Startling new statistics: Portland’s Elementary Schools Report. We thank you for your action.
Today in Portland there are 11,596 children attending schools that do not have any art, dance, drama, or music instruction.
Please help us break the news and build the movement to restore arts and music teachers to our schools. We invite you to repost or retweet our Blog, share our story in your newsletter or spread the word through your own e-mail networks.
The Creative Advocacy Network has partnered with the City of Portland and Portland’s six school districts to restore arts and music education to our schools and ensure that our children have the same opportunities to imagine and learn and thrive as we did.
Join the movement today and help us keep arts and music alive in our schools.
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Grammy award winning jazz vocalist – and Portland native – Esperanza Spalding speaks about the importance of arts education in our schools.
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Students who lack arts education have lower GPA scores.
Photo:
Kimberly Herbert
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New NEA study reveals: The arts can close the achievement gap for low-income students.
“At-risk teenagers or young adults with a history of intensive arts experiences show achievement levels closer to, and in some cases exceeding, the levels shown by the general population studied,” a team of scholars writes in a new National Endowment for the Arts Research Report. “These findings suggest that in-school or extracurricular programs offering deep arts involvement may help to narrow the gap in achievement levels among youth.”
This newly published research from the NEA establishes that while students from the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder tend to do less well in school than those from more upscale families, this is not true for those students who participate heavily in the arts.
The primary focus of the report is on teenagers and young adults in the bottom 25 percent of the socioeconomic scale (as measured by family income, parental employment and the parents’ level of education).
“…Students who had arts-rich experiences in high school showed higher overall grade point averages than did students who lacked those experiences,” the researchers write. What’s more, those higher grades paid off. Disadvantaged high school students heavily involved in cultural activities enrolled in competitive colleges — and in four-year colleges in general — at higher rates than their counterparts who avoided the arts.
In Portland, where 56% of our public school students are economically disadvantaged and 41% of Portland’s high school students do not graduate with their peers, this study is particularly relevant.
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Cities take the lead in investing in arts education. Boston. Dallas. Seattle.
Across the country, city governments are stepping up to support arts education initiatives in our public schools and communities. The Arts Expansion Initiative (BPS Arts Education Announcement Video) in Boston is a collaboration of the Mayor’s Office, the city school district, arts organizations and local and national funders. And it works. Today, nine out of ten elementary and middle school students in Boston are receiving weekly arts education, up from 67% three years ago.
A similar collaboration in Dallas, Thriving Minds is a citywide initiative committed to making creative learning a part of the education of every Dallas student – in and out of school. Dallas is the only city in the country offering this level of comprehensive creative learning opportunities citywide on a year-round basis, and the support from the City helps makes this possible.
Closer to home, a partnership was developed in 2008 in Seattle between the city, the arts commission, and the public schools to guarantee that all Seattle students benefit from arts education. The City has invested money each year in the partnership, helping to install a district-level music specialist and a community art liaison to coordinate with the city’s arts community.
“We view arts education as a catalyst for renewed energy in schools, increased engagement by students, and improved school choices for families. Over the long term it will enrich our young people, our schools, our neighborhoods, and our economy.” writes Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino.
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“Over the long term [arts education] will enrich our young people, our schools, our neighborhoods, and our economy.”
- Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino.
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