Building arts education policy using the tools of out-of-school time youth arts organizations

Abstract

With the rise of COVID-19 and growing awareness of racial injustice, the last few years have been exceptionally tumultuous for our systems of education and their stakeholders. But scholars critical of traditional paradigms of schooling and accountability have argued that these crises kindle opportunities for profound change. Gloria Ladson-Billings, who has long argued for an approach to education that embraces cultural and epistemological diversity, has called for a “hard re-set” in education and has urged stakeholders to fundamentally reconsider the kind of human beings we want to nurture. With a reset in mind, we have turned our attention to studying out-of-school-time (OST) arts learning environments. The arts—dance, theater, music, the visual arts, and the digital and design arts—offer us a way to reimagine what good learning and teaching look like and how to design learning environments that work for all young people, and perhaps particularly for our most vulnerable youth. In this article, we draw on findings from our national critical qualitative study of out-of-school time community youth arts organizations. We offer policy recommendations for arts education and school improvement in four major categories: (1) Focus on youth and community assets; (2) Expand beyond a program-centric model of funding and design; (3) Support creative professionals; (4) Rethink the design and implementation of assessment systems. Within each category, we make recommendations specific to the various stakeholders who affect arts education policy—arts education leadership, funders and policy makers, and researchers.