6 EDCAL April 16 , 2018
Arts education data shows progress in student access
Create CA , in partnership with the California Department of Education and the Arts Education Data Project , released survey results that show fewer students doing without art , but there is a continuing need to improve student participation rates .
The executive summary of the data shows that although more than 97 percent of students have access to some level of arts education , 25 percent of students have access to all four arts disciplines of dance , music , theatre and visual art as required by the state education code . Also , 87 percent of schools provide at least one arts discipline , but only 12 percent offer the four required arts disciplines .
The data shows the need to improve student participation rates , as only 39 percent of students were enrolled in at least one arts discipline . Further disparities exist by discipline , with 17 percent of students enrolled in art , 14 percent in music , 6 percent in arts , media and entertainment , 4 percent in theatre , and 2 percent in dance . Visit www . artseddata . org to learn more . “ Data is an important tool to improve outcomes ,” said Bob Morrison of Quadrant Research , the Arts Education Data Project ’ s research partner and project director . “ In New Jersey , we saw that just the act of making arts education data available to schools led to increased participation rates , and we have high hopes for California .”
The data reinforces the need to continue to address inequities in access to and participation in arts education . The data shows the greater the percentage of students on free and reduced-price lunch , the lower the arts participation rate .
The California Arts Education Data Project analyzes and reports school-level data on arts education courses in grades 6-12 throughout the state . It is designed to enable leaders at the state , district and school level – as well as parents and advocates – to identify and address education inequities across the state .
New features have been designed to help increase participation in the arts , including an equity feature that compares participation by students on free and reduced-price lunch , a year-over-year comparison dashboard and a Trends Dashboard that shows changes over the last four years . Visit www . createca . dreamhosters . com to learn more .
Other tools include the California Arts Education Data Project ’ s Roadmap for School Districts , which guides districts through the process of examining their data to better understand unique circumstances and challenges .
The roadmap contains resources and helpful guides to assist districts in assessing their own programs and creating strategic arts plans . Finally , the California Arts Education Data Project Communication Toolkit provides materials to share these new resources with local stakeholders .
“ School leaders want to offer diverse and high-quality arts education courses , which are essential to ensuring our students foster the creativity needed for 21st century careers ,” said Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson . “ We know arts education in California isn ’ t where we want it to be and we ’ re excited to join with our partners to continually provide updates to the data and new tools to help connect school leaders with other districts to learn best practices and strategies for navigating challenges .”
Presented in a user-friendly , color-coded dashboard , the project provides important information to education leaders , teachers and parents about levels of access to and enrollment in arts programming in schools . The dashboard allows users to review school-level , district , county and statewide data and presents the statewide averages as the baseline for comparison . It reports data from 2013-14 through 2016- 17 , the most recent year of reported data from 3,719 schools , covering more than 3 million students in grades 6-12 , roughly half of California ’ s student population .
“ Quality arts education has long been lauded as an important priority in California because we know it sparks creative thinking , an essential skill to succeed in today ’ s competitive workforce ,” said Anne Bown- Crawford , chair of Create CA , California ’ s Statewide Arts Education Coalition . “ But as the Blueprint for Creative Schools identified , until now there have been few opportunities to analyze arts education data in a coordinated effort to identify and help address education inequities at the secondary school level .”
Research findings summary
• Between 2014 and 2017 , there was a 26 percent decline in the number of students without access to any arts instruction .
• Although more than 97 percent of students have access to some level of arts education , only 25 percent of students have access to all four arts disciplines of dance , music , theatre and visual art as required by the state education code . Also , although 87 percent of schools provide at least one arts discipline , only 12 percent of schools offer the four required arts disciplines .
• In total , 39 percent of students were enrolled in at least one arts discipline . Further disparities exist by discipline , with 17 percent of students enrolled in art , 14 percent in music , 6 percent in arts , media and entertainment , 4 percent in theatre and 2 percent in dance .
• The data shows the greater the percentage of students receiving free and reduced-price lunch , the lower the participation rate in the arts . However , the gap closed by 2 percent increasing to 36 percent participation as opposed to 34 percent previously .
• Students with no access to the arts were overrepresented in charter schools .
• Although schools with no arts courses tend to be in rural areas , the greatest concentration of students without access to arts is in large cities .
• Student enrollment in arts education during middle school was unusually low . In other states arts education participation rates decline as the grade levels advance , but in California there was a larger percentage of students participating in high schools than in either middle schools or elementary / high school combination schools .
• The overall student-to-arts-teacher ratio in traditional public schools was 191 to 1 , which is an improvement of 17 percent from 2015 ( 232 to 1 ).
Job listings and more at www . acsa . org / careers
Paid Advertisement