For example, only 22% of high schools with high concentrations of poverty offer five or more visual arts courses, compared with 56% of high schools with low concentrations of poverty. Theater (4%) and dance (3%) were much less common.ĭata also shows that, at least at the high school level, larger schools and traditional public schools offer more arts courses than do smaller schools and private or charter schools.īut the more locally one looks, the more disparities emerge.

Back then, 94% of public elementary schools reported that they offered music instruction, and 83% offered visual arts. Today, arts programs in K-12 schools include visual arts, music, theater, dance and multimedia or design.Ī congressionally mandated study from 2011 offers a snapshot of what’s available to kids. It started with singing instruction, with instrumental music to follow later in the century. Music education first made its way into American public schools in Boston in the 1830s. As a music education professor and a researcher who studies arts education policies, I know that access to and the quality of arts programs vary greatly among states, districts and even schools within the same district.Īdditionally, I see that disruptions from the pandemic are threatening the already tenuous status of the arts in public schools.

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