I’ve returned recently from the Grad Nation Summit in Washington DC that brought together over 1000 educators, policy makers, funders, researchers, business executives, nonprofits and young people to discuss and strategize about the high school dropout crisis plaguing our nation. In the United States, every 26 seconds a student drops out of high school. This staggering statistic is a call to action, and America’s Promise Alliance, the organizer of the Grad Nation Summit, is effectively mobilizing the nation to come together to partner around solutions to the crisis.
The good news is that there is progress, with Tennessee and New York leading the nation with double-digit gains in high school graduation rates over the last decade. The bad news is that California ranks amongst the bottom 10 states where graduation rates continue to decline.
As the director of an arts education organization working in partnership with the alternative education system, I attended the conference for the second year, to better understand the system within which we work, and to participate as an arts provider in the national dialogue about the dropout issue. Both years, two things stood out to me: there was no representation on any panel of any organization from Los Angeles the first year and minimal representation this year, and no arts education represented. Although this year, our former Department of Cultural Affairs General Manager Margie Reese was on a panel in her new role as Vice President of Programming for Big Thought in Texas, and happily, she sprinkled her remarks on achievement with successful examples from the arts. Also, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, in his opening remarks, offered an example of a model program using drama. And, I was asked to provide a quote on the role that arts education plays in a complete and engaging education. So, progress was made in including the arts in this national dialogue!
But, so many of us in the arts work closely with school districts to infuse the education system with creativity, to engage the otherwise dis-engaged, to challenge students to think differently, and to offer them ways to imagine. We are a part of the solution to re-engaging students in their education and to keeping them in school and on track to graduate with a plan for their futures. The number one reason students give for dropping out of high school is lack of engagement, and research shows us that art is a key engager. We know it by experience, and the research backs it up. Yet once again, we are in a fight to validate our work, as seen with the recent budget cut fight in LAUSD, and with the persistent perception that the arts are extracurricular.
One of the themes discussed at the conference was the necessity for partnerships, including school to career pathways. The CEO of the United Way announced that they are going support infrastructure to manage public/private partnerships, acknowledging the crucial need for cross sector groups to come together to tackle the dropout problem. We from the arts need to be a part of these partnerships. We can no longer just talk amongst ourselves, or just advocate for our piece of the puzzle. We need to position ourselves as an integral part of the whole system of education reform, and to be a part of a unified voice working towards higher graduation rates.
I encourage all of us who bring arts education to at-risk middle and/or high school students to attend this conference next year, and to become a partner of America’s Promise Alliance. They have created a framework of five promises that we can work within, which allows our work in Los Angeles to be a part of this national movement. By coming to this table, we can have a stronger voice for our work, better understand the high school dropout crisis from a national perspective, and be stronger partners in meeting the national goal of 90% graduation rate by the year 2020.
Last year, The HeArt Project expanded its partnership with the Los Angeles County Office of Education to open an alternative high school arts academy. Over the past year and a half, my work has moved more towards working within and understanding the alternative education system. By better understanding this system, and by more strongly articulating our shared goals as partners, I am working to create a stronger space for the arts programming to thrive, thereby allowing us to more effectively meet our goal of using the arts to combat the high school dropout crisis. I return from this conference inspired to expand and strengthen our partnerships with the school districts and with creative industries, and to forge school to career pathways infused with the arts.
