Written By: Rachel McGrain & Peter Dayton, Arts Education in Maryland Schools
Original article by: Liz Bowie published on 8/26/2024
In the 8/26/24 Baltimore Banner article “Maryland education reform kicks into high gear this school year. It’s getting sticky,” Liz Bowie comprehensively and concisely summarized many of the challenges emerging in the process of implementing the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future law. Arts Education in Maryland Schools (AEMS) advocates for equitable access to quality arts education for all of Maryland’s public school students, and some of the stickiness Bowie has highlighted aligns with the challenges we have witnessed that accompany the implementation of the Blueprint’s goals. Especially as advocates for an area of education that is chronically undervalued in favor of standardized-tested subjects, we have long anticipated the kinds of “hard choices” school systems are faced with that threaten to eliminate access to the arts.
This spring, the Frederick County Board of Education responded to the advocacy of thousands of students, families, alumni, and educators by voting to preserve 4th and 5th grade instrumental music programs in the district, which had been proposed to be cut in order to balance the district’s $50 million FY25 budget deficit. Students and community members made clear to decision-makers that the “hard choices” that so frequently put the arts in jeopardy had to be made in a way that did not touch instrumental music.
As the outpouring of support for the instrumental music program in Frederick County demonstrated, the arts are not simply “liked” by parents and students but rather critical to the fabric of school communities. Further, the arts are listed as subject areas essential to a “well-rounded education” under Federal law, they are listed in the Code of Maryland Annotated Regulations under the subject areas Maryland students are required to have access to from Pre-K through Grade 12, and they are listed in the Blueprint Law and corresponding Statewide Implementation Plan as subject areas eligible to be funded using Foundation Formula Funds. There is also a growing body of research indicating the transformative impacts of the arts on brain development.
Bowie’s article states that districts may feel they don’t have money “available for items they used to consider staples of a well-rounded education,” but the intent of the Blueprint is to maintain those staples while also increasing opportunities and support for students and teachers. In fact, the Blueprint’s Comprehensive Implementation Plan states that “The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future and the updated CCR standard are not intended to alter the need for high quality programs and content in fine arts, civics, physical education, and other areas that are necessary to provide a holistic education and enable every student to be well-rounded and meet the CCR standard.” (Section 3.1.1(b), page 103) There has been no policy change in what constitutes a well-rounded education, there has only been an increase in the opportunities available to students and a correlative increase in the cost of offering these opportunities.
Without increased revenue to honor all of these critical opportunities to provide a world-class education for Maryland’s students, “hard choices” have ramifications that affect the quality of students’ experiences and their access to the arts. Looking again at Frederick County, the Board of Education was ultimately able to balance their budget in part by voting to increase the size of classes. School leaders were then tasked with reallocating staff at individual schools, which led to the involuntary excess of the sole dance teacher at Urbana High School and abruptly ending the school’s longstanding tradition of dance excellence. Without curricular dance offerings, Urbana students are now unable to participate in county and statewide showcases, which in turn offer opportunities for college scholarships. As dance is often a prohibitively expensive private activity, losing this public school dance program has now increased financial inequities in FCPS that gatekeep arts participation from lower-income families.
In this instance, there was no vote or campaign to do away with dance education; nevertheless that was the result of a series of decisions about seemingly unrelated issues. As Dr. Kirwan noted in Bowie’s article, there is “real hard work that is going to be required to get it [the Blueprint] implemented properly.” That hard work includes nuanced and careful efforts to preserve the transformative arts education that so many dedicated Maryland educators provide to our students around the state.
In the past, narrower definitions of educational excellence that focused on standardized-tested subject areas at the expense of everything else have been shown to be ineffective at increasing academic performance. During the No Child Left Behind era, principals across the nation, including in Maryland, reported cutting instructional and professional development time in the arts in favor of reading, writing, and math. Despite research showing that arts learning, “especially early on in a child’s schooling, provides myriad benefits including strengthened critical thinking skills, social and emotional development, and sense of belonging,” we anticipate that future “hard choices” will continue to jeopardize the arts in favor of standardized-tested subject unless there is intentional and careful decision making to protect and uplift arts subjects in our public schools. If the true transformative and all-encompassing benefits that arts education provides are not recognized nor incorporated into decision making, the quality of student experience and performance will be the casualty of these “hard choices.” Little will be gained, much will be lost.
AEMS feels deep sympathy for the Superintendents and Boards of Education of Maryland’s public school districts. Maryland’s schools were already underfunded, especially in the area of the arts. As a broad example, as recently as School Year 2021-2022, only 18 of Maryland’s 24 school districts offered courses in dance and within the ones that did offer dance, it was not offered at all schools and at all grade levels. This is the state of affairs despite COMAR regulations requiring that all Maryland Public School students have access to arts learning in all 5 arts disciplines (Dance, Media Arts, Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts) in grades Pre-K through 12. We will continue to hear about the “hard choices” that local superintendents and boards of education have to make about the opportunities their students will have, since they are operating from a longstanding state of inadequacy.
However, AEMS believes that local and state leaders must also be making hard choices on how they will raise the necessary revenue to support our students, rather than offloading hard choices onto local education leadership on how to stretch expenditures. We will always be in a sticky situation as the promises of public education outpace the political will to fund these promises to Maryland constituents. The promise of a world-class education, which must include the arts, will only be realized when fully funded.
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