In this follow-up to her bestselling book, Why Our Schools Need the Arts, Jessica Hoffmann Davis addresses the alarming dropout rate in our high schools and presents a thoughtful, evidence-based argument that increasing arts education in the high school curriculum will keep kids in school. Davis shares compelling voices of teachers and their adolescent learners to demonstrate how courses in the arts are relevant and valuable to students who have otherwise become disenfranchised from school. This important book points the way toward rescuing the American high school from the inside out by ensuring that all students benefit from the compelling and essential learning opportunities that the arts uniquely provide. In an engaging and accessible narrative, Why Our High Schools Need the Arts will inform the uninitiated, change the minds of doubters, and fuel the fight of those already committed to arts-related school reform. This timely resource: Takes key foundational principles presented in Why Our Schools Need the Arts and describes how they work in high schools. Presents research that indicates arts learning engages youth and provides them with a reason to stay in school and graduate. Provides real-life examples, with teacher and student voices, that school reformers need to hear.

What makes a good schoolhouse? Beyond the basics of classrooms and library, a good school inspires students and teachers and enhances the learning environment through its architecture and its art. Nowhere is this principle better demonstrated than in the New York City school system, the largest in the United States, where a collection of more than 1,500 artworks has been assembled over nearly 150 years. This extraordinarily diverse group ranges from stained glass by Tiffany Studios to vast mural cycles commissioned by the WPA to modern and contemporary works by Hans Hofmann, Ben Shahn, Romare Bearden, Faith Ringgold, and Vito Acconci. Education has been a priority for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, and school construction and public art have expanded dramatically under his leadership. New school buildings have been commissioned from noted architects including Polshek Partnership, Pei Cobb Freed, and Arquitectonica, with installations by Tony Oursler, Sarah Morris, and James Casebere. Public Art for Public Schools provides a comprehensive and insightful account of the history and future of this program, lavishly illustrated with archival images from the Department of Education and handsome new photographs by the noted architectural photographer Stan Ries, which were specially commissioned for this publication.

"A comprehensive look at how the arts (broadly conceived) can improve teaching, learning, and curriculum for all students, written in accessible language for non-academics and non-experts. It contains many evocative examples to illustrate the power of the arts to change education"--

EDUCATION / Arts in Education

A Michael L. Printz Honor Book "This is East Texas, and there's lines. Lines you cross, lines you don't cross. That clear?" New London, Texas. 1937. Naomi Vargas and Wash Fuller know about the lines in East Texas as well as anyone. They know the signs that mark them. They know the people who enforce them. But sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it breaks through even the most entrenched color lines. And the consequences can be explosive. Ashley Hope Pérez takes the facts of the 1937 New London school explosion—the worst school disaster in American history—as a backdrop for a riveting novel about segregation, love, family, and the forces that destroy people. "[This] layered tale of color lines, love and struggle in an East Texas oil town is a pit-in-the-stomach family drama that goes down like it should, with pain and fascination, like a mix of sugary medicine and artisanal moonshine."—The New York Times Book Review "Pérez deftly weaves [an] unflinchingly intense narrative....A powerful, layered tale of forbidden love in times of unrelenting racism."―starred, Kirkus Reviews "This book presents a range of human nature, from kindness and love to acts of racial and sexual violence. The work resonates with fear, hope, love, and the importance of memory....Set against the backdrop of an actual historical event, Pérez...gives voice to many long-omitted facets of U.S. history."―starred, School Library Journal

What do Whoopi Goldberg, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Rosie Perez, and Phylicia Rashad have in common? A transformative encounter with the arts during their school years. Whether attending a play for the first time, playing in the school orchestra, painting a mural under the direction of an art teacher, or writing a poem, these famous performers each credit an experience with the arts at school with helping them discover their inner humanity and putting them on the road to fully realized creative lives. In The Muses Go to School, autobiographical pieces with well-known artists and performers are paired with interpretive essays by distinguished educators to produce a powerful case for positioning the arts at the center of primary and secondary school curriculums. Spanning a range of genres from acting and music to literary and visual arts, these smart and entertaining voices make surprising connections between the arts and the development of intellect, imagination, spirit, emotional intelligence, self-esteem, and self-discipline of young people. With support from a star-studded cast, editors Herbert Kohl and Tom Oppenheim present a memorable critique of the growing national trend to eliminate the arts in public education. Going well beyond the traditional rationales, The Muses Go to School shows that creative arts, as a means of academic and personal development, are a critical element of any education. It is essential reading for teachers, parents, and anyone who really cares about education.

This accessible and compelling collection of faculty reflections examines the tensions between the arts and academics and offers interdisciplinary alternatives for higher education. With an eye to teacher training, these artist scholars share insights, models, and personal experience that will engage and inspire educators in a range of post-secondary settings. The authors represent a variety of art forms, perspectives, and purposes for arts inclusive learning ranging from studio work to classroom teaching to urban settings in which the subject is equity and social justice. From the struggles of an arts concentrator at an Ivy League college to the challenge of reconciling the dual identities as artists and arts educators, the issues at hand are candid and compelling. The examples of discourse ranging from the broad stage of arts advocacy to an individual course or program give testimony to the power and promise of the arts in higher education.

Student access to arts education and the quality of such instruction in the nation's public schools continue to be of concern to policymakers, educators, and families. Specifically, research has focused on questions such as: To what extent do students receive instruction in the arts? Under what conditions is this instruction provided? What is the profile of arts education instructors? (Ruppert and Nelson 2006). This study is the third of its kind to be conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (nces) in the Institute of Education Sciences (ies), U.S. Department of Education, to provide national data that inform these issues. The first study was conducted in the 1994-95 school year to provide baseline data on public schools' approaches to arts education. The second study was conducted during the 1999-2000 school year to provide broader coverage of arts education issues by collecting the first national data on educational backgrounds, professional development activities, teaching loads, and instructional practices of elementary school teachers--self-contained classroom teachers, music specialists, and visual arts specialists. To update the information from a decade ago, Congress requested that the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Innovation and Improvement (oii) and nces conduct a new study that would borrow from and build on the previous studies. This study examines many of the issues from the previous studies, including the extent to which students received instruction in the arts; the facilities and resources available for arts education instruction; and the preparation, work environments, and instructional practices of music and visual arts specialists and non-arts classroom teachers. This study also addresses emerging issues such as the availability of curriculum-based arts education activities outside of regular school hours and the presence of school-community partnerships in the arts. In addition, the current study provides broader coverage of arts education instructors by including two new surveys for secondary music and visual arts specialists. Selected indicators on arts education in public elementary and secondary schools are organized into four sections, one for each arts education subject area--music, visual arts, dance, and drama/theatre. Using its Fast Response Survey System (frss), nces conducted the surveys during the 2009-10 school year, with the two school surveys and the collection of sampling lists for the teacher surveys starting in fall 2009. frss is a survey system designed to collect small amounts of issue-oriented data from a nationally representative sample of districts, schools, or teachers with minimal burden on respondents and within a relatively short period of time. The findings in this report have been chosen to demonstrate the range of information available from the frss study rather than to discuss all of the observed differences; they are not meant to emphasize any particular issue. The findings are based on self-reported data from public school principals and teachers. Where relevant, national findings are broken out by the poverty concentration at the school, measured as the percent of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. Appended are: (1) Technical Notes; and (2) Standard Errors for Text Tables and Figures. (Contains 63 tables, 27 figures and 16 footnotes.) [For "Supplemental Tables to the nces Report. Arts Education in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools: 1999-2000 and 2009-10 (nces 2012-014)," see ed530716.].