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Creating and Sustaining Arts-Based School Reform: The A+ Schools Program
Taking a close look at the issue of the arts and school reform, this book explores in detail how the incorporation of the arts into the identity of a school can be key to its resilience. Based on the A+ School Program, an arts-based school reform effort, it is much more than a report of a single case - this landmark study is a comprehensive, longitudinal analysis of arts in education initiatives that discusses the political, fiscal, and curricular implications inherent in taking the arts seriously.
Offering a model for implementation as well as evaluation that can be widely adapted in other schools and school districts, this book will inspire arts educators to move from advocating more arts to advocating the arts as a way to reform schools. Administrators and policy makers will see how curriculum integration can be used to revitalize and energize schools and serve as a springboard to wider reform initiatives. Researchers and students across the fields of arts education, school reform, organizational change, and foundations of education will be informed and enlightened by this real-world scenario of large-scale school reform.
Offering a model for implementation as well as evaluation that can be widely adapted in other schools and school districts, this book will inspire arts educators to move from advocating more arts to advocating the arts as a way to reform schools. Administrators and policy makers will see how curriculum integration can be used to revitalize and energize schools and serve as a springboard to wider reform initiatives. Researchers and students across the fields of arts education, school reform, organizational change, and foundations of education will be informed and enlightened by this real-world scenario of large-scale school reform.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published December 18, 2008
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June 19, 2020With all the local and national debate fixated on the shortcomings of the American education system, and, with my week-to-week presence in two Saint Paul schools, it is no wonder that my mind has been on education. This month's book share has brought me back into the writings of education scholars, and in this case, a group of authors that make an interesting case for the utility of arts-based education as a vehicle for school reform. “Creating and Sustaining arts-based school reform: The A+ schools program” by George Noblit, H. Dickson Corbett, Bruce L. Wilson, and Monica B. McKinney illustrates the effectiveness of Arts-based school reform by highlighting the success of the A+ schools program in North Carolina. It also provides a general road map by describing how to create and sustain arts-based school reform, and cites many case examples of the A+ program's positive overall effectiveness as an education reform package.
The A+ Schools Program was and is one of the largest recent school reform initiatives in recent history. Started nearly 12 years ago, the program spanned across 25 schools and was supported with $1,000,000 in funding from two establishments, and has now expanded to over 42 schools in North Carolina and elsewhere. The basic theory behind the program is that the arts as a curricular part of education not only engages individuals in high quality learning by offering an invigorating, meaningful, and engaging approach to the learning process. This is achieved not only by offering more arts classes, but by integrating subjects such as math, reading, and others into creative, arts-based projects. By cross-wiring the curricular areas, this approach engages students dynamically with the learning process being more adaptive and responsive to their individual skills and needs. On the most basic level, the authors demonstrate how the arts can simply “make classrooms and schools more desirable places to be.”
The second tier to their argument focuses on how the structure of arts education but “be the basis of whole-school reform” as arts education often involves a substantial overhaul or reorientation of preexisting educational forces and institutions. This is seen as an advantage because it redefines the interaction between teacher and student and “enables schools to accomplish what is being demanded of them in terms of accountability and student achievement.” Similarly, a common thread the authors see across many of the pilot schools in this program is the way in which education in the arts are multidisciplinary and serve as a gateway to other subjects, and as a result, can excite student's curiosity and motivation to expand what they are learning in other areas. When compared to other school reform packages, this book also highlights the adaptive advantages of the A+ program offers. While many reform packages are inherently inflexible and require the target district or community to adapt to the package, the A+ program provides flexibility and accommodation to the specific needs and resources already present within the school.
I still found the most interesting part of the book to be one of its sub-components: the role of the arts in improving schools as environments for teachers and learners, and the dynamic ways that arts enhance creative problem solving and decision making skills in students. This is something I can connect well to my service in the video production class I co-teach at Humboldt High School. On many occasions I realize the ways that our work engages students on many levels of learning, and most importantly, requires them to think critically. It is also clearly evident that creative/arts based learning is very engaging, particularly when that learning is experiential. I think this is an inherent part of the creative process, and is something that should definitely be pursued more in schools. This book nails it on the head though, and reinforces my dedication to arts-centric education. If you would like to learn more about the A+ program or the philosophy behind it, definitely check this book out.
The A+ Schools Program was and is one of the largest recent school reform initiatives in recent history. Started nearly 12 years ago, the program spanned across 25 schools and was supported with $1,000,000 in funding from two establishments, and has now expanded to over 42 schools in North Carolina and elsewhere. The basic theory behind the program is that the arts as a curricular part of education not only engages individuals in high quality learning by offering an invigorating, meaningful, and engaging approach to the learning process. This is achieved not only by offering more arts classes, but by integrating subjects such as math, reading, and others into creative, arts-based projects. By cross-wiring the curricular areas, this approach engages students dynamically with the learning process being more adaptive and responsive to their individual skills and needs. On the most basic level, the authors demonstrate how the arts can simply “make classrooms and schools more desirable places to be.”
The second tier to their argument focuses on how the structure of arts education but “be the basis of whole-school reform” as arts education often involves a substantial overhaul or reorientation of preexisting educational forces and institutions. This is seen as an advantage because it redefines the interaction between teacher and student and “enables schools to accomplish what is being demanded of them in terms of accountability and student achievement.” Similarly, a common thread the authors see across many of the pilot schools in this program is the way in which education in the arts are multidisciplinary and serve as a gateway to other subjects, and as a result, can excite student's curiosity and motivation to expand what they are learning in other areas. When compared to other school reform packages, this book also highlights the adaptive advantages of the A+ program offers. While many reform packages are inherently inflexible and require the target district or community to adapt to the package, the A+ program provides flexibility and accommodation to the specific needs and resources already present within the school.
I still found the most interesting part of the book to be one of its sub-components: the role of the arts in improving schools as environments for teachers and learners, and the dynamic ways that arts enhance creative problem solving and decision making skills in students. This is something I can connect well to my service in the video production class I co-teach at Humboldt High School. On many occasions I realize the ways that our work engages students on many levels of learning, and most importantly, requires them to think critically. It is also clearly evident that creative/arts based learning is very engaging, particularly when that learning is experiential. I think this is an inherent part of the creative process, and is something that should definitely be pursued more in schools. This book nails it on the head though, and reinforces my dedication to arts-centric education. If you would like to learn more about the A+ program or the philosophy behind it, definitely check this book out.
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