Sigma Alpha Iota

MUSIC MEDLEY CURRICULUM continued from page 5 be moved by a symphony, all of us can be moved by a soprano's voice or a film's score." Art, that is, has a universal appeal because it speaks, as the President points out, to a shared yearning "for truth and for beauty, for connection and the simple pleasure of a good story." Now, I spent much of last year on a Listening and Learning Tour that took me to more than 35 states. And I heard quite a few stories. I spoke with thousands of students, parents, and teachers. And almost everywhere I went, I heard people express concern that the curriculum has narrowed, especially in schools that serve disproportionate numbers of disadvantaged students. There is no doubt that math, reading, writing, and science are vital core components of a good education in today's global economy. But so is the study of history, foreign languages, civics, and the arts. And it is precisely because a broad and deep grounding in the arts and humanities is so vital that we must be perpetually vigilant that public schools, from pre-K through twelfth grade, do not narrow the curriculum. ... In the coming debate over ESEA reauthorization, I believe that arts education can help build the case for the importance of a wellrounded, content-rich curriculum in at least three ways. First, the arts significantly boost student achievement, reduce discipline problems, and increase the odds that students will go on to graduate from college. Second, arts education is essential to stimulating the creativity and innovation that will prove critical to young Americans competing in a global economy. And last, but not least, the arts are valuable for their own sake, and they empower students to create and appreciate aesthetic works. As the First Lady sums up, she and the president both believe "strongly that arts education is essential for building innovative thinkers who will be our nation's leaders for tomorrow." It is not surprising that visual arts instruction improves reading readiness, or that learning to play the piano or to master musical notation helps students to master math. Reading, math, and writing require students to understand and use symbols— and so does assembling shapes and colors in a portrait or using musical notes to learn fractions. Is it any surprise then to learn of the large impact that arts education has on student achievement and attainment, especially among disadvantaged students? Low-income students who play in the on integrating arts curriculum with academic subjects. And follow-up studies showed that students at the CAPE schools performed better on standardized assessment than students who attended schools that did not integrate arts and academics. I have been especially fortunate to witness the power of integrated curriculum firsthand with our son and daughter, who are now in kindergarten and second grade respectively in a Virginia public school. Their school has a science focus. But it is an extraordinary music teacher, Joe Puzzo, who is the absolute rock star with the students. He writes and teaches songs to the kids about science. Mr. Puzzo has got third graders singing about gravity, sedimentation, rocks, and the planets. Students sing, clap, and dance about solids, liquids and gases. What a fun way to learn. When Columbus Day or Martin Luther King Day come around, Mr. Puzzo sits down and writes songs for the students about Christopher Columbus and Martin Luther King. Years later, when students sit down to take their SATs, they report humming Mr. Puzzo's songs to recall historical and scientific content. ... Now, you all have heard that advanced STEM courses will be essential to workers who want to compete in the global economy. Those claims are true. STEM courses develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills in math and science, they spur innovation, and they enhance self-direction. But as Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind, has pointed out, good arts education accomplishes many of the same ends. The fact is that high-quality arts and humanities instruction are almost uniquely suited to stimulate imagination, creativity, and the ability to find adaptive solutions. Creativity, as Sandra Ruppert, AEP's Director notes, is a "precursor to innovation and the cornerstone of entrepreneurship." Put another way, knowledge —without imagination — is not good enough for students in today's fluid job market. "Imagination is more important than knowledge," Albert Einstein once reminded us, because "knowledge is limited whereas imagination embraces the entire world." Despite these challenges, and the tough budgetary climate, arts education must not just survive but thrive. 6 PAN PIPESfall 2010sai-national.org orchestra or band are more than twice as likely to perform at the highest levels in math as peers who do not play music. In James Catterall's wellknown longitudinal study, Doing Well and Doing Good by Doing Art, low-income students at artsrich high schools were more than twice as likely to earn a B.A. as low-income students at artspoor high schools. ... Fortunately, numerous schools are beginning to take these lessons to scale. Last year, I had the privilege of visiting an early learning facility, the Educare Center in Oklahoma City, which is home to one of the 60 schools in Oklahoma's A+ Schools network. Oklahoma's A+ school-network nurtures creativity in every student — and a recent evaluation shows not just that the program increases student achievement but boosts attendance and decreases discipline problems as well. When I took over as CEO of the Chicago Public Schools in 2001, a survey by the Chicago Community Trust showed that one in seven elementary schools in the city did not provide a single class of arts instruction a week. Fifteen elementary schools, with 7,300 children, provided no arts instruction at all. Through CAPE, the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education, we brought local artists and teachers into the schools to partner up

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