Sacrificing Arts Education at the Altar of Test Prep
The irony smacked me right in the face. Yesterday, my wife and I journeyed to New York City as we often do to see a play. This one was The Heir Apparent, a thoroughly silly and joyous reworking by David Ives of a 1708 French play by Jean-Francois Regnard. And then this morning, buried on page A17 of the New York Times, comes a report from New York City’s comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, confirming what many of us have been observing: that many public schools “do not offer any kind of arts education and that the lack of arts instruction disproportionately affects low-income neighborhoods.” The comptroller’s report reveals that in the arts Mecca of the world, New York City, poor children are not receiving any, let alone adequate, arts education. Between 2008 and 2013, spending on arts supplies and equipment in New York dropped 84 per cent. The irony is positively Shakespearean.
Raise your hand if you think you know why.
Yes, of course, the reason for the reduction in arts education is that in many schools, and especially those with high concentrations of low-income families, the money for arts has been diverted to the tested subjects – Language Arts and Mathematics. Given very limited resources, schools are abandoning the visual and performing arts for test prep. Why? For survival. Under pressure to raise test scores, as if these scores were a true measure of a school, schools have been given little choice. The corporate education reform movement, of which former New York Mayor Bloomberg is a leading proponent, looks to Russ on Reading: Sacrificing Arts Education at the Altar of Test Prep: