A Band-Aid Solution

As nurses are squeezed by growing workloads and shrinking budgets, the burden of medical care increasingly falls on teacher’s aides, secretaries, and other support professionals.

By Rebecca L. Weber

As children walk to their classrooms at Cherokee Elementary in Alexandria, Louisiana, Sharon Scott greets each one with “good morning,” calling many by name. Some kids are still Monday-morning sleepy, and others are speedwalking down the halls. A few, like Sam, a fifth-grader who was diagnosed as a diabetic before he was school age, get more personal. “I’m his school mom,” Scott says as they hug. Chase, with spiky hair that was bleached some time back, also checks in; he’ll see her later in the day, when it’s time for his inhaler. Dressed in primary red pants, a bright yellow Dr. Seuss shirt, and black Mary Janes, Scott stands with her hands clasped behind her back. This is perhaps the calmest moment of her day.

Classes begin and Scott heads to the nurse’s station, a euphemistic name for what’s essentially a long closet outfitted with storage cabinets and a sink. The windowless room has no ventilation; a small fan Scott bought with her own money whirs away. She makes do without a computer or even a chair for herself—there’s barely room for the patient seat and the cabinets, drawers, and mini-fridge that hold prescription medicines, Epi-Pens, antiseptic wipes, inhalers, files, and fruit juice bottles.

ESP Sharon Scott’s role includes medical duties.

Scott spends most of her seven-plus hour days standing here, attending to students with chronic and acute medical needs. She has 37 students’ individual medical plans on a neatly written list—which keeps growing. Most of the kids refer to her as the nurse, but she was never trained as one. Scott was hired as a teacher’s assistant, and she is still responsible for making copies for the school’s first-grade teachers and reading the after-school bus announcements. But most of her time is spent attending to the medical needs of Cherokee’s 700-plus students.

Increasing medical needs are straining the ability of school districts across the country to retain adequate numbers of school nurses. But while the percentage of medically fragile children with chronic conditions such as asthma is rising, many states and school districts are slashing health care budgets. Without school nurses present, the burden of medical care increasingly falls on the shoulders of some of the lowest-paid employees at the school: teacher’s aides, secretaries, and other support professionals.

The education support professionals (ESPs) who bear this ever-increasing medical load typically were hired to perform other roles—but the “and other duties as assigned” clause kicks in. David Clark, an organizational specialist in Florida, once sat in on training where support staff were instructed how to give a shot. A peach was used for the model. “These people, who generally are underpaid and underappreciated, with limited medical background, are being put in a very difficult position,” he says. “What stuns me is that for the amount of money they’re paid, and the status that they’re denied, they’re literally asked to do a life-or-death thing.”

Since Scott has been at Cherokee, the student population has swelled from about 450 to over 700. But the school’s other paraprofessional who shared medical duties with Scott was cut because of budget constraints. “I had the most medical training—and I use that term loosely,” says Scott. So now everyone, she says, refers to her as the nurse. Even the district RN calls Scott “the real school nurse.”

On her weekly visit to Cherokee this spring morning, she and Scott are searching through the locks of a morose little girl with a stylish bob. The adults keep the talk cheerful: What a lovely haircut; it’s got good body. The student, who had been sent home the previous week for head lice, is relieved to hear she can return to school.

Next, an asthmatic boy comes in before his PE class. He was diagnosed just a few weeks ago, so Scott coaches him with his inhaler. After taking a dose, he has trouble holding it in. “Pretend you’re sucking on a straw,” Scott advises, and he giggles, losing the rest of the dose. He tries again with a straight face.

Another, younger girl on the verge of tears takes her turn, gripping the chair seat tightly. She keeps her eyes on the floor, ignoring the comments about her lovely blond highlights as Scott searches her hair for nits.

“I worked on her hair so long, she fell asleep,” her mother says. “If it couldn’t be sprayed, it got doused with bleach.”

“It’s so hard to spot them,” says Scott. When her daughter is given the OK to go back to class, it’s hard to say who is most relieved.

That sense of relief rarely extends to Scott. “There are times when you don’t feel qualified,” she says.

Nurse Norma Nikkola’s district has lost five of its seven school nurses over the past few years. Even a principal now serves as a backup.

Even in places where nurses are more readily available, their workloads are changing. Norma Nikkola works in a small Ohio town that, over the past few years, has lost five of its seven school nurses. One of her assistants now dispenses medication and does regular tube feedings. Even the principal has been trained as a backup.

The National Association of School Nurses (NASN) recommends at least one school nurse for every 750 students with general needs. (The ratio changes dramatically when considering students with substantial or profound disabilities.) Some states and districts are increasing the number of nurses to keep pace with medical needs, but others aren’t. As a result, nurses like Nikkola often worry about the quality of care they can provide.

“A lot of people don’t know what school nursing has become, with asthmatics, diabetics, overweight kids,” she says. “We’re overwhelmed with individual health care plans, screenings, paperwork. We don’t have the opportunity for hands-on care, for follow-up, or counseling. We can’t be used to the fullest extent of our training.”

While nurses increasingly share their workload with other staff, they remain responsible for the outcome—and should be the ones deciding who can handle what, argues NASN President Sue Will. “The nurse is the one who needs to determine what will be delegated to a paraprofessional,” she says. “Health problems change day to day and across the school year. You need somebody with a medical background and licensing.”

By early March in central Louisiana, azalea blooms are already turning into lush, deep green bushes. The pollen count is climbing; mosquitoes are out looking for fresh blood. Gym class meets daily, and the outdoor track is concrete. But when scraped-up kids come to Scott, she directs them to wash the wounds, or instructs them to ask their parents to cut off torn skin when they get home. State law prohibits nurses and other staff members from administering any topical medications or antiseptic. At one point, Band-Aids were banned because of adhesive allergies, but now the school allows Scott to use the latex-free bandages she picks up on her own time.

A silent, sandy-haired little boy sits folded into himself as he holds a baggie of ice on his pale, thin arm. His teacher spotted the big, ugly welt near his wrist, and walked him down to the nurse’s station, where Scott calls his father.

When his father—a handsome, burly man with the same face as his son—walks in a bit later, the boy smiles. Dad produces a well-used tube and squeezes out pink ointment.

“Has he always been allergic?” Scott asks. She keeps detailed files on all students with medical histories, but this is the boy’s first visit.

“Yeah, look at this scar. He’s got a little eczema, too. Do y’all want this?”

“We can’t put on any ointment.”

“It’s not like the old days!” the parent replies. “I used to get all swabbed up.”

“These people, who generally are underpaid and underappreciated, with limited medical background, are being put in a very difficult position.” David Clark, organizational specialist in Florida

While barred from administering some medications, ESPs like Scott are still expected to perform other, often complex medical procedures, including tube feedings and urinary catheterizations. Over the years, Scott has assisted or performed the latter procedure for a half-dozen children. Her training consisted of a video and a nurse who “walked us through it,” she recalls. “Seeing a video and actually doing it are two different things.” At one point, she had to train a second-grader to do it herself. “I remember feeling very inadequate to have to train this child to do this,” she says. “If a child cannot do it, I believe a medical person should. In most cases, they were paralyzed from the waist down—they had no feeling, and cannot say, ‘Ow, you’re doing that wrong.’”

It’s past time to check in with her school’s five first-grade teachers to see what assistance they need with photocopying, laminating, and the like. “I’m sometimes not doing them justice,” she says. Nor does Scott’s salary do justice to the work she does—after nearly three decades of experience in the same district, her salary is capped at just below $15,000. Many of her peers are only able to get by with food stamps or live in subsidized housing.

But Scott loves taking care of children, especially the one-on-one time with those with chronic health problems. Nine-year-old Tristan has a variety of physical and mental needs, but he’s mainstreamed and his needs are relatively minor compared to some of the special ed children she’s worked with in the past. While he always had a bit of an unusual gait, Tristan was recently diagnosed with cerebral palsy and now wears leg braces. His cleft palate impairs his ability to eat and swallow—he’s the only student who chews his pills. (“Ooh, bitter!”) But he knows the drill: Pills, then a little reward.

“Where are the Spider-Man stickers?”

“I don’t have any. You can have a bunny sticker.”

“I'm scared of the Easter Bunny.”

“No, he’s not scary. You can have a sticker.”

“I’ll have chocolate chips.”

Scott changes the subject. “How’s the brace?”

“Not great.”

She gives him his pills.

“They’re yuck,” he says. He demonstrates that he’s already strong and healthy: he flexes and pats his bicep.

“Have you had any water? Drink, drink. Hey, let me see.” He swallows all the water, sticks his tongue out, then up.

Tristan chooses a sticker that she places near his shirt pocket. He then hops out, bunny-style.

Photos top: John Ballance; bottom: Peter Wine

Rules of Engagement

From North Carolina to Nagasaki, Japan, U.S. military bases are home to public schools with a unique role—to serve the children of those who serve our country.

By John Rosales

Theresa Hardesty removes a towel-sized American flag from a desk drawer and unfolds it in front of her prekindergarten students.

“What do we do now?” she asks rhetorically. “We stand.”

Some of the children spring up and hit a brace—heels together, shoulders back, chest out, right hand on heart. One youngster is saluting. Another with long flyaway hair begins tip-toeing in place, head clicked way back, mouth agape, arms flapping like a bird.

“And we stand still, don’t we,” Hardesty adds, “just like our mommies and daddies.”

Those moms and dads happen to be combat soldiers who live at Camp Lejeune, the sprawling Marine Corps base near Jacksonville, North Carolina. Some work and train at Lejeune; others are deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, and other assignments tied to national defense.

Whether at home or overseas, the Marine parent’s presence is strongly felt at Tarawa Terrace 1 Primary Public School, named after the base housing area where it is located. Some of the children mimic soldier attire with desert camouflage pants and bright red T-shirts carrying the Marine emblem. One student proudly points to his red-and-blue “sergeant’s shirt.” “He calls it that because his dad just got promoted,” Hardesty says.

The 36-year-old teacher understands her students and their family’s military lifestyle. She was a “military brat” herself, the daughter of a Marine captain, and educated at similar on-base schools. Like many of her fellow teachers, administrators, and support staff, she is now the spouse of a Marine. Her sense of duty is unwavering.

“Flag etiquette is part of their culture,” says Hardesty, who has taught on and off at one of Lejeune’s eight public schools since the summer before finishing college in 1991. “I want them to know what to do when they’re with their parents at military functions. It’s expected.”

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MUCH IS EXPECTED  and much is provided to the sons and daughters of active duty military. Hardesty’s students are part of the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA), a civilian agency that manages public schools on U.S. military bases around the world. The system serves an estimated 25,500 students in 63 schools located in seven states, Guam, and Puerto Rico; another 65,500 attend 154 schools in 13 countries, including Germany, Japan, and even Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Students from DoDEA’s on-base public schools routinely outscore, outperform, and outpace students from other schools. Some 95 percent of the system’s high school seniors graduate, and 76 percent go on to some form of higher education, according to 2005 figures.

“Some people live on base so their kids can go to a base school,” says Hardesty, who lives outside of Lejeune and must drive through its security checkpoint each morning.

A system that places a high value on safety and education, a well-trained teaching staff, and “great kids” are three elements that make DoDEA schools some of the best around, according to Joseph Tafoya, the system’s director. “We have more people who want to join our system than there are slots available,” says Tafoya, a former teacher and administrator from California. “More than two-thirds [of our educators] have master’s degrees.” Pay is comparable to many urban districts, with salaries starting at just under $36,000.

NEA’s 51st State Turns 51 Association members working on military bases belong to the Federal Education Association (FEA), sometimes known as “NEA’s 51st state.” The FEA represents faculty and staff working within the Department of Defense school system. Headquartered at NEA in Washington, D.C., FEA is a global organization serving more than 6,000 educators in Europe, Asia, the United States, and its territories. FEA is a state affiliate of NEA that was started in 1956 when a group of educators in Germany became upset over a Pentagon plan to shut schools down early in order to save money. They organized to form the Overseas Education Association (OEA). In 1994, the name was changed to FEA. It is the recognized labor organization for DoDEA employees, having nine board members who represent Europe, Pacific, and “Stateside” districts.

DoDEA spends an average of $13,500 per student—above both the national average of $8,287 in 2004 (the most current data available) and the highest-spending state (New Jersey, which spent $12,981 per student that year). But that figure is deceiving, Tafoya notes, pointing out that it covers everything from housing and living allowances for staff working overseas to student activities. “When the football team at our Naples base has to play the team in Aviano [Italy], I have to fly them to the game,” he says. “Our charter says we must provide our students with a comprehensive American education. That includes sports.”   

One quirk is that DoDEA’s funding comes via the Department of Defense, not the Department of Education. Consequently, its schools are exempt from No Child Left Behind (NCLB), though they follow the standards and curriculum set by the law.

In the primary grades at Lejeune, the student-teacher ratio is 18 to 1; throughout DoDEA, the ratio is 20 to 1 on average. Lejeune High School offers advanced classes in math and science, as well as honors English and world history. Advanced Placement classes are offered in 11 subjects. Two years of the same foreign language is a graduation requirement throughout DoDEA. “We want to ensure that our kids can meet the standards of learning in [any] state,” Tafoya says. That’s important, given that the normal military tour of duty is three years, and many dependents will move a staggering half-dozen times before they graduate from high school.

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 DURING RECESS , Hardesty watches her students as they burn energy on the monkey bars, swings, slide, and basketball court, seemingly oblivious to the attack helicopters hovering above the nearby pine trees as soldiers shimmy up and down ropes. “See it all the time,” Hardesty shrugs. Some base schools have soundproof glass to help buffer the noise from aircraft engines on nearby runways. 

Such is life at Lejeune, where 139,000 Marines, sailors, retirees, family members, and civilian employees work. But remove the camouflage vehicles from the road, and the base resembles a mixed-use, albeit gated, suburban community. It even has a slight rush hour. But its Domino’s Pizza and Burger King coexist with 77 live-fire ranges, 43 miles of railroad tracks, and 10 fire stations.

Military families don’t earn high salaries. Most of the students at Lejeune qualify for free and reduced-price lunches. But paychecks are steady and can be stretched far beyond the limits of civilians in the same income bracket. For example, military families enjoy reduced prices at the base department and grocery stores, hair salons, and dry cleaners. Families also have access to decent housing and high-quality health and dental care, as well as fully equipped gymnasiums, playgrounds, and recreation centers.

Alicia Mauro lives three blocks from Tarawa Terrace. While carrying her infant daughter, Mauro walks her oldest son, Anthony, 4, and his 3-year-old brother, Patrick, to school each day. “We have a strong sense of community here,” says Mauro, whose husband is in Iraq. “My husband can do his job better knowing we are safe. Everything we need is on base.”

Base living can be a comfortable and fulfilling life for military families, of which many are ethnic minorities. On-base schools reflect the same ethnic diversity as most urban schools. “DoDEA is color-blind,” Tafoya says. “A lot of our success has to do with teacher expectations.”

Parental expectations are also high. Along with e-mailing assignments to parents serving overseas—“so when they talk to their kid, they can ask about homework,” Tayofa says—DoDEA also broadcasts graduation ceremonies and other school events live via satellite around the world.

DoDEA’s global reach has produced a worldwide alumni network. Graduates scattered across the globe stay in touch through a variety of Web sites, including Military Brats Registry, overseas Brats, and Military Brats Meetup.    

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CAMP LEJEUNE has six elementary schools, a middle school, and a high school. Admission is limited to the 3,300 dependent children of military parents living in permanent housing at Camp Lejeune. Dependents who live with their families off base attend local public schools.

Like Hardesty, many of the 630 teachers, teacher’s aides, education support professionals, and substitutes at Lejeune are military spouses. “We know how to relate to what students are going through when their dad or mom is deployed,” Hardesty says. “We’ve all been there.”

Hardesty has been there more than most. She was born at Lejeune while her Marine father was stationed there in the 1970s. Hardesty has a civilian brother, but her two sisters married military men; a nephew is also in the service. When her father, Capt. Jack Renegar, retired in 1976, her family had amassed 140 years of military service—more than any family in U.S. history, according to news accounts. Her husband, Master Sgt. Daniel Hardesty, is currently stationed in Okinawa, Japan. Before his transfer, the couple purchased a house in Jacksonville where they hope to retire alongside Hardesty’s parents. “We decided to be apart for now, with my teaching job and our house here,” she says.

Dealing with separation is part of military life. Marines like to say that “home is where the Corps sends you.” When it’s one of the world’s hot spots where warriors die, flag etiquette takes on a more sober meaning. Hardesty, like all Lejeune teachers, is prepared to discuss with students the significance of a flag-draped coffin. “They learn what that means,” she says.

While the fear of losing a parent is always present, “the day-to-day issues involve young families who are away from their hometowns,” says Marty Pitcarin, one of three full-time school psychologists serving Lejeune schools. Programs like Club USA help children learn to cope with being separated from parents.

Alicia Mauro recalls how hard her husband’s deployment was on her 4-year-old son, Anthony. “Nighttime was a hard time, because his dad would put him to bed,” she says. A school program encouraged Anthony to write down his feelings and then talk with a counselor, who took notes. “He’d come home from school with paperwork describing his emotions and thoughts,” she says. “It helped me know how to talk with him.”

Staffers also work hard to provide their own support. “You only have each other,” says Laura Hastings, president of the 200-member Lejeune Education Association (LEA), which, along with the Lejeune Education Support Association (LESA) is part of the NEA-affiliated Federal Education Association (see “NEA’s 51st State Turns 51”). “When there’s a major deployment, you can see the change in behavior among students,” says Hastings, who like Hardesty is a teacher and military spouse. “It’s very emotional to watch their dad or mom go to war.”

Send comments on this story to jrosales@nea.org.

State of the Arts

Despite mounting evidence of its role in student achievement, arts education is disappearing in the schools that need it most.

By Sabrina Holcomb

Does art imitate life at Adams Middle School?

Picture full-length mirrors reflecting an empty dance studio where no one practices at the barre, while cameras from a terminated television class sit in a computer lab. How does music sound in a room where instruments lie silent? And is the play still the thing in a theater that’s now merely a set for an English class?

Like many schools across the country, Adams once had a flourishing arts program. Now, five years after the No Child Left Behind law (NCLB) first opened to mixed reviews from captive audiences, arts education must fight for a seat in the classroom, despite the law’s inclusion of the arts as a core academic subject. A small number of forward-thinking school districts have begun to integrate the arts across the curriculum and into the fabric of the school day. But in the vast majority of public schools, arts programs—and teachers—are in more trouble than ever, despite the growing body of evidence showing a powerful link between arts education, student achievement, and teacher performance.

“With the push from NCLB to focus on testing, arts and education are treated as if they’re not compatible,” says Jamie Myrick, an English teacher at Adams. “People are forgetting that math is taught when a child is playing an instrument. English is taught when a child is reading or writing a script. Critical thinking is taught when a child is analyzing art.”

Today, Adams, located in California’s West Contra Costa school district, offers visual arts and band classes just 60 percent of the time, while drama, dance, piano keyboarding, photography, and television classes have been cut entirely from the school day. Despite the cutbacks, Myrick and her colleagues have been fighting valiantly to keep the arts alive at their school.

In the early days of NCLB, says Myrick, all the teachers pitched in to offer students “anime, poetry, dance, drama—a little bit of everything” twice a week. Even though the school recorded growth under California’s Academic Performance Indicator, the pressure to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) has intensified, and a significant percentage of the student body is now enrolled in double English and math classes. Electives such as dance, television, and crafts were relegated to an after-school program run by educators and community artists. Some educators worry that after-school programs make the arts an afterthought, but for many students, these programs are the only access they have to the arts—and even that access is limited. It’s hard for students who have to ride the bus to stay after school, says Myrick, especially in winter when night comes early.

An urban school with a transient population of English-language learners, Adams fits a growing profile of schools most likely to have their curriculum stripped to the bone. “We’re finding that the kids who are not getting art are often Hispanics and African-Americans,” say Myrick and her colleague, part-time art teacher Cathy Coleman. A 2004 study commissioned by the Council for Basic Education states that research “lends support to the overall thrust of anecdotal accounts that poor and minority students are bearing the brunt of...a waning commitment to the arts.” The “greatest erosion of the curriculum,” the study reports, “is occurring in schools with high minority populations, the very populations whose access to such curriculum has been historically most limited.”

Gateway to Learning

Both Myrick and Coleman do their creative best to address the inequity. Myrick, a professional storyteller and former drama teacher, integrates the dramatic arts into her English curriculum. “Storytelling captures the attention of every learning style and every type of student,” she says. Myrick, who sometimes dresses in character, had students spellbound when she recently taught a lesson dressed as the Statue of Liberty. “We were reading about immigrants, and I acted out the lesson for the kids from the point of view of ‘Liberty’ watching all these different people coming into America.”

Now, many students who enter her class reading at second-, third-, and fourth-grade levels end up testing close to—or at—grade level. Last year, she had a “miracle.” A student who entered her class reading at a fourth-grade level in August tested at a 12th-grade level by January. “Dramatic instruction works well with all children,” explains Myrick, “the tough ‘I don’t want to sit down and listen to you’ students and the children who are very on-task. No one is lost on the fringes.”

“And that’s the part that breaks my heart,” says Myrick about NCLB. “We’re losing the ability to hook our students with what their joy is. It might be playing a musical instrument. Or working with their hands in an art class. That joy is a natural bridge that can transfer over to math, history, and science. The things that are complex and heavy in these subjects become clearer when students do work they have joy in.”

Coleman knows about this bridging effect firsthand. “That’s what happened to me when I was in school,” she says. “I didn’t like history, but as I learned more about art, I realized how art and history were interconnected, and I started to really enjoy and do well in history.”

Which is why Coleman makes sure her own students understand how fully art is interwoven into their daily lives. She tells them everything they touch was created by an artist: industrial designers made the cars they ride in and the furniture they use, fashion designers made the clothes they wear, and graphic artists illustrated the video games they play. Her students’ first assignment is choosing the art career that most intrigues them and designing a product in that field. Coleman also rounds out her art lessons with vocabulary tests and writing assignments.

Even so, Coleman worries that her students don’t have the opportunities she did when she was in school. “If students aren’t testing proficient in English and math, they can’t take an elective. Instead, they take double English and double math. Of course, our children must be literate, but I question the way we’re going about it.” She recounts the saga of one talented student who begged to study art all through middle school, but is now graduating without ever taking an art class.

 “I see all these children who may never take a dance, art, or music class,” says Coleman. When these same kids are encouraged to think creatively, she adds, they invent their own learning opportunities. She describes walking into her art room one day and hearing her sixth-graders singing. “They had made up a rap with my vocabulary words to study for their vocabulary test,” Coleman recalls. “Every one of them got an A! It just blew me away.”

State of the Nation

As beleaguered schools across the country cut arts programs, some teachers’ jobs are being eliminated entirely, while others, like Coleman’s, have been reduced to part-time. Many arts teachers who still have full-time positions end up juggling so many schools that, in essence, they’re really working two full-time jobs, says Janis Leiberman, an instrumental music teacher and head of the West Contra Costa school district’s music department. To provide every elementary school in the district with an instrumental music program, each full-time music teacher has to divide his or her time among six schools. The end result: Many instructors teach 30 to 40 students playing very different instruments for just a half hour twice a week.

Art teacher Cathy Coleman sees many children who may never take a dance, art, or music class.

In Dallas, Texas, elementary school students will lose their band programs entirely as they are phased out over the next three years as part of a restructuring that shifts the programs to middle schools, reports Charles Turner, chair of NEA’s Fine Arts Caucus and a band instructor at Fred Florence Middle School. “Some elementary schools will retain their orchestra programs,” says Turner, “but the principal will have to choose between hiring an orchestra teacher or a teacher of another curriculum.”

Even arts magnet schools are not immune. “We’re getting hit from everywhere,” reports Albert Stellmach, chair of the United Teachers of Dade Fine Arts Caucus, who teaches music at Miami’s Perrine Elementary School, an “expressive arts” magnet. “At my school, they allow pullouts for extra reading and math classes. A student who signed up for music can be taken out for half a year. They’re there on paper, but not in reality.”

While Perrine has been able to retain all its teachers because of its magnet school status, it’s been a different story for other district schools. Keeping track of “disappearing” art teachers was one of the goals for starting the Fine Arts Caucus last year, says Stellmach. “Everybody knows we’ve lost teachers, but no one knows how many,” he says. “We asked the union to run the numbers, and we found out we lost eight fine arts middle school teachers in one year.” The caucus is distributing a survey to get more information on what’s actually happening in the schools. Once they’ve collected the evidence, they’ll meet first with their state legislators and then with their senators in Washington, D.C.

The caucus is also gathering data on the link between arts instruction and higher SAT scores. Stellmach refers to a 2005 College Board study that found that students who took four years of arts coursework outperformed peers who had taken similar classes for a half-year or less by 58 points on the verbal portion of the SAT and by 38 points on the math portion. “We know there’s a big resistance to spending time and money on arts education,” says Stellmach. “Our response is, ‘Keep kids in band and drama, and their SAT scores will improve.’”

A New Attitude

With study after study showing powerful links between arts education and student performance—especially for struggling students—why are the arts still expendable? Because fine arts are traditionally viewed as “affective and expressive, not academic or cognitive,” says Nick Rabkin, executive director of the Center for Arts Policy at Columbia College in Chicago. That conventional view is beginning to change, however, as organizations advocate for arts instruction in public schools and educators develop new instructional strategies to integrate arts across the entire school curriculum.

“By recognizing the arts as cognitive, the field of education is starting to acknowledge the academic value and potential of arts instruction,” says Amy Duma, director of the Kennedy Center’s Changing Education Through the Arts (CETA), a Washington, D.C.-based professional development program focused on arts integration that was established with a pilot grant from the NEA Foundation.

One of the original CETA schools, Bailey’s Elementary School for the Arts and Sciences in Fairfax County, Virginia, serves an elementary student population that’s the most culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse in an increasingly diverse county. “The arts are a universal language,” says Melanie Layne, the integration resource teacher at Bailey’s, where over 70 percent of students are English-language learners.

At Bailey’s, grade-level teachers and arts teachers work in tandem to guide students through sophisticated and complex assignments. “You really do need the expertise of someone in the arts to truly integrate,” says third-grade teacher Allyn Kurin. “Otherwise, you’re just making up pretend dance steps that aren’t connected to the content.”

In one such assignment, students are given a scenario: As members of the professional dance troupe Geometry in Motion, they’ve been hired to create a performance for students in the lower grades. Choreography must include math objectives (similar polygons, congruent acute angles, quadrilaterals, and other geometric shapes) and dance objectives (using space at low, middle, and high levels and dance phrases with beginning, middle, and ending sequences). Another project integrates visual art, drama, history, and writing as students explore Virginia’s history from European, African, and Native American perspectives.

“Fully integrating the arts has dramatically improved teaching and learning in my classroom,” says Van Hoffman, a fifth-grade teacher at Bailey’s. “I’ve learned to meld different content-area objectives and teach them in a fun and interesting way that’s accessible.”

Even when arts instruction is integrated into other subjects, arts teachers play another critical role, stress drama teachers Gloretta Wilson-Omolo Shale and Carmen Boatwright-Bacon. They can call students on their artistic choices and performances in a way classroom teachers often don’t. “Classroom teachers have standards and expectations for their curriculum, but they don’t always feel comfortable applying those standards and expectations to the artistic components of a lesson,” says Wilson-Omolo Shale.

In Boatwright-Bacon’s theater class, for instance, it’s not enough for students to memorize their lines for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. When Grace recites her lines without any emotion, the drama teacher good-naturedly exclaims, “Stop! You’re putting me to sleep!” “Do you have a pet?” she asks the fifth-grader. “Think of how happy you are to see her when you walk in the door. Then put that emotion and caring into your lines!” On her second try, a beaming Grace wins bravas and applause from her “audience.”

But even the best-funded, most supportive schools aren’t immune to the relentless pressures of standardized testing. The year before last, Bailey’s missed AYP for the first time. Unlike Stellmach’s arts magnet school in Florida, however, no children were pulled from arts classes to take double English and math. Instead of sacrificing their core philosophy, the staff at Bailey’s decided to use art to help them beat the test.

They invited a Kennedy Center artist to work with the staff on a drama strategy that targeted testing vocabulary. “We passed AYP this year by the skin of our teeth,” says Layne, “but we passed.”

It’s Showtime

As a growing consensus of policymakers, educators, and parents agree that the arts are integral to learning, some districts are seeing a policy shift on the local and state levels. In California, education and arts organizations have worked to secure a windfall arts budget that, in theory, would guarantee arts education in every public school in the state. The monies—$105 million in ongoing funds, and a one-time, $500 million line item for classroom equipment—are a legacy of the California Teacher Association’s successful lawsuit on education funding.

Efforts are underway statewide to help districts spend the money strategically, but “my guess,” says one CTA member, “is that the actual impact will vary according to the level of commitment at the district and school levels.”

Back at Adams, part-time art teacher Cathy Coleman is pleased about the arts allocation but anxious to see what impact it will have at her school. Will visual arts be offered full-time next year? What about the standards-based arts textbook she’s been trying to get for her students for the past two years?

She’s still waiting, but she’s hopeful that with the new emphasis on the importance of arts education, she’ll never again have to watch a talented student graduate without the chance to pick up a paintbrush.

For more information on closing the achievment gap, visit the NEA Achievement Gap website .

Bravura Performances

Boosting Student Achievement

Critical Evidence, a report commissioned by the Arts Education Partnership and the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies in 2005, cites research studies documenting more than 65 distinct relationships between the arts and academic and social outcomes, including:

• Visual arts instruction and reading readiness
• Dramatic enactment and conflict resolution skills
• Learning piano and mathematics proficiency
• Traditional dance and nonverbal reasoning (Dancers scored higher than non-dancers on creative thinking measures, especially abstract thought.)

Promoting Social Growth

Arts activities promoted growth in students’ social skills, including:

• Self-confidence and self-control
• Conflict resolution and
• collaboration
• Empathy and social tolerance

The arts also play a key role in developing social competencies among educationally or economically disadvantaged youth who are at the greatest risk of dropping out.

Improving Instruction

The arts create a learning environment that fosters teacher innovation, a positive professional culture, and effective instructional practice.

NEA is an active member of the Arts Education Partnership (AEP), a national coalition of over 140 arts, education, business, philanthropic, and government organizations promoting the essential role of the arts in learning. For more information on AEP and the power of arts education to transform and enliven schools, visit http://www.aep-arts.org/.