I think it’s safe to say that when I attended high school, the arts were not a priority. We had a single tiny art room, our gymnasium doubled as a theater (there was a stage at the far end and we’d set up rows of folding chairs right before every performance), and our music program consisted of a roaming visiting music teacher who went from class to class wheeling an electric keyboard and attempting to engage restless teens in cheery sing-alongs.

And yet, some of my fondest high school memories (and richest learning experiences) came from the theater classes I took during my junior and senior years when I finally overcame my fear of public speaking, and developed the confidence to perform in front of an audience. (Such skills served me quite well during my college years, and have since carried over into my professional life.) I also remember spending extra time in the art room during lunch period getting lost in one project or another, not realizing then that my mid-day art breaks served as a much needed outlet for creative self-expression as well as a productive form of stress relief.

Unfortunately, arts education continues to remain very low on our national priority list, and whenever school budgets need to be cut and belts need to be tightened, art classes are the first to go.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress’ 2008 Arts Report Card was just released today. It is the first NAEP arts assessment done since 1997. The assessment examines 8th grade student achievement in music and the visual arts only, eliminating theatre and dance because not enough schools offer systematic instruction in those disciplines. Roughly 7,900 eighth grade students from public and private schools participated in the assessment during which they were asked to respond to works of art and music, as well as to create pieces of art.

The general conclusion is that students’ results overall were mediocre, with white and Asian students scoring higher than African-American and Hispanic students, females scoring higher than males, and private schools outperforming public schools. (Due to budget restrictions, the scope of the study was quite limited, as was the sample size, so the significance of the findings are, in my opinion, similarly limited.)

Most disheartening to me about this study (other than the fact that the federal government only bothers to look at arts in education every 10 years, and that theater and dance classes seem to be on the verge of extinction) is the finding that since 1997, there’s been a decline in student exposure to the arts. Not at all surprising when you consider schools’ obsessive focus on standardized testing in reading and math thanks to the No Child Left Behind Act, not to mention growing budgetary concerns. Yet the big question still remains: What does cutting back on arts education do to our children?

The cover story of the current issue of Ed. Magazine (the official magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education) is about the plight of arts in education. It’s a great article that traces the history of art education in the United States, and evaluates various justifications for including art in public schools. (For instance, the arts enable teachers to successfully reach out to otherwise unreachable troubled students; brings students of all races together; helps students think critically and creatively in different mediums and express things they could not otherwise express; may improve students test scores in other areas; relieves stress; is a critical component to a well-rounded education; and of course, let’s not forget appreciating art for art’s sake). But what interests me most about the piece is that rather than just dwelling on gloom and doom statistics about the state of art in today’s public schools, it concludes with creative solutions for saving art education.

For example, a public school teacher in Mass. notes that the arts and other subject areas don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Even in the wake of budget cuts, schools can and should think of creative ways to incorporate the arts into their classrooms. (Couldn’t students, with the help of creative teachers, use art as a window into understanding difficult subject matter?)

I suppose there is truth to the term “starving artist” which speaks to the power of art to inspire passionate resilience and the ability of artists to persevere in the face of financial hardship. I truly believe that art will survive in schools despite our current economic downturn, as it always has. And yet, wouldn’t it be nice if art could one day take its rightful place alongside English, math, history and science on the list of subjects that all American children should be taught?

(Photo: john_a_ward’s flickr photostream/Creative Commons)