Teachers who have no formal arts background and yet integrate the arts consistently may provide essential understanding on how to render to all students a well-rounded education that encompasses the arts. Education that embraces the arts helps students to develop essential thinking skills, expand their creativity and ways of expressing, and…

In November 2022, California established the Arts and Music in Schools Act to fund arts education programs in TK-12 public schools. With funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, SRI Education led an inquiry to estimate the number of new arts teachers required to fulfill the promise of the act. This brief presents funding allocations…

This study is a hermeneutic phenomenological investigation into the lived experiences of teachers implementing the National Core Art Standards alongside the California Visual Art Standards, with a specific lens on culturally responsive teaching practices. Utilizing Geneva Gay's theoretical framework for culturally responsive teaching, this study…

Equitable access to high-quality schooling has been a prevailing concern among educational stakeholders for decades. Magnet schools were first developed in the 1960s to improve academic achievement and attract a more diverse student body by offering unique programs and instruction not provided at other sites within the same district. With…

Preservice art education students are often required to engage in Early Field Experience (EFE) observation hours before entering a credential program. Community-based art education (CBAE) projects may provide them with EFE opportunities to apply what they are learning in art education environments beyond the traditional classroom. This article…

Art education associations across the United States have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the force of societal change has impacted all aspects of both the personal and professional lives of teachers. Leadership that is elected and currently serving during this point of inflection find themselves in turbulent positions that demand…

Teacher education has underutilized the inclusion of art museum education experiences for preservice teachers (Henry, 2004). Teacher educators recognize that learning by doing is effective, which is why some early field experience is required in most teacher education programs (Darling-Hammond, 2006). Teacher education places preservice teachers…

This article examines how important an explicit mission and values framework can be for community-based arts education organizations in times of crises. This argument draws on interview data from early and later points in the COVID-19 pandemic with three community-based arts organizations whose work is deeply rooted in creative youth development…

More than fifteen years ago, the Hewlett Foundation commissioned the researchers at SRI International to create the first comprehensive, statewide study of arts education in California. The resulting report, 2007's "An Unfinished Canvas," revealed the degree to which California was failing to provide standards-based courses in arts…

Promoting equitable access to the arts may depend on structures that support teachers in integrating arts into core curricula. We describe an arts-integration design that spotlights attention within and beyond one teacher credential program to one arts field--drama--engaging 24 new non-arts teachers across grades and subjects who participated in a…

This is the first in an occasional series on the dramatic national push to revamp how reading is being taught in the earliest grades. This EdSource special report examines the state of early reading in California, the needs of special learners, teacher preparation and training and curricula and textbooks that are driving instruction. This ongoing…

This study examines arts education access for students served by California's district community day schools, county community schools, and juvenile court schools; which is collectively refer to as court and community schools (CCS). Although CCS serve a small percentage of the state's school-age population and operate differently from traditional…

Traditional teacher professional development (PD) programs frequently lack sufficient face-to-face preparation time to adequately support the implementation of evidence-based pedagogical strategies in classrooms, with teachers citing insufficient preparedness and training time for new methods. To investigate potentials for online PD methods to…

U.S. educational systems routinely dismiss and discount the voices of newcomer and emergent plurilingual students, and instead privilege ideologies of whiteness, ability, and English monolingualism. In this paper, we use a case study from a month-long arts- and literacy-rich summer program in Southern California to examine how three educators'…

California has long maintained ambitious goals for arts education. The state Education Code requires schools to offer courses of study in four arts disciplines to all California K-12 students. In 2005/06, with support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, SRI Education researchers conducted a study of arts education in California. The…