Sequential, standards-based arts curricula taught during the school day by teachers who are credentialed in the arts discipline they teach is considered the gold standard of arts education. A large body of research shows that this kind of high quality arts education is associated with a wide range of benefits including improved academic performance, better standardized test scores, increased involvement in community service and lower dropout rates.
Partnerships with outside artists and arts organizations play an important role in supporting arts education in America’s public schools. This is equally true in LA County, which is home to 81 public school districts and more than 2,198 schools, serving nearly 1.6 million students. These collaborations with community arts partners may include artist visits to the classroom, residencies, school assemblies and field trips.
In order to determine how much arts education was provided during the school day in 2012– 13 in LA County public schools by community arts partners, Arts for All conducted a survey of teaching artists and arts organizations in the winter of 2013–14. Arts for All is the LA County arts education initiative dedicated to making the arts core in K-12 public education. The LA County Arts Commission is the backbone organization of Arts for All, which works to increase the quantity, quality and equitable distribution of arts education for all public school students.
This survey found 139 arts organizations and 46 teaching artists providing arts education during the school day in 98 percent of all school districts and 53 percent of all schools in the County. While this is certainly an undercount of the total number of such arts organizations and teaching artists serving local public schools, it is a first step toward establishing a comprehensive list, and is the best data we have to date about this group of providers. It should also be noted that this survey did not seek to measure the quality of arts instruction provided by these outside artists and organizations, only the quantity of those services.
Source: Executive Summary
