[Dixielandjazz] NYC School System and it's "Arts" Program

[Steve Barbone]

CAVEAT - VERY LONG ARTICLE. May not interest everyone. Delete now if this is
subject is of little, or no interest.

BUT . . . given the interest on the DJML over the years about the sad state
of "Arts" education, including Music, in the school systems, some may be
interested. As educators can see, there is a long road back to "Arts
Education" in NYC Schools and probably most other schools in the USA.

Roses to those who present school music programs, whether in low cost band
performance form, or like Lincoln Center, with low cost teaching programs.
Thorns to those who cannot see the value of "Arts" education, especially at
the secondary school level.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


Renewed Push for the Artistic ABC's in N.Y.

NY TIMES - By ROBIN POGREBIN - June 26, 2006

Walking around his classroom at P.S. 156 in the Brownsville section of
Brooklyn the other day, Emmanuel St. Bernard, 5, stopped to point out one of
a series of paintings done by his class in the style of famous artists.
"That was the blue period for Picasso," he said. "His friend died, so he was
sad. And when he fell in love, he made a red period."

At P.S. 156 Emmanuel's gloss on art history isn't unusual. The school ‹
along with I.S. 392, which shares the building ‹ is filled with art. It's on
the walls, on display tables in the halls, hanging from the ceiling. On a
recent day students in a music class played expert percussion, jamming on
bongos and steel drums. In the dance studio, third graders paired off to do
the tango, part of their study of Latin American culture.

"This is the way it really should be," said Edward Morgano, the regional
arts supervisor for Region 5, which includes parts of Brooklyn and Queens,
as he walked through the school, one of 113 he oversees. "This is not an
arts school. This is a neighborhood school where every kid gets an
integration of art."

The high quality of the teaching at schools like P.S. 156 and I.S. 392, the
city's Education Department says, is a direct result of its commitment to
create a uniform arts curriculum through new standards put in place over the
last three years. The Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in the Arts sets
out benchmarks for what students pre-K through Grade 12 should be learning
in visual art, music, dance and theater.

The blueprint is perhaps the most prominent example of a larger effort under
way in the city to rebuild arts education. The school year now drawing to a
close was the first in which the blueprint was in place in all four arts
areas. The guidelines for visual art and music were completed in June 2004;
those for dance and theater in June 2005.

"There is now a standard by which people are judged and by which people
judge themselves," said Sharon Dunn, the senior instructional manager for
arts education at the Education Department. "We have made this a priority.
Teachers know what they're supposed to teach, principals know what they need
to supervise."

But there's still a long way to go. Student-teacher ratios for the arts can
be staggering. According to data provided by the department to the City
Council this fall, there is 1 visual arts teacher for every 943 students and
1 music teacher for every 1,200. For dance and theater the numbers are even
more extreme, with 1 dance teacher for every 8,088 students, and 1 theater
teacher for every 8,871. Although about 40,000 teachers have been added to
the New York City school system since 1975 ‹ bringing the current total to
about 84,000 ‹ no more than 2,000 of them are arts specialists, according to
the Center for Arts Education, a nonprofit group. Experts estimate it would
cost $150 million to $200 million to hire arts specialists for every school,
and the blueprint has no funds attached.

Money and Manpower

Each of the 10 Regional Arts Supervisors oversees more than 100 schools,
making it difficult to monitor each one closely. And with the recent
establishment of about 300 "empowerment" schools that are largely
independent of the Education Department, superintendents have been asked to
cut their budgets in proportion to the number of schools leaving their
jurisdiction. Regional arts supervisors could be a casualty.

Still, arts education advocates say the administration is moving in the
right direction. They point to the beefed-up staff dedicated to arts
education at the Education Department. In addition to Ms. Dunn there is now
a full-time director in each of the four disciplines.

The very existence of qualified regional arts supervisors represents
progress. In the past a district superintendent could appoint anybody for
the position; now it requires supervisory certification and experience
teaching the arts. Schools formerly could get away with spending their arts
education money ‹ known as Project Arts funds ‹ on nonarts expenses, but
now, for the first time, there is a budget code, which is being hailed as an
accomplishment in and of itself. (Principals in the new empowerment schools
will have greater budgetary autonomy, however, so the Education Department
will not monitor their arts spending.)

"This is probably the most exciting time in our history for arts education,"
said Thomas Cahill, the president and chief executive of Studio in a School,
a nonprofit organization that has been bringing professional artists into
public schools since 1977. "I see it as an incredible paradigm shift."

Arts in the schools were gutted by the 1970's fiscal crisis and have never
really recovered. In the years since, the city's cultural organizations have
tried to fill the void, and many of them ‹ including the Lincoln Center
Institute for the Arts in Education, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
and the Metropolitan Museum of Art ‹ provide valuable arts education
programs. But it's a hodgepodge: some schools receive consistent,
high-quality arts instruction from outside providers, while others
occasionally take a trip to a show or a museum.

"It was like a quilt, and it just depended what patch you were in," said
Hollis Headrick, the director of the Weill Music Institute, Carnegie Hall's
education arm. "With the blueprint, for the first time there is a set of
common benchmarks and curriculum goals to begin working from."

The increased level of optimism is mostly the result of the effort started
three years ago to create a uniform citywide arts curriculum, which became
the blueprint. Its guidelines were developed by educators and specialists in
each discipline. 

In dance, for example, Joan Finkelstein, the Education Department's director
of dance programs, led the process, along with Jody Gottfried Arnhold, the
founding director of the Dance Education Laboratory of the 92d Street Y, and
Tina Ramirez, the artistic director of Ballet Hispanico. For advice they
brought in professionals from companies like the Merce Cunningham Dance
Company, the Trisha Brown Dance Company and Dance Theater of Harlem.

The dance curriculum goals set out in the blueprint range from "move in
straight, circular, curved and zigzag pathways" in second grade to "vary
movement phrases by changing rhythm, tempo, dynamics and use of space" in
eighth grade. 

Regional arts supervisors see the blueprint at work in the schools they
oversee. "It levels the field for arts teachers because it provides equity
in curriculum development," said Mr. Morgano, the Region 5 supervisor.

"It's not a prescriptive curriculum," he continued. "It doesn't say on Day 3
you have to do so and so. It has benchmarks. It has standards. It's a
teacher resource, and it's uniform."

In making the rounds of some of Mr. Morgano's 113 schools, it was clear that
school art programs still widely vary, depending on the presence of
full-time art specialists and their skills, the commitment of the principals
and existing resources.

Making It Work

P.S. 156 and I.S. 392 together amount to a shining example. The school
building, a former furniture factory, was recently renovated and now has
gleaming new classrooms flooded with light. In Ron Kokke's middle school
visual arts class the other day, students were exploring Chinese portraiture
and mehendi hand designs in connection with a broader study of Asia.

Mr. Kokke said he was constantly in touch with classroom teachers,
coordinating their coursework. "I look to see what they are studying, and I
try to do art projects around that," he said. "It makes things so much more
meaningful for the students."

In the auditorium teachers played instruments onstage for students in the
audience "to get them interested and motivated in classical music," said
Oswaldo Malave, the principal of P.S. 156.

Other schools, though, are struggling with the arts. At P.S. 345 in the East
New York section of Brooklyn, Rochelle Anderson continues to maintain a
top-notch brass band of third, fourth and fifth graders, even though the
instruments are battered and the school cannot afford to replace them. At
P.S. 100 in South Ozone Park, Queens, students are doing fairly
sophisticated etchings modeled after Edvard Munch's in Antonella Natale's
art class. But there is no music, dance or theater above first grade, except
for a ballroom dancing class and the after-school instrumental music
program. That program began only in March this year because there was not
enough money to pay the teachers before then.

Only 10 children participate in orchestra and 32 in band, bringing the
number of students learning music to 42 at a school with an enrollment of
1,150. "This is a school that should be doing a lot more," Mr. Morgano said.
The principal, Michelle Betancourt, said that though she viewed art as an
outlet for students, "it's pretty separate because of the emphasis on the
academic program."

"We used to have it before the emphasis on testing," she added. "Now
everything is after school because the academics is number one in this
building."

Mr. Morgano tries to encourage principals and teachers through professional
development, including periodic training sessions in arts education, for
which the system gives him $2 per student each year. He also keeps an eye on
each school's arts spending. When a school in his region asked to take
students to see a Broadway show, for example, he said: "My initial response
was, 'No, that's not O.K.' I need to know if this is a culminating
experience. Have they studied theater? Do they know what downstage right and
stage left means? For kids who are just going to get it as a one-shot,
that's not acceptable."

Not everyone is convinced that the blueprint will mean real change. Critics
point out that the document represents a recommendation from the Education
Department, not a requirement. Therefore, they argue, it has no teeth, is
difficult to enforce and could easily be abandoned in the future by a less
arts-friendly mayoral administration.

"The blueprint is not curriculum, the blueprint is only a recommendation,"
said Councilman Domenic M. Recchia Jr., a Democrat of Brooklyn, chairman of
the council's Cultural Affairs Committee. "They're not requiring schools to
have music teachers or art teachers. They're not saying, 'You have to have
this much art.' " Because the blueprint is aimed at arts specialists, it
does not address schools that do not have them, or those with insufficient
art space or supplies. "There is such a gap between the aspiration and the
resources to actually make that happen that it feels like a hoax or a P.R.
document," said Eva S. Moskowitz, former chairwoman of the City Council
Education Committee, who now runs a charter school, Harlem Success.

Given the intense emphasis on math and reading scores, schools remain
focused on test preparation and have no comparable incentive to improve arts
education. "Arts are not on the school report card," said Richard Kessler,
the executive director of the Center for Arts Education.

No real change can occur until they are, arts advocates say. "The chancellor
would have to issue a mandate that arts is required as part of the
curriculum and schools will be assessed and held accountable," said David
Shookhoff, the director of education for Manhattan Theater Club, which
produces plays on and off Broadway. "That would be a necessary step to
ensure that we really move forward where every school has qualified arts
specialists."

Not a Mandate

That mandate is not likely to come, said Joel I. Klein, the schools
chancellor: "I'm a little hesitant to start to say, 'I'm going to mandate an
arts curriculum, and I'm going to mandate a social studies curriculum, and
I'm going to mandate a language curriculum.' Sometimes a little bit of
judgment and discretion goes a long way."

The department is in the process of applying for a Wallace Foundation grant
that some estimate could amount to as much as $20 million over five years ‹
the foundation would not specify an amount ‹ enabling the city to leverage
other funds and improve its arts education resources. In January the
foundation awarded the city a $1 million planning grant; the Education
Department is currently researching its proposal, to be submitted by the
fall. 

"We're not asking them for a typical grant proposal," said M. Christine
DeVita, president of the Wallace Foundation. "We're asking for a large
vision and to create a plan around it."

But with or without the Wallace money, improving arts education remains
largely a process of nudging schools down the right path. "We cannot make
them do it," said Ms. Dunn, the department's senior instructional manager
for arts education. "There is no stick."

"In every region," she added, "I'm making the case: Do this because it's
good for kids."