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Arts Education Policy Forum
Inaugural meeting brings together diverse statewide arts associations.
Michigan Youth Arts is pleased to debut the first Arts Education Policy Forum with Interlochen Center for the Arts on August 4th, 2009. It is here that leaders in arts education are gathering together to share a common agenda of advancing arts education in Michigan. Sam Singh, a senior policy consultant with the research and evaluation firm Public Policy Associates, is facilitating the day and participating organizations of Michigan Youth Arts were invited to join in the dialog.
This convening is at a critical point for all of us involved in the education of future generations. The strength of our combined efforts is key to giving us a louder voice throughout Michigan and beginning a dialog that will shape arts education policy for years to come.
For almost fifty years, Michigan Youth Arts has brought together some of our state's finest student talent through the Michigan Youth Arts Festival. Now, as we move towards the next fifty years, we are bringing together the state's arts education associations to ensure the future of quality arts education for all of Michigan's students.
If you are interested in becoming involved as a participating organization of Michigan Youth Arts, please contact Kim Dabbs at 248.649.8888 or via email at [email protected].
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MCACA awards ARRA grants.
But citizens must still act to save arts jobs.
It's been a busy summer at the Michigan Council for Arts and
Cultural Affairs. Although there is no definitive word yet on MCACA's FY2010
budget, the staff has been administering
Michigan's portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act / National
Endowment for the Arts grant program, (otherwise known as ARRA/NEA/MCACA for
acronym fans) to preserve jobs in the nonprofit arts and culture field. We were
able to award $438,007 to 37 organizations in 21 counties across Michigan. A
complete list is available at www.michigan.gov/arts.
It is difficult to be happy about this, however, as we were
only able to fund 140 positions of the 756 facing elimination, according to the
applications. In addition, many other jobs in these organizations had already
seen reduced hours, layoffs or elimination. These jobs vary from curators and
executive directors to education program managers. What they have in common is
their mission to provide access and educational opportunities to Michigan
citizens of all ages - oftentimes when there are no other affordable cultural
offerings available. These lost jobs do not often receive attention as a sector
because it is difficult to gather specific, real-time data such as what we
encountered through these grant applications. It's up to the citizens of
Michigan to stand up for these jobs and the programs they provide to school
boards, PTAs and city councils, as well as the legislature and state
government.
In the coming months several more ARRA opportunities will be
announced through the federal Department of Education and other agencies that
may be applicable to schools and nonprofits. The National Association for State
Arts Agencies has a guide outlining some of the opportunities for arts and
cultural organizations, available under NASAA at www.michigan.gov/arts. The Americans
for the Arts has also produced a user-friendly guide to how these grant
programs apply to arts education. This guide is available at www.AmericansForTheArts.org/ArtsEducation/Guides.
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21st Century Arts Learning
Visual Arts workshop with MDE kicks off curriculum expectations series.
Over 22 visual arts educators from elementary to higher
education worked together over three days at Michigan State University's Henry
Center this past June to ensure that Michigan learning expectations for
students in the visual arts align with 21st century skills and the
state's new graduation requirement for the visual, performing, and applied
arts.
The visual art educators began their work by reviewing and
discussing a number of important framing documents together, e.g. Olivia Gude's
spiral curriculum, 21st century skills, Bloom's new taxonomy, and
Eisner's purposes of art education. The full group then divided into grade-span
work groups for detailed review and alignment of the current visual arts
standards, benchmarks, and draft grade level content expectations.
At the close of each day, work groups convened to review
each other's work highlighting key areas for others to note. Among the first discoveries
was the need to clearly distinguish between the create and perform standards in
the visual arts. The key role of problem-solving through the visual arts was a
common theme throughout all work groups. In addition, references to specific
arts media in the grade level content expectations were minimized in favor of
big ideas and problem-solving.
 The group was motivated to complete their work in a timely
manner by the scheduling of a public review on the final afternoon of the 3-day
work session. The public audience for this charrette included members of
professional arts associations, cultural institutions, career and technical
education, and higher education. Audience members reviewed the physical
evidence of the work group's thinking and then listened to summary
presentations of their work. They were encouraged to add their comments
physically through post-its on the work documents throughout the rooms and then
to question and make recommendations during the oral presentations.
This work will now be fine-tuned to include feedback from
the public audience, and ensure consistency of language and expectations K-12. This
fall, an informal review will solicit additional input electronically from the
field before the documents go through the formal approval process for Michigan
Department of Education curriculum documents. All arts disciplines (dance,
music, theatre, and the visual arts) will be reviewed and final recommendations
brought to the State Board of Education by the end of 2010.
The next arts discipline to go through the review process
August 5 & 6 will be music. Work group participants have been confirmed but
we encourage anyone with interest in music education in Michigan
to join us for the public charrette review scheduled for Augsut 6th
from 2 - 4 p.m. at Lansing's
Radisson Hotel. To RSVP for the Aug. 6th public review, please
contact my assistant Connie McCall at [email protected].
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New ARRA Programs
Webinar discusses the details of U.S. Department of Education grants.
ArtServe
is excited to partner with the Michigan Youth Arts Association, Michigan
Department of Education and the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs
in hosting the Arts Education Policy Forum at Interlochen in Traverse City on August 4th. We look
forward to listening to the policy goals of all involved and working towards a
policy agenda for advancing arts education in Michigan.
Additionally,
we continue to learn more and more details about the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act as it pertains to the nearly $9 billion in grants states will
receive from the U.S. Department of Education.
Monday,
July 27th, ArtServe participated in a webinar held by the U.S.
Department of Education for governors, Chief State School Officers, state
legislators, mayors, superintendents, school board members, education
association leaders, and other stakeholders.
The
webinar reviewed the following new ARRA
programs:
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Race
to the Top - $4.35 billion
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Teacher
Incentive Fund - $300 million
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Investing
in Innovation - $650 million
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Education
Technology - $650 million
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Title
I School Improvement Grants - $3.5 billion
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Statewide
Longitudinal Data Systems - $250 million
The
webinar discussed guidelines, public comment and application timelines, as well
as additional information on each program. A comprehensive list of documents as
well as a recorded version of the webinar can be obtained by visiting http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/leg/recovery/programs.html
As
always, if you have any questions or comments please contact Mike Latvis, ArtServe's Director of Public Policy at
[email protected] or
248-379-5897.
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