School-level Conditions to Support Arts Education

These Include the measures of:

• Arts learning standards alignment
• Representation of the arts in individual school governance structures
• Arts expenditures for supplies, materials, and programming
• Partnerships with external arts organizations and teaching artists
• Participation in arts-specific professional development
• Opportunities for family and community engagement
• A thoughtful and planned approach to instruction in the arts

They have historically been measured within the Creative Schools Certification under the “Quality” section, however, these metrics don’t specifically measure the quality of arts learning in schools. Many of the above metrics were added or expanded upon within the second iteration of the Creative Schools Certification, which was implemented starting the 2019-20 school year. These school-level conditions remain important to measure how schools create and sustain conditions, though the section may be renamed and adjusted to better align to their use.

Strategies

1. Evolve the Creative Schools Roadmaps, an annual customized report of the arts education conditions they do and do not meet, and support for how to meet the standard. This is currently part of the annual Creative Schools Certification process.
2. Develop and publish guides for multiple instructional approaches that can be utilized in arts education. These guides provide schools with clear definitions, exemplary resources, research, scheduling and professional learning implications, budget considerations, and look-fors to implement and support each approach.
3. Revise the Arts Partnership metric within the Creative Schools Certification to better assess the reach, quality, and impact of partnership programming.