Trends in arts education in United States public schools from 1988–2018

Abstract

There is scant evidence on the level of arts education available in U.S. public schools and how this has changed over time. In this paper, I present new evidence on broad trends in arts education in U.S. public schools from 1988 through 2018 using nationally representative data from the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) and the National Teachers and Principals Survey (NTPS) and administrative data from North Carolina. Both the SASS/NTPS and North Carolina data cover several school years after the Every Student Succeeds Act was passed in 2015, which may have impacted arts education. I first calculate the percentage of full-time teachers whose main teaching assignment is in the arts. In the aggregate, about 5.5% of public school teachers are arts teachers, and this has been stable for decades. There are substantial regional differences that have also changed little. I also find substantial and persistent differences by school characteristics: Schools with higher percentages of both Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) and low-income students consistently have a lower percentage of full-time arts teachers than other schools. I also examine of school-level and student-level trends in arts access using administrative data from North Carolina from 1998–2013. I find narrowing gaps in the presence of licensed art teachers between low-performing schools and other schools, and high-BIPOC schools and other schools. I also assess access to the arts at the student level from 2007–2018. I find narrowing gaps in arts enrollment between White students and Black and Hispanic students, consistent with the school-level trends I report. This descriptive evidence from both national and North Carolina data improves our understanding of how arts have been prioritized by schools in recent decades and highlights gaps in access students have had to the arts over time.