A Call to Invest in Arts Education
"Imagine what could be accomplished if the city of Boston and any of the 26 Massachusetts Gateway Cities reinvested the millions of dollars now spent policing schools—often with questionable results—in arts instruction!" write Barbara Wallace Grossman and Jonathan C. Rappaport, in a recent post.
"As arts educators who have witnessed the life-changing power of art and culture, we know that money invested in arts education contributes to improved academic outcomes, increased civic engagement, and enhanced racial equity," they state.
Celebrating the power of arts education, Wallace Grossman and Rappaport write,
We strongly urge state (Massachusetts) lawmakers to fully fund the Student Opportunity Act passed late last year and protect Chapter 70B funding, which distributes aid to school districts across the state. We also urge municipalities to resist cuts to education, which inevitably lead to reducing or eliminating arts instruction altogether. Now more than ever, we must spend our political capital to enact budgets that invest in proven solutions, even if it means allocating funds from other areas such as public safety to do so.