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I was the founding school principal of an arts-based elementary school in Louisiana. Our mission was to get kids fired up about learning by integrating the visual and performing arts throughout the curriculum. To accomplish this, we replaced paraprofessionals and other non-instructional staff with working artists: dancers, actors, painters, photographers, graphic designers, and musicians. We did residencies and workshops and held regular exhibitions and performances. We named our classrooms after teachers’ favorite artists, and we started and ended every day with A.R.T., or Art Reflection Time.

If you know a district leader whose strategies or innovations would inspire colleagues nationwide, we want to hear from you. Leaders To Learn From spotlights forward-thinking district leaders who seize on good ideas and execute them well in their school systems. The deadline for nominations is August 1, 2017.

In this article, Americans for the Arts BCA Coordinator Jessica Gaines makes the case for creativity as a vital force in today’s business environment, especially as millennials makes up the largest generation in the workforce.

There’s been a lot written about the new flexibility afforded states and districts under the Every Student Succeeds Act. A new report suggests that added leeway may pay dividends for arts education, and it offers a de-facto guide to the sections of the federal statute that may benefit that area of the curriculum.

Announcing new chapters covering a Well-Rounded Education and Tiers of Evidence in the report, ESSA: Mapping opportunities for the arts. This report highlights the ways states and districts can engage the arts in the ongoing work of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and now includes chapters on the following topics: Accountability, Assessments, Stakeholder Engagement, State Plans, Tiers of Evidence, Title I, Part A and a Well-Rounded Education.

The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities and its cultural partners – the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services – are proud to recognize 50 outstanding programs in the field of Creative Youth Development across the country for their work in providing excellent arts and humanities learning opportunities to young people. From big cities to small towns, the 2017 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award Finalists reflect the diversity of disciplines and settings of these exceptional creative youth development programs that are taking place from coast to coast.

Brian Belott has some time-honored tactics for becoming childlike. One of them simply involves staying up in his studio until he’s so tired that he can’t help but “honor every small thought” that passes through his overstretched imagination. Another is “scaling a project so large that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew—you don’t have the time to fuss over stuff.”

When the U.S. Department of Education released results from its 2016 assessment of 8th graders' achievement in the visual arts and music, the takeaway for the casual observer was not how well the students scored, but surprise that artistic skills and competencies can be measured in the first place.

The Arts Education Partnership, a center at Education Commission of the States, serves as the nation‘s hub for individuals and organizations committed to making high-quality arts education accessible to all U.S. students. AEP gathers and analyzes research and education policy information, fosters dialogue about what works in arts education, and supports advocacy for improved education policy and practice in America’s schools.