Arts Education for America’s Students

National Art Education Association (NAEA) and other national arts and education organizations release a statement calling on policy makers and the public to re-examine support for quality arts education.

Arts Education for America’s Students: A Shared Endeavor is a statement outlining the importance of high quality arts education and those responsible for providing it to students. It articulates the purpose and value of art education in the balanced curriculum of all students, asserts its place as a core academic subject area, and details how sequential arts learning can be supported by rigorous national standards and assessments. The statement was created to respond to the alarming marginalization of quality arts education in America’s schools in recent years, as funding, staffing, and school time have increasingly focused on tested subject areas.

A Shared Endeavor defines what quality arts education looks like at the local level, encourages partnerships, and calls on organizations and individuals to actively support and promote:

• Policies and resources for arts education.
  
• Access to arts education for all students.
  
• Collaboration between school-based arts educators, other subject area teachers, community-based artists, and arts educators.
  
• Long-term advocacy partnership between all providers of arts education.

A Shared Endeavor should be used as an action tool to help prompt dialogue and engagement with your community arts education leaders in a Q&A conversation about how students in your community access arts education, beginning with these questions:

• How do your students have access to arts education in your community’s schools?
  
• How do your community-based arts educators such as an art museum or a community school of music connect with your community’s schools?
  
• How do your teachers connect the learning in their classrooms to learning in the arts? How can you support them in that endeavor?
  
• Where do you have strong supports for arts education at your school? What arts education does your state require schools to provide?