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A Favorite Arts Education Video: Powerful Learning Through The Arts
It’s a tough genre, primarily because the bulk of these sorts of videos tend to be promotional (see boring). There’s a reason for this, I think, and it’s because video production isn’t cheap and there’s pressure to promote your own work. Moreover, showing process is a pretty tricky thing. Without the process, well, there’s no…
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To Have and Have Not: Arts Education in American Public Schools
Before I start this entry, will everyone join me in wishing Jane Remer a VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!************************************************************************************************************A couple of years ago I was attending a conference on arts education,convened by the United States Department of Education for its AEMDD and Professional Development grantees. One of the panel sessions involved arts education and trauma. In this…
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Breaking Through the Roadblock: An Example from Science Education Advocacy
As a follow-up to yesterday’s entry, The First Roadblock to Arts Education Policy Improvement, I offer a very interesting item, an example if you will, as to what it looks like when such roadblocks are broken through. Perhaps bypassed would be a better way to treat the metaphor, as you never know what’s on the…
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The First Roadblock to Arts Education Policy Improvement
“If we did it for the arts, we would have to do it for every subject.” That’s it. There you have it. That’s the first roadblock pulled out of a hat to rationalize “why not.” I have heard this particular roadblock deployed many times, including in response to the advocacy for a special form of…
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Beaverton Oregon School District Meets the Required i3 Match
The Beaverton School District and Young Audiences Arts for Learning have completed raising the required match to secure its i3 grant from the USDOE. The school district and partners had approximately 21 days to raise the required $800,000, not a small sum for a relatively small school district, in this economy no less. Bravo!
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A Good Idea: Let’s End Test Prep and Expand the Curriculum
In today’s New York Daily News, United Federation of Teacher President, Michael Mulgrew called for an end to test prep: Test prep isn’t instruction. In virtually every school I have gone into in recent years, teachers complained about instructional time lost to prepping students for tests. Art and music fell by the wayside years ago…
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Books. Children. Arts. Education!
It’s never too early to consider your holiday gift list. Today, I present to you a lucky 13 list of primarily arts-oriented books for children. The wonderful thing about these books, which for me is a big-time measure of children’s book quality overall, is that adults will enjoy these books just as much as the…
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Fund Advocacy or Direct Service? Is there a third way?
Speaking of advocacy, I came across a rather interesting and compact blog by Ashley Blanchard of the consulting group TCC: Finding the Right Balance, Thoughts on Advocacy and Direct Service Funding. For better or worse, the recent economic crisis has changed the way some funders are thinking about their support for advocacy and direct services,…
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Former Arts Endowment Official Takes Arts Ed Advocates To Task
In the new edition of Education Next, Mark Bauerlein takes a dim view of the nature of arts education advocacy and offers a prescription for improvement, namely a focus on arts as a discrete discipline and a more entrepreneurial approach overall. Click on through to read Advocating for Arts in the Classroom. In essence, Bauerlein…
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Judging Teachers by Test Scores? Not quite.
This issue, one among many in “school reform,” has me worried. You have to wonder whether teacher evaluation based upon test scores will only further marginalize arts education, as arts education assessment lies outside of the types of teacher evaluation being heavily promoted by so very many. For the record, this type of assessment is…