Okay, I am back at my desk after a nice break in that week or so between Christmas and New Year’s. Here are a few quick items: 1. There’s a very interesting book out there, you might want to take a look: Spin Cycle.  It’s by Jeffrey Henig, of Teacher’s College, Columbia University. He takes…

That’s right, New York City’s LaGuardia High School of Music and Arts and Performing Arts (that’s a mouthful) has cancelled its spring musical due to budget cuts. NY Times: Cuts Imperil a Real High School Musical

One of the things I had hoped to do with Dewey21C was to capture news items related to arts education that might not make it to artsjournal.com’s headlines section. Here’s one for you. No matter what the ideal many people would like to see, arts education is provided by any number of people, in a…

When I read about the closing of the Picower Foundation, it just plain took my breath away. A few days earlier, it was the JEHT Foundation, and while JEHT didn’t support arts education, it was truly one of the most important, leading funders of human rights anywhere in America. They both fell victim to the…

A month or so ago I wrote about cuts to the New York State Council on the Arts, as proposed by Governor Paterson. The cuts fell through at that time, due to political wrangling related to which party would be in the majority when, in the New York State Senate. A convoluted sentence for a…

Once upon a time, most public schools had substantial arts education, with music and art most often recognized as the formal, official art forms. Dance and theater more often appeared as extracurricular activities, i.e., drama club. For many, many years, classroom teachers were expected to be able to teach the art forms. Primary school teachers…

I am thrilled to present my first guest blogger on Dewey21c: David Shookhoff. His biography appears at the bottom of this post, but I want to add my own quick thought about David: I can’t think of any one person in the very large arts education community in New York City that has been more…

Sunday’s New York Times had a very interesting article about Scarsdale High School dropping its Advanced Placement Courses, which many had complained were overly reliant on rote memorization, with something called Advanced Topics. In addition, a handful of select private schools have abolished their Advanced Placement Courses, and paid $40,000 a piece to have Ivy…

Okay, it’s back to Dewey21c, in the long shadow of the five-day online discussion about arts education. In the next couple of days, my first guest blogger will appear. I am lining others up as well… I wanted to get back on track with my regular blog by moving fairly far afield from the topics…

When I was working as an arts education consultant in the early 90s, during pretty difficult fiscal times for schools, principals were focused on integrating the arts across the curriculum. I know this, because during this period I was involved in focus groups and interviews with hundreds of principals and school district officials across the…