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Advocating for the Arts
Part Two: Tracking Progress, Getting Parents Involved By Kim Byrum Skinner
Nationally, the health of the arts in education remains unclear.
In a country of nearly 16,000 school districts and 112,000 schools, national data remains scarce. According to National Education Association (NEA) estimates, just 59 percent of public elementary schools have an art teacher within their buildings. Among high schools, roughly 95 percent to 99 percent offer art programs.
"That's pretty good growth," says Tom Hatfield, executive director of the NAEA, based in Reston, Va. "That's more than half the states saying they offer it. So if they have those [exit] requirements, then you can make a reasonable conclusion that kids are engaged in the study of art and music at the high school level."
The College Board's "Profile of College-Bound Seniors National Report" reveals that national SAT scores in 2000, 2001 and 2002 averaged higher for students involved in the arts than for those without arts coursework.
The most noticeable gap was between students who engaged in music study or appreciation and those who did not. Those engaged in musical study/appreciation averaged a verbal-mean score of 538 and a math-mean score of 537, compared to scores of 475 and 495, respectively, for those who did not.
Overall, students involved in the arts (art history, studio art/design, photography, dance, drama and music performance or study) averaged 526 (verbal) and 525 (math). Art students averaged scores of 520 and 523 during that three-year span, some 45 points higher in verbal skills and 28 points higher in math skills.
"But that's a correlational study, not cause-effect, so I'm being a little conservative on it," Hatfield says. "Correlation, in research terms, means that two things exist at the same time. Most of the studies we have are correlational. Let me give you an example of what I mean by 'correlational.' Let's say that I go out and I call fourth grade teachers who teach reading in the state of Ohio, and I get 100 teachers who have the very top [student] scores in reading when they give the state test. I call those teachers and I find out that the majority of them drive Chevys. Therefore, there's a correlation between fourth grade teachers who drive Chevys and test scores. That's a correlation. It doesn't mean that because you drive a Chevy your test scores are going to be up."