I received a letter from someone at the NYC Dept of Cultural Affairs from Joel Klein about eliminating Project ARTS (which essentially gave schools a pocket of funds restricted to arts programs). The full copy of his letter is below. What immediately follows is my concerns with his rationale:
"Setting high standards and holding schools accountable for results is the way we ensure that schools help students learn math and reading. We do not earmark funds for teaching reading and math. We simply demand results. This must also be the way we ensure that arts instruction is as good as it must be."He’s comparing apples and oranges. There is no equivalent demanding of "results" in the arts.
In a vacuum, yes he’s right. But in a political context, student performance in reading and math are very public and a significant part of how job performance of school leaders and administrators is evaluated (especially his job and his boss’, who told us in his campaign to fire him if math and reading scores didn’t go up).
We don’t need a line item telling principals to spend money on math and reading, it’d be like making a law telling people to breathe. Projects ARTS is more like a mandate requiring school leaders and administrators to do what’s in the long-term interest of their schools and students when unfortunately, they live (like politicians) on a very short leash.
A better way to look at it is requiring people to exercise and eat their vegetables. You know in your heart its good for you (or rather your kids), but life’s immediate pressures make it easy for you to push it aside without some lever to hold you accountable for doing it.
He says:"Under our reforms, we will continue to promote strong arts standards through the "Blueprint" we rolled out in 2004." 'Promote' is a wishy-washy word. I wish he’d come with something stronger like “require” or “mandate". These standards are not universally implemented at every school and principals currently lack the incentive to implement them fully even WITH the existence of project Arts budget lines.
He says:"We will also, increasingly, hold schools responsible for providing our children with a high-quality arts education. Our parent, teacher, and student surveys will ask about the quality of arts education." I doubt that parent surveys about the quality of the arts is going to be as heavy a motivator as student promotion and test scores for school leaders.
He says:"This survey data will factor into schools’ Progress Report grades. The quality of schools’ arts programs will also affect their annual Quality Review scores. Additionally, we are creating a brand new Annual Arts in School Report that will include information on participation and spending on school arts, Quality Review assessments of arts programming, and results from the parent-student-teacher survey. This Report will be available every year to all parents, principals, and students."This is the million-dollar question. If doe schools are going to go in the direction of charter schools as "empowerment schools" (more accountability for "results" (i.e. test scores) then the arts have to be a significant part of a school's licensing process and a principal's job performance.
The real problem with this is that it is a quality reviews of the arts in the school NOT an evaluation or an assessment of HOW WELL students are performing in the arts. What was so exciting about the blueprint was that it not only laid out a comprehensive K-12 arts education across disciplines, but started the conversation as to what constituted exemplary work so that we could talk about student performance in the arts. We ask to see if our kids are up to snuff in reading and math, why not the arts? (this gets into a bigger pedagogical debate if we want the arts to be some standardized thing measured which I'm not going to address only to say that I think by bringing the arts into this conversation we can think about how we assess learning beyond quantitative measures).
He says:"Critics of our Children First reforms are giving schools—and principals—very little credit, far less credit than you deserve. I have enormous faith that you know what your schools and your students need to achieve in the arts. I trust you to spend the money how best you see fit. I think this will be especially true when we hold you accountable for results."* “Faith?” What is this, The Bush administration? For such a business-minded administration to suddenly forget that people's behavior often responds to incentives (thank you Professor O'Regan!) to depend on "faith" speaks volumes about the importance they place on this area. What gets measured is what gets done, probably my most enduring lesson from public policy (good lookin’ out Professor Smith). Klein talks as if his policies and measures will have no impact on the behavior of school leaders that they’ll just do what they think is best in a vacuum. If their kids are promoted, and their jobs are retained based on reading and math test scores and less on the basis of performance in content areas like art, social studies and science than those are the areas that will be squeezed out more no matter how much more general money they have. I don't think a parent survey and a quality assessment report is going to cut it.
A Message from Chancellor Klein:
Dear Colleagues,
Three decades ago, when our City was facing a fiscal crisis, we entered a kind of Dark Ages of the arts in our public schools. Our system faced enormous budget cuts and our schools lost the money that once paid for thriving art, music, theater, and dance programs. I think we all agree that cutting the arts was a tragedy for our students, for our schools, and for our City. Back then, the non-profit cultural community responded immediately by providing arts edu cation for our children. This momentum increased about 10 years ago when Mayor Giuliani launched "ProjectARTS," creating an annual line item for arts in schools budgets.
Over the past decade, and in the past five years under Mayor Bloomberg’s leadership, the arts have blossomed in our schools. More and more, principals are dedicating resources to arts programs; more and more, all of the wonderful arts organizations in our City are forming partnerships with our schools and enhancing the program that our schools offer. Today, our schools spend $320 million a year on the arts. ProjectARTS makes up just a fraction (about one-fifth) of that budget.
I know many of you probably read the stories in last week’s newspapers about what our new Children First reforms mean for arts edu cation in our schools. Let me be very clear: I believe that arts are fundamental to edu cation. We will not allow what happened in the 1970s to happen again in our schools. We are not cutting ProjectARTS funds. In fact, schools will continue to receive all the money they get this year and most schools will receive additional money that they will be able to use to enhance their arts programs. I believe most schools will spend the same or more next year on arts edu cation. That said, if I’m wrong and if I notice any diminution in the amount we are spending on arts or any r edu ction in the quality of our arts programs, I will take immediate action to ensure that our students are receiving the kind of high-quality art, drama, music, and dance instruction they need.
Setting high standards and holding schools accountable for results is the way we ensure that schools help students learn math and reading. We do not earmark funds for teaching reading and math. We simply demand results. This must also be the way we ensure that arts instruction is as good as it must be.
Under our reforms, we will continue to promote strong arts standards through the "Blueprint" we rolled out in 2004. We will also, increasingly, hold schools responsible for providing our children with a high-quality arts edu cation. Our parent, teacher, and student surveys will ask about the quality of arts edu cation. This survey data will factor into schools’ Progress Report grades. The quality of schools’ arts programs will also affect their annual Quality Review scores. Additionally, we are creating a brand new Annual Arts in School Report that will include information on participation and spending on school arts, Quality Review assessments of arts programming, and results from the parent-student-teacher survey. This Report will be available every year to all parents, principals, and students.
Critics of our Children First reforms are giving schools—and principals—very little credit, far less credit than you deserve. I have enormous faith that you know what your schools and your students need to achieve in the arts. I trust you to spend the money how best you see fit. I think this will be especially true when we hold you accountable for results.
I cannot emphasize enough our commitment to arts edu cation in schools. I look forward to working together to further enhance our arts instruction. Please contact me or our senior instructional manager for arts edu cation, Sharon Dunn at sdunn@schools.nyc.gov, if you have any questions or want advice on how to improve your school’s arts programs.
Sincerely,
Joel I. Klein
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