Albany Times Union November 16, 2008

HEADLINE: The Arts Left Behind In Schools

By Danielle Furfaro

As Greenville High seniors, Brittany Case and Emily Valentine have taken every art class offered at their small-town school. Now, both participate in independent study, Case focusing on graphic design and Valentine on photography.

"They really offer only the basics here," said Valentine,17, who plans to attend the Hallmark College of Photography in Turners Falls, Mass., in the fall. She believes the Greene County school's art program has suffered from a lack of funding. As a result, students are using outdated, hard-to-use software and the school's darkroom has been replaced by an office. "The software's so old. It's easier for me to just do my work at home," she said.

Across the Capital Region, art, music and dance programs at public school districts have been affected by the continued scramble to comply with the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which requires schools to meet required standards on core subjects such as math and reading. In addition, budgets increasingly spend a higher percentage on health and energy costs and a lower percentage on education.

The problem might get worse with steep budget cuts anticipated for the coming two years, especially with Gov. David Paterson's proposal to cut more than $1.4 billion from state aid to school districts.

Greenville art teacher Sean Stewart said that since the No Child Left Behind Act was passed in 2001, the number of students in some of his elective classes had dropped by 50 percent.

"Kids need to be placed in academic assistance programs to pass the tests or they need to keep their study hall," said Stewart. "We have 40 or 50 kids in study hall and six or eight in art classes. There's no incentive to get these kids into electives."

While the state Education Department keeps records of how many students are taking a certain type of class, determining whether schools are meeting state requirements or offering as many arts classes as in the past is more difficult. While there are federal report cards tracking schools' performance in core subjects such as math and reading, there is no similar measure to evaluate art and music education.

"Good policy starts with good data and we don't have good data. If we had the data, we could figure out a strategic plan for the state," said Heather Hitchens, executive director of the New York State Council on the Arts, a private nonprofit dedicated to preserving and expanding arts culture. "Are the schools meeting the standards and are they meeting them for more than just a portion of the kids? It's impossible to know."

In an independent survey released in June, New York City Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum found that only 7 percent of elementary schools and 27 percent of middle schools in the city offered instruction in all four arts disciplines - music, visual arts, dance, and theater - as required by state regulations. There have been no similar studies done for the Capital Region or the entire state.

The pressures of the No Child Left Behind Act have stunted the growth of arts education, many educators believe.

"It used to be that art and music was held at the same esteem as math and science, but over time, education has become more prioritized because of testing," said Hitchens. "Arts have fallen aside and are being compared to physical education, and that's a bad way to go about it."

Arts classes are not only for those children who might grow up to be graphic designers or rock musicians. When educators put the arts on the back burner, some say, they run the risk of not only leaving talent untapped, but alienating students from the entire education process.

"Nothing incited passion in kids like the arts do," said Mary C. Daley, executive director of the New York State Summer Institutes, which is a branch of the state Education Department. "The arts are what keep kids in school and provide a maturation in students in terms of working with their peers and understanding how the world works best."

Right-brain development is also important to maintain the creativity America needs to solve its most basic problems, said Mary Schmidt Campbell, dean of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

"If you look at American industry, what put us on the cutting edge was that we were always inventing things, from the telephone to the airline all the way to Microsoft and Google," said Campbell. "If we sap that from our schools, we lose our ace in the hole."

Some students are happy with the arts offerings provided by their school. June Criscione, a 13-year-old viola player in eighth grade, said she left private school to come to Myers Middle School in the Albany City School District partially because it offered an orchestra.

"My other school had chorus and piano and a band, but no string instruments," she said.

As school budgets have been stretched increasingly thinner in the past decade, many districts have turned to private sources to fund programming and supplies as well as guide some of their curriculum.

For example, NYSCA has an annual $5 million earmarked for educational programs, much of which is used to connect teaching artists with school districts. Hitchens believes in the program and its benefit to school children, but also fears that schools will become too dependent on other organizations to provide arts education. "There are now far less opportunities within the schools," said Hitchens. "There is a feeling that they can't do it, so they let the private organizations step in, but I don't ever want it to become an excuse and for the districts to say, 'It's OK, they'll take care of us.'"

More often, teachers are turning to private organization to cover class expenses, or else they are taking the money right out of their own pockets.

Michele Rooney, a music and chorus teacher at Myers Middle School in Albany, has applied to a Web site called Donors Choose four times in the past 18 months to cover the costs of items such as pianos, magazine subscriptions and library books and supplies worth about $4,000.

"We don't get a budget," said Rooney, who has been with the Albany school district for 25 years. "Everything we get from the school is like Christmas in September. You're lucky to get a third of what you put on your wish list."

There are local groups such as the Albany Charity Fund for Arts and Education that help individual school districts, as well as bigger organizations, such as BOCES, which assist a number of area districts with funding and programs by finding private funding and connecting districts with teaching artists. Using BOCES also means the state covers a portion of costs.

"Teachers are really stressed," said Arlene Sampson, arts in education coordinator for Questar BOCES, which serves Rensselaer, Columbia and Greene counties. "They might want to meet with an artist, but they don't have the time to do that anymore."

Danielle Furfaro can be reached at 454-5097 or by e-mail at dfurfaro@timesunion.com.

The state standards

Board of Regents educational standards for art and music education have been in place in New York state since the 1960s and were updated in 1996. Elementary school students must receive instruction in the arts (including music, dance, theater and visual arts) every year. Middle school students must take one half unit each of music and visual art before finishing eighth grade. High school students are required to complete one unit of visual art or music during their high school career.