New York State Alliance for Arts Education notes that the National Assessment Governing Board released the 2008 National Assessment in Educational Progress in the Arts on June 15th. They note:

On the whole, the report shows that Arts education has held steady but gained little ground over the past ten years. Some highlights for the report of surveyed schools:

8% do not offer music instruction
14% do not offer visual arts instruction
8% offer music instruction less than once a week
10% off visual arts instruction less than once a week

Of eight-graders who attended surveyed schools during the 2008:

57% received music instruction at least three or four times a week
47% received visual arts instruction at least three or four times a week

Perhaps most startling is the omission of dance and theatre education statistics. The reason? There were not enough schools providing instruction in these areas to provide a statistically relevant sample.

Encouraging were the comments of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan:

—This Arts Report Card should challenge all of us to make K-12 arts programs more available to America’s children and youth. Such programs not only engage students’ creativity and academic commitment today, but they uniquely equip them for future success and fulfillment. We can and should do better for America’s students.—

Here in New York, NYSAAE is working in conjunction with the NYS Department of Education on the inclusion of ten questions to gather an overview of arts education, as part of the 2009 Basic Education Data Survey, distributed to every school in New York State. It is our hope that this census will provide data that will be beneficial to the dialog on the current state of arts offerings, and their impact on student achievement…

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