Why They Shouldnt Cut the Arts Why They Shouldnt Cut the Arts

Journalism students at Howard University's school of communications were deeply engaged in this year's presidential entrada as Barack Obama and Mitt Romney battled for the White House. The students wrote widely about the candidates and the issues. Some traveled to Ohio, a key battlefield state, and wrote most classmates who canvassed voters there as volunteers for the Obama campaign.

Others wrote about higher students struggling to pay rising tuitions after their parents had lost jobs and homes to foreclosures. 1 student wrote about black Republicans who supported Romney and their status every bit double minorities – minorities within the Republican Party and among black voters who largely supported Obama. Throughout the year, students reported on the economic and social challenges that working people and poor communities were facing, problems that were being neglected by candidates singularly focused on the needs of the heart form.

And on Election Solar day, the students covered everything from problem-plagued polling stations to election nighttime parties and spontaneous street festivities in front end of the White Firm. The Root DC is publishing some of the students' work, starting with the story below by Tyleah Hawkins, a sophomore, about the bear on of funding cuts to public school arts programs in poor communities.

Schools across the country accept slashed their arts programs in the wake of major funding cuts past country governments struggling to balance their budgets during the economic downturn.

(Oscar Perez/Associated Press)

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, more than 95 percent of school-aged children are attending schools that accept cut funding since the recession. Schools in wealthier neighborhoods that faced budget cuts were able to make up for their losses through individual donations, while schools in impoverished neighborhoods have not.

As a result, schools in areas serving children from low-income families accept reduced or completely cut their arts and music programs. These programs tend to be the first casualties of budget cuts in hard-pressed schoolhouse districts already struggling to meet other demands of the academic curriculum, and they are rarely restored. Some school districts don't take much meat left to cut from arts programs that had already been reduced to bare bones subsequently repeated funding shortfalls over many years.

"The cuts that accept been occurring for the by couple of decades ... still, with this recession, many arts advocates such as myself practise non have a inkling when some programs volition exist brought back," said Narric Rome, senior director of Federal Affairs and Arts Instruction at Americans for the Arts, a national organization that promotes the arts. "The entire system is very unstable; teachers are laid off one school twelvemonth and brought back the next, or about times not brought back at all. If we are lucky enough to bring these programs back, they won't be for a couple of years. Which ways some students who are in school during these difficult economical times will completely miss out on the benefits of arts teaching."

Although arts and music programs tend to be seen every bit less important than reading, math or scientific discipline, research has shown that arts education is academically beneficial.

"Low-income students who had arts-rich experiences in loftier schools were more three times as likely to earn a B.A. equally low-income students without those experiences. And the new study from the National Endowment reports that low-income high schoolhouse students who earned few or no arts credits were five times more than probable not to graduate from loftier school than low-income students who earned many arts credits," Education Secretarial assistant Arne Duncan said in a study titled "Arts Didactics in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools: 2009-10."

The arts take as well proven to exist a form of inspiration and expression for at-risk students, especially those in inner-city schools, and take been shown to amend their outlook on education.

According to a report titled "The Role of the Fine and Performing Arts in Loftier School Dropout Prevention," by the Center for Music Research at Florida State University, "Students at risk of not successfully completing their high school educations cite their participation in the arts as reasons for staying in school. Factors related to the arts that positively affected the motivation of these students included a supportive surroundings that promotes constructive acceptance of criticism and one where it is safety to take risks."

Organizations such as ArtsEdSearch, an online clearinghouse that collects and summarizes loftier quality arts teaching inquiry studies and analyzes their implications for educational policy and practice, take done private research near the effect. AEP Executive Manager Sandra Ruppert said that the findings in the study signal to the power of the arts to atomic number 82 the mode in helping every child realize success in schools

"This is peculiarly true for underserved students who benefit well-nigh significantly from arts learning only are the least likely to receive a high-quality arts education," Ruppert said.

Enquiry has also shown that arts education helps improve standardized test scores. A study done past The College Board, a nonprofit association that works to brand sure all students in the American educational system are college-ready, found that students who have four years of arts and music classes while in loftier schoolhouse score 91 points amend on their SAT exams than students who took only a half twelvemonth or less (scores averaged 1070 among students in arts educations compared to 979 for students without arts pedagogy.)

"Arts pedagogy gives children a place where they tin express themselves and channel negative emotion into something positive. Students are well-rounded and required to exist academically healthy in all subjects to perform. To be honest, what is learned in music education is truly immeasurable," said Barbara Benglian, the 2006 Pennsylvania land instructor of the year. Benglian has been teaching at Upper Darby High schoolhouse in Drexel Colina, Pa., for virtually 40 years. Her school was i of the many schools at risk of losing their arts programs due to depression examination scores. Withal, the arts programs at the schoolhouse were saved after parents, students and alumni organized petitions and protests rallies. Fifty-fifty Upper Darby alumnus and actress Tina Fey jumped on lath to help relieve the arts program. Other schools around the country are not every bit fortunate.

Several Howard University students who participated in music and arts education in grade school and high school speak fondly of the positive effect it has had on their lives.

"In simple school, music sparked my interest and led me to playing the trumpet. It gave me the opportunity to travel to places I otherwise would not have gone, and nigh importantly, helped me become more culturally accepting by broadening my musical horizons," said Joe Williams, a inferior majoring in psychology. "Without music, I would not exist equally open as I am to learning almost new people."

Nate Shellton, a sophomore, chose to dedicate his life to the arts by majoring in acting.

"I call back it'due south admittedly outrageous that fine arts are the first to be cut in public schools," he said. "It says a lot virtually what is important to education in America. Because math and science is what is beingness tested, tests that determine a school's ranking is what is most of import to the schoolhouse, just the institutions' ranking is not necessarily what'due south in the all-time interest of the students as a whole person."

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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/therootdc/post/will-less-art-and-music-in-the-classroom-really-help-students-soar-academically/2012/12/28/e18a2da0-4e02-11e2-839d-d54cc6e49b63_blog.html

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