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Opinion: As students return in-person, here’s a reminder that arts and music are essential in education

Mentor Artist Rashaad Graham provides instruction with virtual school wifi, tutoring support, and music-making opportunities.
Mentor Artist Rashaad Graham provides instruction with virtual school wifi, tutoring support, and music-making opportunities.



(Courtesy Jesus Villegas/ David’s Harp Foundation)
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Smith is the chief executive officer of The Lewis Prize for Music, and lives in Coronado.

Last fall, Luna, Bruno, Cesar and Kate enrolled in college immediately out of high school. As Latinx youth who speak English as a second language, college was never a certainty for them. Their start was even more impressive in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when enrollment from low income and majority non-White high school students declined significantly more than enrollment at high-income or low-minority-enrollment schools.

Along with having engaged families, they shared the key experience of learning music. After handing them their first instruments 10 years ago, I have witnessed music’s role in helping them succeed.

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Their stories are affirmed by overwhelming evidence-based results showing music and arts education deliver substantial developmental and educational benefits. Yet these subjects have been diminished for decades in schools that serve the most diverse populations. Instead, too many young people have their days built around double blocks of language arts and mathematics, a strategy failing to narrow students’ outcomes.

Last June, McKinsey & Company projected that at least 40 percent of low-income Black and Hispanic high school students would fall dramatically further behind due to virtual schooling and that dropouts could increase by 1.1 million students as a result of the pandemic.

Schools can overcome this expanding crisis by infusing joy into learning.

Young people need outlets for understanding and expressing all that they’ve experienced over the last 12 months. The arts are the perfect complement to other subjects and an outlet for healthy expression. Research confirms that arts education contributes significantly to social-emotional well-being as well as college, career and citizenship readiness.

We’ll know educational leaders understand what is needed when they prioritize creative subjects for every student, especially those who have endured the most hardship this year. U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona must immediately issue a letter to all states and school districts reminding them of two things: Music and arts education are federally recognized core subjects proven to increase overall student achievement, and Title I funds as well as newly passed COVID-19 relief funds can be used for arts instruction. State superintendents can reaffirm this guidance with letters of their own to local leaders that encourage implementation of proven arts education strategies.

Deputy Secretary of Education-nominee Cindy Marten showed the effectiveness of Title I arts education as superintendent of San Diego Unified School District with “Learning Through the Arts.” Participating schools saw greater gains in language arts and math test scores than the district average. The district has now funded a summer learning partnership with community-based organizations that emphasizes the arts and has plans for on-campus arts education to complement academic summer programs. All districts can take this path by including local artists and arts organizations, especially those providing young people with access to culturally rooted artistic traditions throughout the pandemic, in reopening plans.

Ongoing actions must also be initiated. Cardona should reinstate the arts on the calendar of the National Assessment of Educational Progress and support routine data collection on the status of access to the arts in public education. States should prioritize the collection and sharing of arts access data through the Arts Education Data Project.

Diversification of the nation’s certified visual and performing arts teachers must be a priority. It must be easier for artists and culture bearers to have their lifetime of art-making recognized as the professional expertise it is so they can receive teaching credentials. Student choice in higher education funding should be maintained so students can pursue studies in arts and design fields regardless of their socioeconomic status at the institutions that best suit their educational aims.

Finally, adding a new arts education incentive grant to the Department of Education budget will ensure school districts have the support they need to hire visual and performing arts teachers. Chula Vista Elementary School District, where Luna, Bruno, Cesar, and Kate first learned their instruments, hired its first music teacher in 20 years with the arts education portion of a Promise Neighborhoods grant. This started the district’s return of arts education to all 30,000 students and the hiring of over 90 visual and performing arts teachers.

Everything I describe comes full circle with Luna. She has ambitions to become an elementary music teacher. She wants to bring all that music gave her to the children growing up behind her. In order for the next generation to achieve its full potential, just as Luna and her friends are, schools must be infused with the joy of the arts today.

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