FYI: In 1997, California ranked 50th among the states in the ratio of music teachers to students.

Local educators struggle to fill the arts gap left by Proposition 13

BY GLEN STARKEY

Little Jane and Johnny may be able to read, write, add, and subtract, but when it comes to understanding, appreciating, and talking about the arts, they’re both wearing dunce caps.

There is little argument among educators concerning the sad state of the arts in California public education, especially in grammar and secondary school. According to a 1997 report by the California Superintendent’s Task Force on Visual and Performing Arts, arts education in California has been in a perpetual state of crisis since the 1978 passage of Proposition 13, the Howard Jarvis-led tax-revolt movement that kept money in homeowners’ pockets and out of public education coffers.

Because public schools are funded in large part by local property taxes, school administrators had some hard decisions to make regarding what subjects were more important. Math, science, language, and history were in; music, painting, dance, and theater were out. Unfortunately, what education researchers have discovered over the ensuing 24 years is this: Arts education benefits students in a variety of ways that enhance their studies in other subjects. In other words, a failure in arts education leads to a failure in education in general, which may explain poor performance in standardized testing among California students.

Just how bad was the state of California arts education at the time of the Superintendent’s Task Force report? The statistics suggested that in a majority of school districts, only 10 to 25 percent of students were participating in some form of arts education, and no district in California had more than 50 percent of its students involved in arts education.

A survey of arts teachers in Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, and Ventura counties found that in most school districts, an average of only 2 percent of all teachers were qualified to teach arts.

Before you despair entirely, it’s important to note things have gotten and are getting better, albeit slowly.

"The report you’re talking about was in many ways a catalyst," said Laurie Schell, executive director of the California Alliance for Art Education (CAAE). "The current statewide perspective on arts education contains both good news and bad. In 2001, the state board of education did pass a set of standards for the visual and performing arts, which is a huge step in the right direction. Everyone hears about math and science and language standards, and now we have arts standards, too. Not everybody acknowledges them, but having standards puts us on the same page with other disciplines. These standards are what every child should know by the time of graduation."

That’s not all. More and more school districts are putting in place a system to assess their arts programs and fix deficiencies. Higher education has also begun to acknowledge the importance of arts education. Both the University of California and the California State University systems will require one year of arts education to gain admission to their school systems beginning in 2003. By 2006, UC and CSU schools will require a year of continuous arts education in one discipline.

"That shows they acknowledge the depth and breadth that needs to be mastered and that arts education should be more than just two or three beginning classes," said Schell.

Dr. Kathy Friend, an arts education advocate who teaches future teachers attending Cal Poly’s liberal arts and teacher credential programs, is also a member of the California Alliance for Art Education.

"We represent all the various arts organizations throughout the state, so there are nonprofits, the [state] department of education, the California Arts Council, the California Art Education Association, the California Educational Theater Association, the California Association for Music Education, the California Dance Educators."

All these groups are working overtime in their attempts to return adequate arts education to the schools, and Friend herself is helping to administer several grants locally, which place arts educators in schools that can’t afford them.

According to Friend, there’s still an ongoing cycle of a lack of arts, which leads to chronic deficiencies. Many prospective teachers currently attending universities didn’t have any arts education themselves. Now they find themselves in a training program that once again brushes aside the arts as a second-tier concern. These new teachers are ill-prepared to offer the arts to their students, and in many cases are unaware of the arts’ importance. In addition, with most schools buckling under the pressure of student body performance in the face of standardized testing, administrators assign little time to the arts.

"The part that’s very upsetting to me is the pressure on the school sites and their days, the pressure they have in limiting the classroom teachers’ time and effort in the arts, and the weakness of the California system in not requiring multiple-subject teachers more art education to pass onto their students," said Friend. "It makes you wonder if [new teachers] as students received any arts education, and now they’ve gone through their university education and will continue this trend."

Cal Poly’s education department seems to recognize this problem and has doubled its efforts in planting the art bug in its students.

"At Cal Poly we require a lot more arts education than other credential programs," said Friend. "How will music, dance, or the visual arts ever occur in public schools unless new teachers have a personal interest in and love of the subject? Without an interest among new teachers, it’s difficult to make arts in the public schools happen. I know my granddaughter, as a second grader, needs the arts. I know as a grandparent that I want her to have all those experiences. We live in California, a state that leads in entertainment and the arts, a state that prides itself in theater and visual imagery, and we’re not providing that for our students. It’s the same old story, and we’ve all heard it before."

This lack of arts education is beginning to trickle down into our economy, even right here in San Luis Obispo. Said Friend: "Even here in SLO we have the need for graphic artists who are astute and intelligent, but I know of cases where local companies have had to hire out of the county and even out of the country because they couldn’t find someone appropriately trained here. At Oddworld [a local video game design firm] they hired someone from Dublin because Ireland has a really strong arts education system, and we’re not keeping up."

To replace funding left by Proposition 13, many arts organizations and even the state government are offering grants. Friend and her Cal Poly colleague Dr. Susan Duffy are currently administering two of them in our county. While Friend admits that "grants are wonderful," they’re merely a stopgap to make up for a deficiency in the system.

"Struggling from year to year isn’t the way to provide arts education," said Friend. "We want to have a program that’s solidly based. Since Prop. 13, there are no arts specialists for kindergarten through sixth grade. That’s a long time to have children who haven’t had those experiences. Now we’re faced with students attending Cal Poly who have had little or no art experience. If they’re lucky, they may have had some arts education in junior high and high school. The most promising development is the new requirement by the UC and CSU systems to require arts education of incoming freshmen."

"Things are certainly better locally because of the two large grants that we have," said Duffy. "With the California Arts Council grant, this is our second year of working with Lucia Mar school district. The grant tracks 800 students through the third, fourth, and fifth grades, assessing student achievements of those who have access to arts education and comparing it to students who don’t.

"Another grant from the California Post Secondary Education Commission and the Eisenhower Foundation supports six schools in the North County," said Duffy. "These are rural schools getting help through the professional development of teachers in the arts and provides supplemental training for teachers at those schools, as well as resident artists and performances at the school."

"The long-term study grant that tracks the 800 students is of particular importance," said Friend, "because it attempts to determine if those students who receive arts education do markedly better than those who don’t."

According to Friend, it’s a very unique study, and one that’s meant to be replicable. If it demonstrates that arts education helps improve scores in other areas, it will be a huge boost for arts education throughout the state.

The question is, are grants and studies enough to fulfill students’ needs?

"Certainly in San Luis Obispo we’re not hitting all the school districts in the county, but what we are doing is making small inroad into expanding the arts and access to art in public schools," said Duffy. "Of course, we have a long way to go. My understanding is there haven’t been art specialists in public schools since Prop. 13 except for some in secondary school. California is one of just a handful of states that doesn’t have arts specialist in elementary school."

It may take years and years to overcome the damage Proposition 13 has done to arts education in the public school system, but most educators have been encouraged by recent trends.

"Both grants and many nonprofit arts providers like the Children’s Creative Project have stood in the gap to provide arts education since Prop. 13," said the CAAE’s Schell. "But a lot of the arts work grants by the Department of Education are designed to give school districts money to do the kind of systemic planning needed to overcome these chronic deficiencies. And those are effective only if administrators and arts providers all come together to talk about how it can become sustainable.

So is the sky falling on arts education, or isn’t it?

"There’s a heavy marine layer," said Duffy. "It’s certainly not sunny for arts education. When we go to national conferences or arts education seminars, people are amazed when they learn we don’t have arts specialists in our elementary schools in California. But personally, I’m optimistic. At Cal Poly, the teachers we’re training may not be art specialists when they graduate, but I know they’re going into teaching with a new or renewed interest in the arts. That’s a step in the right direction." Æ

Glen Starkey had plenty of arts education in elementary school, and look how he turned out.