Schools Should Not Cut the Arts Programs to Save Funding

Journalism students at Howard University's school of communications were deeply engaged in this year's presidential campaign as Barack Obama and Mitt Romney battled for the White House. The students wrote widely nearly the candidates and the issues. Some traveled to Ohio, a central battleground land, and wrote most classmates who canvassed voters there as volunteers for the Obama entrada.

Others wrote about college students struggling to pay rising tuitions after their parents had lost jobs and homes to foreclosures. 1 pupil wrote about black Republicans who supported Romney and their status as double minorities – minorities within the Republican Party and among blackness voters who largely supported Obama. Throughout the year, students reported on the economic and social challenges that working people and poor communities were facing, issues that were being neglected by candidates singularly focused on the needs of the middle class.

And on Election Day, the students covered everything from problem-plagued polling stations to election night parties and spontaneous street festivities in front end of the White House. The Root DC is publishing some of the students' work, starting with the story below past Tyleah Hawkins, a sophomore, well-nigh the affect of funding cuts to public school arts programs in poor communities.

Schools across the country have slashed their arts programs in the wake of major funding cuts past state governments struggling to balance their budgets during the economic downturn.

(Oscar Perez/Associated Press)

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, more than 95 percentage of schoolhouse-aged children are attention schools that have cutting funding since the recession. Schools in wealthier neighborhoods that faced budget cuts were able to brand up for their losses through private donations, while schools in impoverished neighborhoods accept not.

As a result, schools in areas serving children from depression-income families take reduced or completely cut their arts and music programs. These programs tend to be the first casualties of budget cuts in hard-pressed school districts already struggling to encounter other demands of the academic curriculum, and they are rarely restored. Some school districts don't accept much meat left to cut from arts programs that had already been reduced to bare bones after repeated funding shortfalls over many years.

"The cuts that take been occurring for the by couple of decades ... nonetheless, with this recession, many arts advocates such as myself do not have a clue when some programs will exist brought back," said Narric Rome, senior director of Federal Affairs and Arts Pedagogy at Americans for the Arts, a national organization that promotes the arts. "The unabridged system is very unstable; teachers are laid off one school year and brought back the next, or nigh times non brought back at all. If nosotros are lucky plenty to bring these programs dorsum, they won't exist for a couple of years. Which means some students who are in school during these difficult economic times will completely miss out on the benefits of arts education."

Although arts and music programs tend to be seen as less important than reading, math or science, inquiry has shown that arts educational activity is academically benign.

"Low-income students who had arts-rich experiences in high schools were more than 3 times equally likely to earn a B.A. as low-income students without those experiences. And the new study from the National Endowment reports that depression-income loftier school students who earned few or no arts credits were five times more likely not to graduate from high school than low-income students who earned many arts credits," Teaching Secretary Arne Duncan said in a report titled "Arts Education in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools: 2009-x."

The arts accept also proven to be a form of inspiration and expression for at-gamble students, especially those in inner-metropolis schools, and accept been shown to meliorate their outlook on education.

According to a study titled "The Role of the Fine and Performing Arts in High Schoolhouse Dropout Prevention," past the Heart for Music Research at Florida State University, "Students at risk of non successfully completing their high school educations cite their participation in the arts equally reasons for staying in school. Factors related to the arts that positively affected the motivation of these students included a supportive environment that promotes constructive credence of criticism and 1 where information technology is safety to take risks."

Organizations such as ArtsEdSearch, an online clearinghouse that collects and summarizes high quality arts educational activity research studies and analyzes their implications for educational policy and practice, have done private research about the issue. AEP Executive Manager Sandra Ruppert said that the findings in the written report point to the ability of the arts to lead the way in helping every kid realize success in schools

"This is particularly true for underserved students who benefit most significantly from arts learning but are the least probable to receive a loftier-quality arts education," Ruppert said.

Research has also shown that arts education helps amend standardized test scores. A report washed by The College Board, a nonprofit association that works to make sure all students in the American educational organisation are college-gear up, found that students who accept 4 years of arts and music classes while in high school score 91 points better on their Sat exams than students who took only a half year or less (scores averaged 1070 among students in arts educations compared to 979 for students without arts education.)

"Arts pedagogy gives children a identify where they tin express themselves and channel negative emotion into something positive. Students are well-rounded and required to be academically good for you in all subjects to perform. To be honest, what is learned in music education is truly immeasurable," said Barbara Benglian, the 2006 Pennsylvania state teacher of the year. Benglian has been didactics at Upper Darby High schoolhouse in Drexel Loma, Pa., for nearly twoscore years. Her school was ane of the many schools at risk of losing their arts programs due to low test scores. All the same, the arts programs at the schoolhouse were saved after parents, students and alumni organized petitions and protests rallies. Even Upper Darby alumnus and extra Tina Fey jumped on lath to assistance salvage the arts program. Other schools around the land are non as fortunate.

Several Howard University students who participated in music and arts education in class school and high schoolhouse speak fondly of the positive upshot information technology has had on their lives.

"In elementary school, music sparked my involvement and led me to playing the trumpet. It gave me the opportunity to travel to places I otherwise would not accept gone, and almost chiefly, helped me become more culturally accepting by broadening my musical horizons," said Joe Williams, a inferior majoring in psychology. "Without music, I would not exist as open as I am to learning nigh new people."

Nate Shellton, a sophomore, chose to dedicate his life to the arts past majoring in acting.

"I think it's absolutely outrageous that fine arts are the outset to exist cut in public schools," he said. "It says a lot near what is of import to instruction in America. Because math and science is what is existence tested, tests that determine a school'southward ranking is what is almost important to the school, but the institutions' ranking is non necessarily what's in the best interest of the students every bit a whole person."

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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/therootdc/post/will-less-art-and-music-in-the-classroom-really-help-students-soar-academically/2012/12/28/e18a2da0-4e02-11e2-839d-d54cc6e49b63_blog.html

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