Arts Education In America 10 Years After NCLB

This week, the U.S. Department of Education released a study entitled Arts Education in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools 1999-2000 and 2009-10. This study was previously published in 2002 and highlights the impact that the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has had on arts education.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan stated, “despite the importance of providing equal educational opportunities in the arts, today's report shows we are falling well short of that goal.”


From the Department’s announcement of the study we learned that:

• 1.3 million of our nation’s public elementary school students receive no specific instruction in music, and nearly 4 million students receive no specific instruction in the visual arts.
• 800,000 public secondary school students do not receive music, and 11 percent of secondary schools do not provide the visual arts.
• Only 3 percent of elementary schools offer any specific dance instruction and only 4 percent offer any specific theater instruction. In secondary schools, the numbers improve somewhat as 12 percent offer dance and 45 percent offer theater.

The most heartbreaking finding in the study shows that the nation’s poorest students, the ones who could benefit the most from arts education, are receiving it the least. A decade ago, the data showed that 100 percent of high poverty schools offered music instruction, but currently, only 80 percent offer music instruction. The percentage offering visual arts, dance, and theater is even lower. In his remarks, Secretary Duncan called the disparity between high-poverty and low-poverty schools “deeply disturbing” and“absolutely an equity issue and a civil rights issue.”

Please join thousands of arts advocates across the country on April 17 for a virtual rally on Arts Advocacy Day. We’re asking everyone to send messages to their members of Congress urging them to support the arts and arts education. Look for an e-mail from us in your Inbox on April 17. Americans for the Arts will send out an easy-to-use customizable message for you to send to Congress on that day.