An Art Form at Risk

That's the title of the paper I'm currently writing. Basically it's about the crisis in music education and how schools across the country are either diminishing its presence or cutting the programs all together. NCLB requires that every school have a comprehensive arts program, but since there is no test currently being administered, the definition of what and arts program should be is actually very vague. This allows individual schools and districts to wreak havoc on their music programs in favor of more emphasis in math and language arts.
I found some interesting things in my research. One of the ways I found to help solve this problem from an administrative perspective (per the assignment) was to create a structure that allows for arts integration. There were several types of arts integration that I talked about, the most ideal of which was the system that WEDJ is using. I also found that there was a danger in arts integration in that either the "traditional" subject or the art could be trivialized. It seems obvious, but I didn't think of it from the perspective that it could actually hurt both academics and arts if arts integration is not implemented properly.
Another thing I found was the results to a NAEP arts assessment pilot. If high stakes testing is here to stay, perhaps to evolve and not get "left behind" the arts will need to step up to the fact that they may be the subject of a standardized test in the near future.