Arts Education

The Qualities of Quality: Understanding Excellence in Arts Education; By Steve Seidel, Shari Tishman, Ellen Winner, Lois Hetland, Patricia Palmer. Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education (Cambridge, MA), 2009, 121 pages. Commissioned by The Wallace Foundation with additional support from the Arts Education Partnership

I began my work life over thirty years ago writing poems with children in my daughter’s kindergarten class. At that time, I didn’t think of myself as a community artist, the descriptor I’d come to use in a few years. I thought of myself as a mother, a volunteer, a lover of poems, and as someone who had fun sharing imagination with kids.

2009, 102 pages, Common Core, 1016 16th Street NW, 7th Floor, Washington, D.C., 20036, (202) 223-1854 http://www.commoncore.org

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2010, 16 pages, The Urban Institute, 2100 M Street NW, Washington, D.C., 20037, (202) 833-7200 http://www.urban.org

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   Arts and Non-arts Partnerships (2.1Mb)

A report from the 1994 arts education conference of Americans for the Arts co-founding organization, the American Council for the Arts. As stated in the introduction, "The historical relationship between business and the arts has been governed by a single set of terms. The arts—and arts education—have looked to the private sector for financial support and patronage, and business has looked to the arts to enrich the lives of their employees and of the community, but not for any strictly business benefit.

Elliott Eisner argues that the arts are more important means for developing complex and subtle aspects of the mind to deal with the ambiguities and uncertainties of daily life than are the formally structured curricula. He provides a fresh and admittedly iconoclastic perspective on what the arts can contribute to education, namely a new vision of both its aims and its means.

Beyond Enrichment tackles important issues facing arts education: school reform, artist training, curriculum standards, partnerships, and the building blocks of long-term change. It includes essays by and interviews with more than 40 leaders in the field—administrators, artists, educators, foundation officials, and others. The book also features case studies of arts education programs and a wealth of personal insights, stories, and strategies.

This book offers insight into how to establish the arts in schools and use them as a vehicle for school renewal at the same time. The author makes a convincing case for the important role of visual arts, music, dance, drama, and architecture in educating our youth.

284 pp, paperback (1990, Americans for the Arts)

This handbook describes how partnerships between local cultural agencies, schools, businesses, and other sectors of the community can make a positive impact on arts education. Learn how 11 communities built their local partnerships, and how you can adapt similar programs to your community.

40pp, saddle-stitched paper (1995, Americans for the Arts' Institute for Community Development and the Arts)

Available online from Americans for the Arts

This brief presents research findings as well as policy recommendations arising from a study of the No Child Left Behind Act and its implications for immigrant children and English language learners (ELLs). Analyses are based on nationally-representative data from the Schools and Staffing Survey and detailed case studies of selected elementary schools and school districts serving high concentrations of ELL students. Results reveal an extraordinary degree of concentration of ELL students in a few schools that tend to be large, urban and serve a predominantly minority student population.