It’s hard to imagine a school without colorful artwork brightening its classroom walls or music filling its hallways. Decades of research show a clear connection between arts education and a child’s inspiration, motivation and ability to learn. Yet for many school districts in Greater New Haven, policy demands and shrinking budgets make a meaningful arts education program elusive or unattainable.
In a recent report, the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities challenged communities to reinvest in arts education. The report cited high dropout rates as one of several indicators that schools are failing to meet this challenge. The report also concluded that students who do graduate are leaving high school without the creativity and critical thinking skills they need for future success — skills that can be taught through arts education.1
“Within a learning context, we want kids growing up in this community to be well-rounded individuals, and that means having a strong academic background, but also kids who are able to express themselves, who are confident of their own abilities, who can think creatively,” says Cindy Clair, Executive Director of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven 
. “The arts have a tremendous ability to reach kids the way other subjects do not.”
Of special note in the Committee’s report was the fact that teaching models that integrate the arts with core academic subjects are demonstrating promising results in closing the achievement gap.2 With Connecticut recently gaining dubious recognition as the state with the widest education achievement gap in the country, the challenge becomes even greater to find ways to provide an enriching, engaging educational experience for every student in our region.
Despite a wealth of empirical and anecdotal data that point to the value of arts in education, the unfortunate reality for many local school districts is that budget restrictions often leave arts programming at the bottom of the list. As districts increasingly struggle to meet high testing goals and other academic standards of measurement, the arts may seem superfluous; yet, the presence of a strong arts program is often the very thing needed to help students achieve at higher levels of academic performance. In such cases, supplemental programming may be the only arts education available to students.
“The arts are critically important to the development of whole, healthy human beings,” Clair says. “Kids who have difficulty with academic subjects can sometimes excel in the arts, which gives them self-esteem and confidence to stay in school and tackle other subjects.”
The Educational Center for the Arts (ECA) serves 300 high school students with programs in creative writing, dance, music, theater, visual arts from New Haven and 22 surrounding school districts from a building in New Haven’s arts district on Audubon Street. Director Alice Schilling says arts education can both foster general education skills and promote well-rounded students, using different areas of the brain and multiple intelligences. She says from her years of teaching visual arts, “Lots of kids with learning disabilities were fabulous artists.”
She says she’s seen first-hand the value of arts education in reducing the drop-out rate, “because kids want to be here -- if they dropped out of their sending school they couldn't come. [ECA] motivates them to keep their studies up.” She explains that ECA has no academic threshold a potential student must meet. “We have an audition process and get recommendations from guidance counselors.” That ensures that a student who is not excelling academically has just as good a chance to get into ECA as one who is, and once in, can thrive both artistically and academically.
“Our kids usually feel more of a sense of community and belonging here than in their sending schools,” she adds. “They have a sense of acceptance for who they are.”
Schilling says a “successful” high school arts career is tricky to measure. “We don't have a statewide assessment; [the state] is just starting to develop assessments in specific areas like music. We rely on some traditional measurements -- a performance that takes place in the class, or a portfolio over 4 years.” She adds that the school has some standards and goals that can be assessed through data, and that 95 percent of their graduates go to college.
She also agrees with the data that show the arts provide a unique contribution to a workforce development strategy. “They [the students] are problem-solving and working with other people. It’s different from regular school because the arts are more engaging and more personal. There’s more of a human connection. If I’m baring my soul, you're going to appreciate and accept me for who I am and vice versa.”
Funding for ECA comes partly from the state through its interdistrict magnet school grant and partly from sending districts. Schilling says that, despite the state's and municipalities' grim economic pictures, funding has not been cut "as of yet."
New Haven is often described as a "resource-rich community," and is considered the arts mecca of Connecticut. So it's not surprising that an arts component is being developed as part of the city's ground-breaking school reform initiative. This is in addition to the programming that's been available for many years through the Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School, serving grades 5 through 8.
Laoise King of the United Way of Greater New Haven explains that the Community component of the reform plan includes Boost, to provide wrap-around services to New Haven's 21,000 students.
"Boost is based on the recognition that kids need to be supported in their whole person in order to be successful," says King. It's a collaboration between the City, the public schools and United Way of Greater New Haven . The goal is to provide these services in all city schools, but they're starting with five pilot schools: K-8s Clinton Avenue, Troup, Wexler-Grant and Barnard, and one high school, Metropolitan Business Academy.
She says there are many agencies serving the same families but not in coordinated fashion. Boost's goal is to figure out "how to use resources more efficiently, and how to connect what's happening in outside agencies with what's happening in school with kids. We do a needs assessment in four areas: physical health and wellness, social/emotional/behavioral supports, family support and engagement and extended learning opportunities. We've asked the schools to do asset maps in these four categories and looked at gaps and got 72 agencies to commit to filling those gaps. Arts education can fit into more than one of those categories, and that's what we want. In two Boost schools we created partnership between the schools and the Foundation for Arts and Trauma, a nonprofit arm of the Post-Traumatic Stress Center; it uses drama coaches who are also therapists to work with the kids, during school and after school; one school has an after-school dance program."
Boost got a $30,000 grant from Nationwide Insurance Company to support the arts in these five schools, which will help in the first year in forming new partnerships. "We sent a request for information to the arts community saying we have funds for partnerships; they have submitted proposals for programming they can do, and that should be in place by fall of 2011."
Many local nonprofits are doing remarkable work with children, through experiential learning opportunities over a wide range of arts disciplines both in and out of the classroom. Some of these opportunities involve ensemble work, which can be especially valuable in helping to foster self-esteem and team-building skills in young people. Other programs align the arts with state academic curricula, providing services that not only help students, but also train teachers to help students in the classroom. And many communities are finding value in nonprofit programs that include family participation, serving the dual purpose of strengthening a child’s creative abilities as well as his or her family relationships. The common denominator among all of these programs is a desire to ensure that every child in Greater New Haven has access to the resources and learning opportunities they need to help them succeed as the next generation of leaders in our community.
One of these programs is Center Stage in Shelton, a nonprofit community theater and theater-education studio working with adults and children from third grade up.
"Arts are essential to us as human beings," says president and co-artistic director Fran Scarpa."Without them, culture ceases to exist. As we look back at history we learn so much about people from the culture of the time; we use theater arts as a platform for teaching about world history, culture and artists of different time periods." She adds, "I think today in a world that's become so computerized it's important for young people to come together as a community to present something for their larger community. It gives them a sense of connectedness and purpose; it teaches collaboration, cooperation and dedication. Collectively they have a tremendous eagerness to learn."
Long-time director Bill Brown has welcomed thousands of kids from pre-schoolers to high schoolers into his workshop at the Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop , where creativity reigns, and where Brown shares his over-the-back-fence philosophy.
"What interests me is it's not just arts but that passion for arts and artisanry that there is no sensible training path for. If a kid wants to be an electrician he's relegated to a second-class education. Why don't we have college for electricians? The impulse that makes an electrician is an artisan impulse rather different from the academic impulse." He says, "We need to change education; there's an aesthetic reward for completing manual projects. I like my life -- I build things, and I didn't learn that in college or grad school. I'm so proud that my student is a PhD in economics from Harvard; I'm proud of the kids I have at Harvard and Yale and Princeton. But I'm really, really proud of the kid who works at Breakfast Woodworks -- architectural woodwork. All I'm saying is it takes some practical people to make the world go. I think more kids who come through here think outside the box and are more adventurous. Some have to overcome all their education.
"I got started in this when I was a school social worker and they kept sending me 9-year-old boys who were some of the smartest kids in school but also the most restless. And nobody ever asked is there a problem with the school? We just don't give choices." He suggests the first set of non-academic choices "should probably be more physical things like dance and athletics, but the second choice should be arts."
Brown sees what he does as contributing to happier, more productive adults, because, he says, "Art asks you to figure out who you are and what your priorities are."
1,2 President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. “Reinvesting in Arts Education: Winning America’s Future Through Creative Schools.
Other Resources:
Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development
Making the Policy Case for Public Investment in Youth Arts
Staying in School: Arts Education and NYC High School Graduation Rates
(Center for Arts Education in New York)
Critical Evidence: How the Arts Benefit Student Achievement
Neuroeducation: Learning, Arts and the Brain
(three-year research study by Johns Hopkins University School of Education)
© The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven
October 2011