Arts education means many different things across the city’s 1200 public schools, as a recent City Council report makes clear. Dancers might be hired to teach “movement” to first graders to harness their excess energy; history teachers might take high school students to the Metropolitan Museum’s “Art of the First Cities” exhibition for a long perspective on the Middle East. In District 25, in Queens, students create multimedia works that do double-duty as lessons about technology and Shakespeare. Overall, however, the City Council concluded that funding, resources, and facilities for arts education remain woefully inadequate.
Though all schools receive funding through Project A.R.T.S. (Arts Restoration Throughout the Schools), each school principal chooses how to allocate the funds, whether for professional development, an arts coordinator, programming, or purchase of equipment and resources. Financially strapped schools often tap into Projects A.R.T.S. money for basic needs, since current regulations do not require that funds earmarked for the program are actually spent on arts. According to Department of Education figures, in 2002 only $12.5 million of the $52 million Project A.R.T.S. funding went toward arts education. Schools Chancellor Joel Klein wants to build more accountability into arts education. As part of his efforts to reorganize and streamline the system, Klein plans to implement a uniform arts curriculum by the fall of 2004. Standards will be created to assess arts programs, and the city will track how the $67.5 million Project A.R.T.S. budget is spent on a school by school basis.
Regional Arts Supervisors
From her “Office of Strategic Partnerships” at the Board of Education, Caroline Kennedy will oversee the new arts curriculum. According to Kennedy’s advisor, Leslie Koch, Kennedy will work to “strengthen the relationships between schools and the city’s many arts institutions and artists.” This will likely mean seeking private funding to supplement Project A.R.T.S. money; already, some of the most ambitious school arts programs are funded by the Department of Cultural Affairs, private foundations, or large cultural institutions. The New York City Arts in Education Roundtable estimates that 60 percent of funding for arts programming in schools comes from cultural institutions and community organizations.
With the shift from school districts to regions, regional arts supervisors will oversee as many as 100 schools and all age groups. Already, the average pupil-to-art-teacher ratio in is 610 to 1. Some arts educators worry that the supervisors will be overwhelmed under the new regional structure, but Koch argues they will have the advantage of “being able to think about the whole gambit of arts education, from kindergarten through graduation.”
Arts Standards
Standards-based assessment has become the new mantra for educational reform. A national review of arts education in 1997 revealed that most students’ exposure to the arts was sporadic and lacked any coherent plan. This finding prompted the creation of assessment tools for desired outcomes of basic arts learning, under the rubrics of creating, performing, and interpreting the arts.
The standards are surprisingly specific. In evaluating movement skills among students from kindergarten to fourth grade, they include: “students create movements at low, middle, and high levels” and “students use improvisation to discover and invent movement.” For theater education among the same age group, students are expected to “imagine and clearly describe characters, their relationships, and their environments” and “visualize environments and construct designs to communicate locale and mood.”
By high school, dance students are expected to be able to “project” (demonstrate movement and meaning to audiences) and theater students are expected to “design coherent theater management and marketing plans.”
Under the direction of Angelo Gimondo, the outgoing superintendent of District 30 in Jackson Heights who will become senior instructional manager for the arts, the city has just one year to come up with an arts curriculum and uniform standards to judge its success. Working committees made up of education and artists will focus on each of four disciplines -- visual arts, dance, theater, and music.
But, as demonstrated by the national effort, assessing the efficacy of something as subjective and varied as arts education is challenging (we’ve learned in recent weeks that even math tests can be flawed). In addition, arts learning is freighted with multiple expectations in a way that math or science are not. Research has found that involving students in creative activities can improve their overall academic performance. For troubled students, the arts can build self-confidence or provide direction. Particularly in New York’s diverse classrooms, arts activities are often the media through which discussions about racial or cultural difference occur. After 9/11, creative writing and role-playing became a kind of collective therapy for thousands of shell-shocked students. Art performances or programs are often a vehicle for involving parents or other community members in schools.
Ron Russell, the former education director for Theater for a New Audience and current artistic director of Epic Theater Center, says that art activities have virtue as a process of “consistent reflection.” When a young person tries to learn a song on the guitar, for example, they must pay close attention, check their progress, and assess the results. Russell has found that the repetition and revision of creative activity is often difficult for students to grasp (“I just did that,” his drama students when asked to read a line of dialogue again). Making art -- with its cycle of preparation, rehearsal, and production -- can be a useful model for most kinds of work.
Making Arts Part of the Core
During the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, arts programs were zeroed out from the city’s education budget, and there was no system-wide funding for the next two decades. It is a sign of the times that no one is considering doing away with arts education today, thanks in part to the high-profile role accorded to “creativity,” broadly defined, in the new economy.
Martha Hostetter writes for American Theatre magazine.
Tatiana Sampson was thrilled to learn earlier this year that a new
federal law would give her child a shot at a decent education. The law — the No Child Left Behind Act — allows parents of students at failing schools to transfer to better ones.
But when Sampson got back a list of schools she could choose from, she was first shocked then amused by what she read. Of the eight schools available to her child, the one near her home in Harlem's district 5 was no better than the current school, another was an hour's subway ride away, and the remaining six were in other boroughs, including Staten Island.
Sampson decided to stick with her child's current school. In doing this, she was responding like thousands of other parents whose children were supposed to be able to move out of failing schools. School choice, while nice in theory, has not become a reality for most families.
But while the New York City Council and much of the press have focused on school transfers, No Child Left Behind seeks to do far more than shuffle students from one school to another. The measure, signed into law by President George W. Bush in January, 2002, promises to hold states and schools accountable to improve instruction for all students.
This is not very different from what Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his schools Chancellor Joel Klein have vowed to do in their sweeping school reform program. But local educators and advocates worry the federal law may not provide the means or the money to deliver on its lofty promises. These shortcomings are almost guaranteed to become particularly evident in New York City, the nation's largest and most diverse public school system and one suffering from a lack of resources and hundreds of poor schools.
BEHIND THE LAW
Education is very much a state and local responsibility in the United States. Unlike many other countries, the United States does not have uniform standards for graduating high school or a national curriculum. Federal money accounts for a small percentage of school funding — only 11 percent in New York City.
But the federal government has claimed some role in educating America's children. The most recent effort, No Child Left Behind, is the latest version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which Congress passed in 1965 to aid the nation's neediest students. Title I of the act gave money to schools with high percentages of low-income students, at first targeting that money to pay for extra services for youngsters falling behind, but gradually allowing that money to be used for the schools' overall curriculum.
After a campaign in which he vowed to be the "education president," Bush and his advisers proposed No Child Left Behind. The money for poorer schools stayed, but as the law is phased in, schools will be required to perform adequately on standardized tests. The act also tacked on a couple of life lines for parents stuck in the worst schools to keep children from languishing as educators struggled to improve instruction.
In brief, the law passed by Congress states that:
In the coming years, the act sets out additional requirements, until by the 2013-2014 school year, 100 percent of students will have to be "proficient" in reading and math.
MAKING SCHOOLS ACCOUNTABLE
For many educators, the heart and substance of the law is that it holds schools accountable for improving education. Visitors to the federal Department of Education web site are greeted with a graph with two lines. One shows huge increases in the number of federal dollars that went toward education from 1975 to 1999, the other shows reading scores hardly budging. Accountability is about making that picture change — so more federal money translates into more kids reading on grade level.
The law takes aim at accountability from many angles, giving states a number of hoops to jump through. These include making sure that all teachers by 2006 are "highly qualified," meaning they must have at least a bachelors degree and have demonstrated — by passing a test or earning an academic degree — that they are qualified to teach reading, writing and math for elementary school and the specific subject for middle and high school. The law also requires that schools use teaching methods that research has demonstrated really help youngsters learn.
But the centerpiece of the accountability package is test scores. Based on how schools test, they can be placed on a series of lists from "schools in need of improvement" to "corrective action schools." Penalties for being a school in need of improvement include giving students the right to transfer out of the school. The state could take control of corrective action schools.
Although the law presented a monumental change for some states that did not conduct standardized tests or track school progress, New York State had been requiring standardized testing for years and putting schools in its own version of corrective action, which it called "registration review". Perhaps because of this, New York's accountability plan was among the first to win Washington's approval.
The huge shift for New York is in how scores will be reported. Starting this year, test scores have to be broken down by group, and schools will be judged not only on how well they do overall, but how their African American, Latino, low-income, English-language learners and disabled students perform. If schools cannot show they are making progress with each group, they can land on the list of needs improvement schools.
In that case, school officials must develop a plan to turn the school around and allow students to transfer out. And if a school does not make progress after five years it must be restructured — shut down, perhaps, or turned into a charter school.
Despite New York's familiarity with testing and accountability, the first list of schools in need of improvement, issued in September 2002, brought sobering news. Some 331 New York City schools — about one third the total — were on the list. The city accounted for two thirds of all the schools in the state cited as needing improvement.
Theoretically, students in all of these schools could transfer to other schools. The business of sorting out transfers was left to the community school district offices. Although some 220,000 city students were eligible to transfer under the law, only 6,000 students requested moves and, in the end, only about 1,500 students changed schools in response to the law.
A lawsuit filed by parents accused the school system of denying transfer requests, failing to notify parents of their right to transfer their children, and of not having a coherent policy for dealing with requests and transferring students.
Even Mayor Michael Bloomberg agreed the first efforts to fulfill this requirement were a disaster. And schools Chancellor Joel Klein told the New York Times that the department "did not meet that challenge" of providing transfers.
Klein vowed to do a better job of following the federal law. The city Department of Education would run the show, and this time they would get it right. And indeed the department mounted an awesome effort to contact every parent whose child was entitled to a transfer. The schools mailed letters to 220,000 parents, stuffed kids' backpacks with notices and matched student needs to schools with available seats.
In the end, each of the 20,000 parents who requested transfers received a list of eight schools that they could ask their child to attend. Of those parents, 10,000 opted to take a transfer although it will not be clear until September how many will actually go through with it.
Even critics agree the city did a "much better" job — but not good enough, according to City Councilmember Eva Moskowitz, chair of the council Education Committee, who says that not enough parents knew about their right to get a transfer because the city failed to get the word out and to make the parents' options clear.
An investigation by the Daily News in February found that school officials frequently gave parents incorrect information — saying, for example, that a school was not on the "needs improvement" list when, in fact, it was. Some were unable to provide information in Spanish; others would try to talk parents out of requesting a transfer.
Moskowitz has drawn up a list of things the department should do to improve the transfer process. And she scheduled hearings and "a speak-out" on the issue on June 17 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at City Hall.
Parents who do not accept the transfer option can request what is called Supplemental Educational Services tutoring. According to the Department of Education, as of the end of 2002, some 28,000 students had received this additional help.
TESTS AND MONEY
Even if transfers and tutoring go smoothly, it will not end the controversy over No Child Left Behind. Many see the law as fine in theory but flawed in practice, lacking what it takes to make real change in New York or elsewhere.
The law's supporters such as Laurie Hall Armstrong of Councilmember Moskowitz's staff believes that the crux of the law — publicizing testing information – will spur parents to demand better schools. "There's no way to fix [the problem] if you don't know what is going on," she says.
Some critics fault the entire notion of giving such weight to standardized tests, saying they are too limited. Skeptics such as Monty Neill, executive director of FairTest, the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, say teachers can raise student scores by teaching to the test but may not be fundamentally improving student learning. Of the federal law, Neill has said, "I like to call it the 'No Child Left Untested But Many Children Left Behind Act.'"
Whatever the merits of the test themselves, the federal law assumes that its carrots and sticks, such as the transfer provisions, will give educators an incentive to encourage their students to perform well, an idea based on the competitive model of the private sector. Doubters such as Noreen Connell of Education Priorities Panel, a local advocacy group, wonder whether "shame" will keep principals in line and whether even the most talented principal can turn around a school where there is huge need and not a lot of funds.
Eventually, says Joe Colletti of the United Federation of Teachers (the city's teacher union), some otherwise successful schools will be put on the "needs improvement" list because they fail to make progress for their English language learners or special needs students. That, he says, could punish those schools instead of helping them meet the needs of all their students.
The law's most ironic pitfall is that the more it focuses on test scores, the more it may make test scores meaningless. So far New York appears to have resisted the effort to dumb things down. But in other states — Connecticut for one — educators are relaxing their definition of what it means to be proficient. One can only expect the pressure to do this to mount as the countdown continues to the 2013-2014 requirement of universal proficiency.
Of the potential wrenches in the works, however, the biggest may be money. According to Education Week, the National Conference of State Legislatures has estimated that it will cost states a total of $1 billion each year to comply with the testing requirements. Money for the promised tutoring services and teacher training could also be tight.
New York City will receive $376 million less for the federal law this year than it was promised when the act passed, according to Representative Anthony Weiner. Although the city still gets $141 million more than it did last year for a total of $756 million, the shortfall in expected funds means that schools are asked to be doing more while their pockets are being pinched. In New York City — and many other financially strapped communities across the country — the city and state do not have the money to pour into meeting a new set of requirements.
The good news in New York is that No Child Left Behind's call for accountability comes at the same time that Mayor Bloomberg has gained control of the city's schools, making the public education buck stop at the mayor's office. The federal law can provide a framework for improvement, but it will be up to the mayor and governor to make it work for the city's schools.
As Ross Weiner of the Educational Trust, which works to promote high educational achievement, says, the next few years will present a challenge for public schools, a chance to "step up to the plate and show what public education can do." If the public officials and educators fail to rise to the challenge, at best our schools will stay status quo. At worst, the belief that public education cannot work will become more widespread, setting the stage for more radical reform.
LINKS:
No Child Left Behind Primer
(From Education Week)
Julia Kamin is a reporter with Inside Schools, a web site published by Advocates for Children.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein are moving ahead with the "Children First" initiative, their ambitious and still unfolding plan to restructure, streamline, and improve instruction in the city schools. Meanwhile, their scheme faces a court challenge contending that the plan pushes changes beyond what the law allows. Launched by the principals union, New York State Assembly Education Committee Chair Steven Sanders, and other elected and school officials, the suit claims that Children First's de facto elimination of the community school districts is not in the best interest of city families and requires approval from the state legislature.
Though district lines remain intact officially under Children First, each of ten new instructional divisions subsumes up to four of the existing community school districts, as well as the high schools located within the geographic boundaries of the divisions. These ten divisions that will now administer the city's elementary, intermediate, and high schools have started to take shape. In contrast with the community school district bureaucracies they are replacing, all instructional divisions are to have a standard set of job titles and the same chain of command. The Department of Education has been busy reshuffling district personnel to fill new administrative and school-level positions.
The recently appointed regional superintendents, veteran city educators who will oversee the new divisions, have made their choices for the next tier of school system administrators. Each of these "local instructional supervisors" will supervise the principals of up to 12 schools. Under the new plan, school principals are set to receive leadership training and greater control over their own budgets.
In the restructured system, there is very little left of community school districts. Community school district superintendents', and high school superintendents', jobs no longer exist. District offices are getting ready to close by the end of the school year. The Department of Education recently announced that it would, however, retain an administrative presence in each of the old community school districts. In an agreement reached with State Senator Frank Padavan of Queens, another vocal critic of the restructuring, one local instructional supervisor will serve as district administrator to handle parent concerns and problems, monitor the performance of schools, and work with the new district councils, the parent and community bodies that are likely to replace the outgoing community school boards.
Steve Sanders says this is not enough. "State law requires a superintendent for each school district, a superintendent whose jurisdiction is solely that one school district," he says. "If the mayor wants school districts abolished, or their lines changed, then he must ask the legislature for such changes."
Assuming the suit doesn't force them back to the drawing board, Klein and company will soon turn their attention to hiring and training new school-level personnel. Under Children First, each school is to have both a math and a reading "coach" to work with teachers to improve instruction. Each school will also employ a parent coordinator to promote involvement by parents in the children's education. In addition, Klein and his colleagues have the daunting job of preparing teachers and administrators in 80 percent of the city's schools to work with the new required math and reading curricula before students return to school in September. To this end, they have added several staff development days to the beginning of next year's calendar, pushing the first day of school for students from September 4 to September 8.
Additional details of the restructuring plan emerge each week. Perhaps because the new system is being invented and implemented simultaneously, many specifics vital to public-school families are still undecided or under wraps. As a result, parents and students are in the dark and anxious about the future of policies that were previously set at the district level. They wonder, for example, how to register for pre-kindergarten, which gifted and talented and other programs students will be eligible for and how to apply, by what process students will now move from elementary to middle school, and whether successful district-level programs and practices will be preserved in the midst so much change.
State's Highest Court Hears Oral Arguments in School-Funding Case
On May 8, ten years since their school-funding lawsuit began, attorneys for the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (where I work) presented their final arguments in their case in Albany before the New York Court of Appeals, the state's highest court. The lawsuit, Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) v. the State of New York, seeks reforms in the way the state funds public education. It charges that the state's education finance system has, for years, shortchanged the New York City schools, and, as a result, has denied students in New York City their constitutional right to the opportunity for a "sound basic education."
City Council Member Robert Jackson, a founder of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity and lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, arrived in time to hear the arguments, having walked the entire 150 miles between the Appellate Division courthouse in Manhattan and the Court of Appeals in Albany. Jackson's "Walk a Mile for Your Child" march started on May 1, with a rousing send-off in Manhattan from Chancellor Joel Klein and a number of elected officials, along with scores of parents, teachers, advocates, and schoolchildren. Numerous supporters joined Jackson along the route, including Maria Behncke, a Rochester parent and Alliance for Quality Education regional director, who also walked the entire way. Jackson told the cheering crowd that greeted him as he reached the courthouse that he had "walked the walk" and now it was time for the lawyers to "talk the talk"
In their arguments before the six sitting judges, attorneys for the Campaign for Fiscal Equity called for the court to overturn the last year's ruling by an intermediate appellate court. The Appellate Division ruling held that providing only an eighth grade level of skills fulfills the state's obligation to its students. The campaign attorneys argued instead that the state constitution's guarantee of the opportunity for a sound basic education should ensure students access to a meaningful high school education, a 12th grade level of skills. The justices spent a nearly unprecedented 2 ½ hours listening to oral arguments from attorneys for both sides. They asked numerous questions of both sides, many of which centered on how to craft a remedy that would produce real reform and avoid the lengthy legal entanglements that have plagued some other states. A decision in the case is expected this summer.
Jessica Wolff is a public school parent and Director of Policy Development at the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, a not-for-profit coalition working to reform New York State's education finance system to ensure adequate resources and the opportunity for a sound basic education for all students in New York City. The views expressed are her own.