State of the Nation
In 2002, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, reauthorized as the No Child Left Behind Act, outlined specific ways including prioritizing test taking to close America’s achievement gap regardless of race, gender, and income factors. Though ideal in nature, such top-down driven initiatives naturally faced criticism from educators nationwide in its disregard for classroom differences and individual student learning styles. In 2010, the Common Core State Standards Initiative established new standards for math and English, further pressuring teachers to spend more time in those areas.
Needless to say, despite increasing evidence of its impact on student achievement, arts education has been losing its foothold in America’s K-12 system. Furthermore, national trends in education, plagued by austerity budgets, have seen significantly reduced funding in other vital areas from teacher salaries to even cutting bus routes. Faced with hard choices, school administrators and educators must find other creative ways to provide a well-rounded curriculum while fulfilling state and federal mandates. The purpose of this section is to highlight the relevance of arts education, difficulties in its implementation, and the ways T2C hopes to solve them for the unique population it serves.
Why Arts Education?
It is generally accepted that theatre arts can be used as a learning medium. The National Standards for Theatre Education developed by the Consortium of National Arts Education Associations have identified eight standards to which students can benefit from theatre education.
1. Script writing through improvising, writing and refining scripts based on personal experience and heritage, imagination, literature and history.
2. Acting by developing, communicating and sustaining characters in improvisations and informal or formal productions.
3. Designing and producing by conceptualizing and realizing artistic interpretations for informal or formal productions.
4. Directing by interpreting dramatic texts and organizing and conducting rehearsals for informal or formal productions.
5. Researching by evaluating and synthesizing cultural and historical information to support artistic choices.
6. Comparing and integrating art forms by analyzing traditional theatre, dance, music, visual arts, and new art forms.
7. Analyzing, critiquing, and constructing meanings from informal and formal theatre, film, television, and electronic media productions.
8. Understanding context by analyzing the role of theatre, film, television, and electronic media in the past and the present.
*American Alliance for Theatre Education
In 2006, the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies published a booklet titled Critical Evidence, underscoring the positive effects of arts education. The research proposes a collective understanding that the arts are vital and then highlights various correlations between experiencing art and academic achievement. Aside from social skills commonly gained through arts education, the report also addresses relationships between the arts in developing spatial reasoning, having higher SAT scores , and its’ role in motivating at-risk youth. The link to the PDF version of the document is provided below.
Difficulties in integrating Arts Education
Notwithstanding strong cross-curricular links between the arts and other subjects like math and science, it remains unclear what kinds of performance models are applied successfully at the middle and secondary school levels, especially when working with minority populations. While performances and productions remain integral to K-12 education in the United States, most schools including even traditional performing arts schools do not actually use theatre as a learning medium. The debate between implementing theatre as an integrated area of study versus being separate in the curriculum points to the lack of longitudinal and interdisciplinary research on the topic. One immediate question for educators is what is the most effective way of using theatre to maximize students’ college readiness?
T2C serves the Karen refugees who encounter cultural and linguistic barriers on a daily basis. For these students, creative measures must be taken to address the plethora of issues affecting their achievement including student motivation, family issues, language proficiency, financial circumstances and much more. We approach the question of college readiness with the understanding that theatre education is a comprehensive strategy which should complement, not replace traditional schooling. Due to the aforementioned factors, the ability of these students to experience arts learning is limited but for whom is obviously necessary. We face this incredible challenge to provide these students with some of the benefits of an integrated arts education outside of the setting that traditionally denies them this opportunity.