Ingenuity State of the Arts Report 2016-17 Ingenuity_SOTA_2016-17 | Page 45

ARTS ASSETS IN SCHOOLS
ARTS ASSETS
IN SCHOOLS
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Staffing, Instructional Minutes and Access (for elementary schools), and
Disciplines and Depth (for high schools) are at the core of the CSC. They do
not, however, provide a complete picture of the arts education environment
students experience.
To improve the ability of the CSC to capture the entirety of a student’s
experience, Ingenuity also tracks whether or not schools provide any of
the following assets, all of which are important elements to offering and
sustaining high-quality arts experiences for students:
1 Dedicated arts budget
2 Arts-specific professional development
3 Use of arts integration strategies
4 Community arts partnerships
5 Parent and community engagement
The CSC envisions that both the elementary and high school rubrics will
include three or more of these arts assets. Throughout the last five years,
that has by and large been the case. The share of schools that report
having each of these arts assets has remained consistently high, with little
variance from year to year. A slightly higher share of elementary schools
than high schools tend to report having each of the assets.
In 2016–17, 90 percent of schools reported having a dedicated arts
budget outside of district-provided funds for arts instructors and
capital expenses, an impressive number in light of the financial challenges
principals face in a student-based budgeting environment. In the last five
years, the percentage of schools with a dedicated arts budget has ranged
from 88 percent to 95 percent.
Arts-specific professional development continues to be the area in which
there is the greatest opportunity for improvement. At 77 percent in
2016–17, and only 67 percent among high schools, the percentage of
schools engaging in arts-specific professional development for school
administrators and teachers was the lowest it has been since 2012–13.
The high mark for this measure was 84 percent in 2014–15.
PROGRESS REPORT | 2016–17