When I visited Maya Lin, an elementary school in Alameda, California where art is at the center of learning, third graders were in the middle of a multi-week project on climate change. Pairs of students had chosen climates around the world and researched them to learn about the weather, flora and fauna.
Over the past two decades, policies focused on math and reading test scores, along with a global recession, have pushed many schools to cut what they considered to be “extras.” In many places, that has meant visual art, music, drama, and dance. These subjects became afterthoughts as school leaders put pressure on teachers to raise kids’ scores in the ‘focus’ subjects – math and reading.
District officials told the principal, Judy Goodwin, that she could hire her own staff. She first invited the teachers at Washington to join the project. About half of them did, and the other half were transferred to other jobs in the district.Integrated Learning Specialist Program
should do a study of all the pedagogical methods tried over the years and how they did at their goals of improving equity and learning. A tally of their costs would be nice too. I can think of many such tests in the past few decades but were any successful when scaled?
NPR has become the Onion