IEA Newsletter for Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Welcome to the Institute for Education and the Arts’ weekly newsletter for January 16, 2008. The newsletter is published each Wednesday and is archived here on the IEA blog.

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REPORTS
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TOUGH CHOICES OR TOUGH TIMES: THE REPORT OF THE NEW COMMISION ON THE SKILLS OF THE AMERICAN WORKFORCE
National Center on Education and the Economy, 2007
According to this Fall 2007 report, the future "depends on a deep vein of creativity that is constantly renewing itself, and on a myriad of people who can imagine how people can use things that have never been available before, create ingenious marketing and sales campaigns, write books, build furniture, make movies, and imagine new kinds of software that will capture people’s imagination and become indispensable to millions. This is a world in which a very high level of preparation in reading, writing, speaking, mathematics, science, literature, history, and the arts will be an indispensable foundation for everything that comes after for most members of the workforce."
Learn more>>


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ARTS IN SCHOOLS
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TO PROVIDE QUALITY MUSIC EDUCATION NOW, SCHOOLS COULD LEARN FROM THE PAST
Allen Kozinn, New York Times, 12/25/07
“[I]n the marginalized world of music education, a good deal of serious thinking needs to be done … The crisis of the moment has partly to do with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s announcement last summer that New York City schools would be required to teach the arts, and that principals would be rated annually on their success, much as they are in other subjects. In theory this could put some muscle behind the adventurous curriculum that the city’s Department of Education and a panel of arts consultants drew up in 2004: a kindergarten-through-12th-grade program that envisions choral and instrumental performance, the fostering of musical literacy and the consideration of the role music plays in communities and the world at large …The problem is that [it] is recommended rather than required. Given the paucity of music teachers in the system … schools that could execute it in all its glory were few … Mr. Bloomberg has also decreed that the $67.5 million earmarked annually for Project Arts …will go directly to the schools. The fear is that it will be absorbed by programs other than those for arts education. That’s what arts organizations are worrying about publicly. But the fact is that Project Arts and grant programs like it have become a dependable gravy train for these groups. In the absence of the teachers and the budgets necessary to offer comprehensive and coherent arts courses, the schools, encouraged and financed by such programs, have formed partnerships with performing groups, charging the ensembles with the task of creating arts programs for children.”
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MEASURING CULTURE
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BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY
Sean Redmond, New City Chicago, 1/8/08
”Dan Silver … [is] eager to talk about his achievements; working with fellow University of Chicago faculty members Lawrence Rothfield and Terry Nichols Clark, the three have recently completed a groundbreaking study on just what it takes to create a ‘scene,’ whether it be bohemian or otherwise. The enterprise, termed the Cultural Amenities Project, is a product of the U of C’s Cultural Policy Center. ‘The initial goal [was to see] to what extent do the cultural amenities drive urban development,’ explains Silver of the project’s origins. The three men hoped that a crude count of amenities could be used to help guide policies with the aim of augmenting a neighborhood’s cultural strengths in ways that could help stabilize communities, attract businesses and spur economic growth. What the three ultimately ended up with, however, was a much more complicated quantitative rubric by which they could judge a neighborhood or city based on a number of categories, which, when compiled and averaged, could then be compared to other cities and to ideal neighborhood types, such as ‘cosmopolitan,’ ‘urban’ and, yes, ‘bohemian.’”
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NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND
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COUR REVIVES LAWSUIT AGAINST NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND LAW
Sam Dillon, New York Times, 1/8/08
”A federal appeals court on Monday revived a legal challenge to the federal No Child Left Behind education law, saying that school districts have been justified in complaining that the law required them to pay for testing and other programs without providing sufficient federal money. The 2-to-1 ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, gave new life to a 2005 lawsuit and appeared to be a setback to the Bush administration. School districts in Michigan, Texas and Vermont joined with the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, in their 2005 lawsuit. In it, they argue that [Secretary of Education] Spellings had violated the United States Constitution in enacting the law by requiring states and school districts to spend local money to administer standardized tests and to meet other federal requirements. The suit was built in part around a paragraph in the law that says no state or district can be forced to spend its money on expenses the federal government has not covered. A federal judge in Michigan dismissed the suit. In the ruling Monday, the appeals court sent the suit back to the lower court, arguing that a passage of the Constitution known as the spending clause requires Congress to give states clear notice of their financial liabilities when they accept federal financing that may fall short of the full costs of complying with requirements from Washington …It also noted that because the states had been required to spend state and local money to meet requirements of the federal law, their ‘injury has already occurred and is ongoing.’”
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DIVERSITY AND CREATIVITY
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IN PROFESSOR’S MODEL, DIVERSITY = PRODUCTIVITY
Claudia Dreifus, New York Times, 1/8/08
“In the long-running debate on affirmative action, Scott E. Page, a professor of complex systems, political science and economics at the University of Michigan, is a fresh voice. His recently published book, ‘The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies’ (Princeton University Press), uses mathematical modeling and case studies to show how variety in staffing produces organizational strength. Rather than ponder moral questions like, ‘Why can’t we all get along?’ Dr. Page asks practical ones like, ‘How can we all be more productive together?’ The answer, he suggests, is in messy, creative organizations and environments with individuals from vastly different backgrounds and life experiences.”
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GRANTS AND AWARDS
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PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR ARTS EDUCATORS
U.S. Department of Education
Deadline: 2/29/08
”This program supports the implementation of high-quality professional development model programs in music, dance, drama, media arts, or visual arts, including folk arts, for arts educators and other instructional staff of kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12) students in high-poverty schools. Grants are intended to strengthen the capacity of teachers and schools to deliver standards-based arts education programs and to raise student academic achievement in the arts and ensure that all students meet challenging State academic content standards.” 30 grants averaging $200,000 each.
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