research

Topic: Arts Education: K-12 Arts Education Policy

American public schools serve as fundamental centers of community, as well as serving as the major provider of formalized arts instruction for America’s youth. Arts education policy is a clearly identified course of action, infrastructure, and/or framework, established by a governing body—school boards, state legislatures, federal government—and designed to guide present and future decisions regarding arts programming, facilities, instruction, curricula, and funding. While arts education policy is adopted, implemented, and funded at the national, state, and local levels, school boards play a fundamental role in designing educational policy at the local level within their school districts.

With the passing of the Goals 2000: Educate America Act, the arts were written into federal law as a core academic subject in K–12 public schools. The arts maintain their status under the No Child Left Behind Act. While the federal government asserts that the arts are a core academic subject, it does not require that states and/or school districts offer programming. Most states have an arts education mandate, but school districts are usually left to oversee the implementation and funding of such programs.