November 16th Webinar: Arts Ed Data Project for Advocates. Slides.

All students in California deserve to have access to high quality arts education that will provide them with important skills they need to succeed in today’s competitive workforce. But up until now, we lacked the tools to show us where (and how) arts education is offered across the state.

CreateCA, in partnership with the California Department of Education and the Arts Education Data Project, launched a first-of-its-kind suite of tools designed to help increase participation in arts education across California. The tools include the California Arts Education Data Project, which analyzes and reports school-level data on arts education courses and middle and high school enrollment across the state. It is designed to enable leaders at the state, district and school level – as well as parents and advocates – to identify and address education inequities across the state.

Presented in a user-friendly, color-coded dashboard, the Project provides important information to education leaders, teachers and parents about levels of access to and enrollment in arts programming in schools. The dashboard allows users to review school-level, district, county and statewide data and presents the statewide averages as the baseline for comparison. It reports data from 2013–2014 and 2014–2015 from 3,719 schools, covering more than three million students from grades 6 through 12, which is roughly half of California’s student population.

RESOURCES: The roadmap for school districts guides advocates through the process of examining their data to better understand their unique circumstances and challenges. The roadmap contains resources and helpful guides to assist districts in assessing their programs and creating strategic arts plans. The Data Project also provides a communication toolkit that includes materials to share these new resources with local stakeholders.

NEW ADVOCACY TOOL: The California Alliance for Arts Education has developed a customizable powerpoint presentation that school staff, leaders, teachers, parents and other advoccates can use to share data about local schools and make the case to for increasing access to arts education. Download powerpoint.

FINDINGS: A few of the research findings from the Data Project include:

• In total, 38 percent of students were enrolled in at least one arts discipline. Further disparities exist by discipline, with 17 percent of students enrolled in art, 14 percent in music, 5 percent in arts, media and entertainment, 4 percent in theatre and 2 percent in dance.
• The greater the percentage of students on free and reduced lunch, the lower the arts participation rate.

These important tools will provide a complete picture of where California’s schools currently stand, allowing leaders to ensure their schools can provide invaluable arts education to every child in California.

For more information, contact Patricia Wayne at [email protected].