the first successful test of the atomic bomb.

Exploratorium's Doctor Atomic Website

Oppenheimer recalls the moment

The State of Arts Education in Colorado

2008-10-14T17:00:09Z

Over the past year or two we've seen the emergence of significant studies to determine the levels of access to arts education by students in a given state or in some instances a city. Later today, the New York City Department of Education will release its second Annual Arts in the Schools Report. This year, they're not inviting press to the release. More on that report later this week.

I came across this study by the Colorado Department of Education and the Colorado Arts Council.

Click here for the full report

Click here for the beautifully prepared summary

Not surprisingly, the study finds "that while most schools offer some formal arts education to a majority of students, an estimated 29,000 students attend public schools that do not offer any formal arts education."

Importantly, "offer" only tells us so much. There is always a major gap between what's offered and what is received. For instance, in some research related to a Wallace Foundation grant to the NYCDOE, it was estimated that while 50% of the middle schools "offer" dance, only 10% of the students receive it.

The study also claims that "new data reveals that Colorado public high schools offering more arts education have higher scores on state tests in reading, writing and science - regardless of student ethnicity or socioeconomic status. They also have lower dropout rates."

Naturally, these finding are not about "transference" of arts education to reading, writing, and science. They are looking at statistical relationships between students who study arts and their grade scores in certain subject areas, as well as dropout rates. We've seen these claims before, particularly in regards to SAT scores and the number of years a students studies music in high school.

Nevertheless, the more we have to understand the state of access to arts education, the better the position we are in to advocate.

If you're interested in this area, be sure to look at both the SRI report for the Hewlett Foundation and the census report done of all schools in the State of New Jersey.