My birthday is November 6 and overall I think I picked it wisely. True, some national elections have presented me with unwelcome outcomes, but on my 48th birthday I received the 2000 Texas Art Educator of the Year award, and on my 54th birthday I received a call from a liaison for our nation’s new Speaker-to-be, Nancy Pelosi, asking if I wanted advise the House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor on education-related legislation. I said yes. Since then I have advised members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions as well, in both cases placing most of my effort into the debate on how to change the No Child Left Behind Act (West, 2003).

To assist me in this weighty task I formed an advisory organization, The National Education Taskforce (The NET: “We catch the children left behind”). As of this writing the NET has about 100 members spread from coast to coast. We advise on all matters educational; however, arts issues are often foregrounded because the executive director is an art educator—I earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree (ceramics emphasis) with an art teaching certificate in 1975, taught K-12 art for a decade, pursued an art education doctorate for three years, and have been an art education professor since 1988.

To rectify the havoc that NCLB has wreaked on arts education (cf. Fehr, 2008a; Fehr, 2008b) the NET’s Committee on the Arts drafted arts education legislative language and submitted it to the education committees of both chambers, as well as to several individual members, requesting that it be included in the law’s new incarnation. Below is the original language (the several-hundred-page Act contains almost no other mention of arts education):

Section 1. Title V, Part A, Subpart 15, Arts in Education.
Sec. 5551. Assistance for art education.

(a) PURPOSES- The purposes of this subpart are the following:
(1) To support systemic education reform by strengthening arts education as an integral part of the elementary school and secondary school curriculum.
(2) To help ensure that all students meet challenging State academic content standards and challenging State student academic achievement standards in the arts.

Here are our proposed changes (again as of this writing), formatted according to legislative proposal protocol:
Section 1. Title V, Part A, Subpart 15, Arts in Education is amended—

(a) in subsection 5551(a)(1) by inserting “The arts are defined as creative activities and products of the theater, the visual arts, dance, music, and multimedia combinations of the above, and shall be henceforth referred to as ‘the arts disciplines’”; and
(b) “To foster divergent thinking as a counterbalance to the convergent thinking fostered by most school curricula, a goal of public education shall be that all children are taught the arts by arts specialists. A further goal is that teachers of other subjects from Early Childhood through twelfth grade shall use the arts to embellish the teaching of those subjects. The teaching of art by teachers of other subjects shall not replace the teaching of the arts by art specialists, but shall occur in addition to it.”
(c) in subsection 5551(a)(2) by inserting “A goal of public education shall be for all children to receive an average of ninety minutes of arts instruction per week, under the guidance of specialists in the respective arts disciplines. This instruction is to occur during the regularly scheduled school day. Arts instruction time shall not be interrupted to tutor children in other subjects or to prepare them for assessment examinations in other subjects”; and
(d) “A goal of public education shall be that arts education shall include instruction in every arts discipline.”
(e) in subsection 5551(a)(2) by inserting “To foster diversity, the study of arts forms created by artists and communities representing multiple races, cultures, religious affiliations, gender identities and under-represented groups as well as traditionally recognized groups, shall be included in all arts curricula”; and
(f) “To teach children to interpret media messages critically, arts curricula shall include study of mass media and popular culture with attention to the manipulations of arts and aesthetic content in advertising and propaganda”; and
(g) “To create a civically engaged and ethical citizenry, study of the arts shall include the examination of social justice and ethical questions posed by artworks throughout history and across world cultures.”

Respect for the arts has increased on Capitol Hill since we started, but not enough to guarantee that this language will be included in the new law. We regard the current gridlock in the debate as a good thing because it probably will postpone the vote until 2009, and the NET will make good use of the extra time. Art educators and concerned citizens can help by mailing this language to their representatives in Congress, both House and Senate, and asking them to include this wording in NCLB’s new incarnation. Names and contact information for Congressional representatives and senators for given districts can be found at www.house.gov and www.senate.gov. Similar advocacy should occur at the state level as well.

In a meeting with Speaker Pelosi in Washington to discuss the NET and the reauthorization debate, the topic of names for the new law came up. I suggested Great Schools, Great Nation because it draws attention to the fact that the former creates the latter, but the Speaker preferred New Directions because it signifies change from the current unpopular law. So don’t put your money on Great Schools, Great Nation. But in any case, an updated version of NCLB will become law. After that, the NET, which is built on relationships rather than issues, will continue to advocate for children in U.S. schools. If you wish to become part of our organization, the NET’s Web site has directions on how to join us. It is at www.natedtaskforce.org.

REFERENCES

Fehr, D. (2008a). Developing Arts Education Policy at the Federal Level: The First Ten Months of the National Education Taskforce. Studies in Art Education 49(4), 381-384.

Fehr, D. (2008b). Counterbalancing NCLB. School Arts, 107, 8, p. 62.

No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, 5 U.S.C.A. § 5551 § et seq. (West 2003).