Arts in Education Week September 12-18 Highlights Importance of School Arts Education

(9-10-10) League of American Orchestras Information Brief: September 2010

As America goes back to school, orchestras and arts advocates nationwide are renewing their call for equitable access to a complete arts education for every student. The U.S. House of Representatives has designated the second week of September as annual Arts in Education Week. This year the week will be observed September 12-18, 2010. With the passage of this resolution, Congress has called for public attention to the role of arts education as a core academic subject that provides skills and knowledge essential to the education of all students.

The resolution is one part of a broader multi-year effort to strengthen the status of arts education as Congress re-writes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, currently titled the No Child Left Behind Act), the bill that determines how the U.S. Department of Education supports our nation’s schools, students, and communities.

At the federal level, the League of American Orchestras plays a leading role along with a broad range of national arts and education organizations in seeking major improvements in funding, policies, and national data collection at the U.S. Department of Education. Their activities include:

• Making federal legislative recommendations to transform the arts from merely being listed as a core academic subject of learning to actually being implemented as one.
• Creating and endorsing a national policy statement, Arts Education: Creating Student Success in School, Work, and Life, which explains how the arts can improve teaching and learning.

The League can provide further expert comment on these national arts education advocacy efforts.

America’s adult and youth orchestras are among arts advocates across the nation working to improve music education in our nation’s schools. Since the majority of education policy is made within communities, much of the most effective advocacy at the local and state level. Orchestras nationwide have written and endorsed a statement of common cause, Orchestras Support In-School Music Education, which reflects their commitment to take individual, community-specific action to improve access to music education in schools.

• More than 200 orchestras have signed on to support in-school music education.
• Arts education advocacy resources demonstrate that arts education provides unique academic and social benefits that prepare students for success in school, work, and life.
• Orchestras are taking action by speaking out in the press, at school board meetings and other public events, and forming strategic community partnerships to advance the presence of music education in communities large and small.

Among the League’s advocacy partners are Supportmusic.com, the Performing Arts Alliance, Americans for the Arts, the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, the Arts Education Partnership (AEP), and more than a dozen other national organizations participating in an Arts Education Legislative Working Group.

The AEP has created a hub site for complete background information and activities related to Arts in Education Week.

Examples of education programs created by American orchestras:

Programs in schools

• Los Angeles Philharmonic School Partners Program
  At the elementary level, students learn developmentally appropriate musical concepts and vocabulary illustrated through teaching artist visits and the concert experience. Teachers at participating schools attend a professional development workshop to learn about fundamental music concepts and also collaborate with the teaching artist during a planning session. At the secondary level, students attend Los Angeles Philharmonic concerts and open rehearsals in addition to receiving in-school visits by Los Angeles Philharmonic musicians and teaching artists.
• NY Philharmonic’s School Partnership Program
  Stimulates students to acquire focused listening skills, performance skills on recorder, musical literacy both symbolic and verbal, strategies for group work, knowledge of cultural history, and a personal relationship to the art of music.
• San Francisco Symphony – Adventures in Music
  A sequential music education program designed specifically for San Francisco’s public elementary schools, in partnership with the San Francisco Unified School District.
• Pacific Symphony – “Class Act” Program
  Connects Pacific Symphony to a select number of Orange County elementary schools each year. Each year, students form a relationship with a new Symphony musician who serves as a "Class Act teaching artist," through activities including classroom lessons, ensemble performances, assemblies, and either a Youth Concert at Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall for older students, or an Interactive Performance on-site for younger students.

Minority Talent Development Programs

• Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Talent Development Program (TDP)
  For promising young African American and Latino classical music students, the TDP provides instruction, mentoring, and performance opportunities, as well as financial assistance to attend summer music programs through the Azira G. Hill Scholarship Fund.
• Boston Symphony Orchestra – Project STEP
  Created 25 years ago to address the under-representation of Blacks and Latinos in orchestras. The program offers a combination of instrumental lessons, classroom instruction, performance opportunities, summer study, musical instruments and career counseling.
• Dallas Symphony Orchestra – Young Strings Program
  Discovers, develops and promotes the musical talent of outstanding African American and Latino string players in the city of Dallas and provides them with the skills and resources necessary to pursue professional music careers.