Arts assessment worries educators

WASHINGTON – Children were taking fewer field trips to art museums even before the recession began to gouge school budgets, according to a nationwide survey released Monday.

The survey, conducted with music and art tests of eighth graders, paints a lackluster picture of arts education in this country.

Results came from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the benchmark of student achievement across the country. Music and art assessments were last given in 1997.

Educators worry the arts could suffer as budget cuts force tough decisions in the years to come.

The economy and the arts “are marching hand in hand downhill,” said Eileen Weiser, a classical pianist from Ann Arbor, Mich., and a member of the board that oversees the tests.

Board member David Gordon, the school superintendent in Sacramento County, Calif., said he is cutting back on bus transportation for students to visit the local Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts.

Only about 16 percent of students said they visited an art museum or gallery at least once with their class, down from 22 percent in 1997.

Even the board is feeling the budget pinch: The report doesn’t state how kids are doing in dance and theater, because there wasn’t enough money to test in those subjects, and a small number of schools offer them.

Results are based only on the multiple-choice portions of the tests, such as identifying the clarinet as the instrument that begins Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” or identifying examples of Renaissance painting. Only multiple-choice questions could be compared to 1997.

Performance on other portions – such written responses and self-portraits drawn with pastels and charcoal pencils – could not be compared because scoring has changed significantly.

There were other limitations, too. Results are based on a relatively small number of students, with tests given to 7,900 eighth-grade students from 260 public and private schools. By comparison, the National Assessment of Education Progress based a reading and math report in April on tests given to 26,000 students.

Despite these constraints, the assessments may be used in the debate over the 2002 No Child Left Behind law, which Congress and the Obama administration hope to rewrite next year. The National Assessment of Education Progress scores are interpreted by critics and supporters alike as supporting their positions.

Critics insist the 2002 law has pushed music and art out of the classroom because of the high-stakes reading and math tests required under the law.

And supporters point out a recent study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office showing that teachers spent roughly the same amount of time on the arts before and after the law was passed.

The study released Monday suggested students may have had about the same access to music and art as in 1997. Fifty-seven percent of children were in schools where music was offered three or four times a week, and 47 percent were in schools where visual art instruction was offered as often.

But that brings up another limitation: The study did not state how many students actually took those classes.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said he worries the arts could get squeezed from the classroom.

Kids “need to have a chance to develop their skills, develop their passions,” he told The Associated Press in an interview during a visit Monday to Raleigh, N.C.

“When the curriculum gets narrowed and the arts gets dropped, we do a huge disservice to students,” Duncan said.