The author, Victor B. Almanzar, reports on his introduction to the arts while growing up in New York as a young teenager. He felt like an outcast from society due to his language barrier and numerous ethnic groups different from his. He became involved with other students who, like himself, were harassed and suffered from bullying due to their…

As art educators are asked to broaden their scope to include children with a variety of abilities, they are beginning to seek answers from sources that might traditionally be outside their field. In an era of hybridization, appropriation, and bricolage, the divide among fields has become anachronistic and unfruitful. A new form of scholarship in…

In this article, the author talks about innovative high school curricula that engage students through the study of visual art in conjunction with critical study of history and social movements. Just as historians place a premium on locating and interpreting events in time, the visual arts are centered on getting an idea across in a visual form,…

Reading Improvement Through Art (RITA) program is an interdisciplinary approach to literacy that blends visual art with reading comprehension, evaluated in nine New York City urban high schools. 240 problem readers participating in the pilot program were pre- and post-tested in the Fall 1975 and Spring 1976 semesters. The testing showed the 9th…

Increasingly, education policy makers understand the importance of students and families having access to a range of high quality educational opportunities inside and outside of school, 365 days a year. This paper explores the concept of multiple pathways in arts education to further conceptualize and build upon such opportunities, inside and…

At Portledge School in Locust Valley, New York, ninth graders in their upper school study art history for one semester. The visual arts department has created a vigorous new syllabus culminating in an hour-long mock art auction. The department selects several art movements (e.g., Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, Social Realism,…

A holistic education linked to creativity, innovation, critical thinking and local/global citizenship is increasingly marginalized in the United States as schools continue to struggle with the impact of high-stakes testing regimes. In particular, urban youths' access to an education that furthers their ability to choose lives they have reason to…

Arts education has been a low priority in the nation's public schools for more than 30 years. In some communities, a countermovement to this dwindling presence of arts education in the schools has developed in the form of initiatives aimed at coordinating schools, cultural institutions, community-based organizations, foundations, and/or…

This article describes Nilaja Sun's groundbreaking one-woman show about a TA, her students, and her school, and includes interviews with the author/performer, an excerpt of the work, and a discussion of the organization behind it.

For over 30 years, arts education has been a low priority in the nation's public schools. Arts teaching positions were cut, and arts education in schools has dwindled as schools try to increase test scores in mathematics and reading within the time constraints of the school day. Some communities have responded with initiatives aimed at…

This collection of essays explores various arts education-specific evaluation tools, as well as considers Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and the inclusion of people with disabilities in the design of evaluation instruments and strategies. Prominent evaluators Donna M. Mertens, Robert Horowitz, Dennie Palmer Wolf, and Gail Burnaford are…

This article chronicles the development and implementation of a lesson sequence in a high school art course that utilized "Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed," a special exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute from December 6, 2001-March 17, 2002. This project took place over a 3-week period in the spring…

In contemporary life and education, the local is marginalized in favor of large-scale economies of consumption that are indifferent to ecological concerns. The consequences of neglecting local human and natural communities include a degraded habitat, loss of wilderness, alienation, rootlessness, and lack of connection to communities. Critical…

Late in 2007 New Visions for Public Schools, a New York City reform organization, received a grant from the C.S. Mott Foundation to organize select high schools and community partners into delivery systems that could improve student achievement. New Visions asked Policy Studies Associates, Inc. to provide research support for this effort in the…

In this article, the authors attempt to explore some of the ways in which youth subjectivities are constituted in the neoliberal order, the ways in which their behaviours are criminalized, and the harrowing manner in which schools, as one site, are complicit in a larger cultural disinvestment in youth. The authors accomplish this through an…