Pamela Cotant:

Music teacher Kathy Bartling is on a mission.
“I want every child to have one chance to be on the stage before they leave this school district,” Bartling said.
To that end, she has written and produced 30 different musicals where every fifth-grader has a role, despite the growing student population. The first year she had 70 students to work in. This year, she found a way to include 261 students at Waunakee Intermediate School.
She has found ways for students who don’t speak English to take part.
This year some students performed as a green inch worm. The required costume was one of 17 new ones she made this year.

Last night, Fine Arts Task Force co-chairs Barb Schrank and Anne Katz presented the committee’s report at the regular school board meeting. It is a fine document and a reminder of how fortunate we are to have a community that is rich in arts resources and people with a clear understanding of the importance of the arts in educational programs. We all owe this group a significant debt for their diligence in putting together a comprehensive document and set of recommendations.
The report and committee minutes and meeting materials are available on-line at:
http://www.madison.k12.wi.us/boe/finearts/
Last night the board voted to receive the report and turn it over to administration and staff for analysis and comment. Later this school year, the superintendent and board will hold input sessions to give the community a chance to weigh in on the report and on priorities. I am not sure if this will be done as part of the strategic planning process that the new superintendent has in mind or as a separate process, but I am confident that there will be opportunities to weigh in.
For now, this group deserves a big THANK YOU for their work.

Ciar Byrne:

When Daniel Barenboim returns to the Royal Festival Hall in the new year, where he made his London debut at the age of 13, he is planning to launch an impassioned plea to educate young people about music.
It will be the first time in more than 40 years that Barenboim has performed all of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas in London; the last time he played them in their entirety was at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1967.
But as well as performing eight concerts, the legendary pianist and conductor is using his return to the Southbank next month to warn that in many countries, music has disappeared from the education curriculum, making it appear elitist and depriving people of a life-enriching experience.
Barenboim will deliver a series of lectures, as the first speaker in the Southbank Centre’s “Artist as Leader” programme, looking at the role of the artist in society.
He said: “Music has disappeared from the education curriculum and this has far-reaching consequences. It means there are billions of people who have no contact with music, and I believe their lives are all the poorer for that.”
In the Southbank Centre members’ magazine, he said: “The problem is that music now appears only to a small quantity of the population and therefore it is too expensive, which in turn makes music look elitist, which of course it isn’t.”

Valerie Strauss:

Seventh-grader Jessica Dodson walked into class and yanked Eric Clapton from the wall — the guitar, not the guitarist. Classmate Corey Cook already had Carlos Santana cradled in his lap, plucking out E-minor, C and G chords.
“On the C chord, I’m hearing some funky sounds,” teacher Darlene Dawson said after her 17 students at Metz Middle School in Manassas played “Eleanor Rigby” in unison. She played along with the students, having taken up the guitar just a few months ago.
This isn’t the kind of music class Dawson, a teacher for 25 years, is used to teaching. Or the kind students are accustomed to attending. Or what most students in U.S. schools are offered.
The elective class at Metz — with guitars named after guitarists — is being given as music education programs across the country are facing difficult times. Despite research showing that students who study music have better attendance, achievement and lifetime earnings, music classes are struggling to survive.

Kevin Carey has more.

Dani McClain:

The low test scores and high dropout rates typically associated with southeastern Wisconsin’s largest districts also plague some Milwaukee-area suburban schools and smaller urban districts in Waukesha and Walworth counties, the Public Policy Forum reports in its annual assessment of education in the seven-county area.
Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha continue to skew comparisons between the region and the rest of the state, but the report shows that the achievement gap is increasingly tied to changing student populations in places such as Cudahy, West Allis, Whitewater and Delavan.
“Some of these smaller districts are getting a critical mass of minority or low-income students, and they’re starting to feel some of the same stressors,” said Anneliese Dickman, research director at the Public Policy Forum, a nonpartisan think tank in Milwaukee.
Smaller cities and older suburbs have started seeing a set of trends that have long challenged Kenosha and Racine, the state’s third- and fourth-largest districts, and Milwaukee: declining enrollment, higher concentrations of poverty and less student engagement, according to the report, released this fall.

Mary Beth Marklein:

WASHINGTON — Steven Van Zandt says rock ‘n’ roll saved his life. Now he wants to return the favor.
The E Street Band guitarist and Sopranos star began sowing the seeds five years ago with the launch of Little Steven’s Underground Garage, an internationally broadcast weekly radio show that celebrates his favorite genre — garage rock, a sound that evokes images of teens practicing in somebody’s parents’ suburban garage.
Last year, he created the non-profit Rock and Roll Forever Foundation as a vehicle to preserve the music that so shaped his life.
Monday, he will unveil the foundation’s first project: a middle- and high-school curriculum designed to introduce a new generation of teens to the music. He planned to make the announcement in the nation’s capital, where he is playing two concerts with Bruce Springsteen and the other E Streeters.
Anyone attending the sold-out Springsteen shows might question the notion that rock ‘n’ roll is endangered. And never mind that The Sopranos skillfully wove rock music into its story line, right down to the last moments of the final episode.

Dear Community Members,
The Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) values the arts as an integral component of a quality education for all students. Research has shown that involvement in the arts teaches children many important academic skills as well as enriches personal growth and development. Tight budgets, however, have increasingly affected the arts education we offer our children. Further, the District has monitored a downward trend in participation in arts offerings among low-income students and students of color for a number of years.
The Madison Board of Education formed the Community Fine Arts Task Force to gather information from the community and provide recommendations to the Board on MMSD’s arts education program. Specifically, the Board asked the Task Force to:

1. Identify community goals for MMSD K-12 arts education including curricular, co-curricular and extracurricular;
2. Recommend approaches for increasing participation in arts education for low-income students and
   students of color; and

3. Recommend priorities for District funding of fine arts education.

October through December, the Task Force will be distributing surveys and conducting community conversations to gather information from the community on its goals for fine arts education. Your input is very important and will help inform and strengthen the Task Force’s work. The result of this work will be completed and presented to the School Board next spring.
We appreciate your participation in this important effort. To take the online survey and to learn more about the Community Fine Arts Task Force, go to www.mmsd.org/boe/finearts/ .
Sincerely,
Arlene M. Silveira, President

During Middle School Registration, some middle schools collected a $70 string participation fee. This fee, which was posted on the District’s Fee webpage, was in error and has been corrected. Those parents who paid a fee should be receiving a refund per a letter from the Administration to parents (MS String Participation Fee Reimbursement).

K-12 Resources at the UW-Madison.

Jacob Stockinger:

Nineteen middle school and high school violin students from the Madison area will tour Costa Rica, where they will perform for a week, starting Monday.
The Sonora Strings, an advanced touring group of a private Suzuki string school in the city, will be led by Maria Rosa Germain, a classically trained violinist who earned a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with Vartan Manoogian and Tyrone Greive, who is also the concertmaster of the Madison Symphony Orchestra.
The MSO is a major co-sponsor of the tour and, according to orchestra officials, will continue to collaborate with the National Orchestra in Costa Rica’s capital San Juan, perhaps with the goal of one day becoming a “sister” orchestra. Later this summer, MSO maestro John DeMain will conduct the National Orchestra in San Juan and will waive his fee to help the National Institute of Music.

Zoe Mezin:

Elegantly ensconced in an elaborately embroidered armchair at the British ambassador’s residence, Michael Tilson Thomas reveals his recipe for drawing young people to classical music.
“Rosebud,” says the San Francisco Symphony music director, who was in Paris until Monday filming a future installment of the “Keeping Score” documentary series.
“When Charles Foster Kane dies (in the movie “Citizen Kane”), a paperweight falls and he says the word ‘Rosebud.’ ‘Keeping Score’ is like that. It tries to go behind the scenes, into the unconscious of the composers and their world. It builds up from small, seemingly inconsequential things to see what drives them.”
Storytelling is central to the “Keeping Score” series that aired on PBS to 3.5 million viewers in November 2006. In forthcoming episodes, Thomas follows the same formula.

Gayle Worland:

There are plenty of pages to turn in a library, though usually it’s between book covers. At the Pinney Branch Library, carefully arranged and locked behind glass, stand adventures in paper of a much different sort: “Origami By Children,” a traveling exhibit of tiny, ingeniously folded works selected in an international competition by the group OrigamiUSA.
Two Madison students have works in the exhibit, which was first assembled in 2005 but only now has arrived in Madison. Each creation is deceptively simple: many are made from a single sheet of paper, yet turned into a fanciful creature or sharp-edged geometric shape by the skilled, young hands of their creators.
“Origami is a very different art than arts that are based on expression, like painting,” says Natalya Thompson, a Madison West High School sophomore whose interlocking paper “Bow-Tie Motif,” made from 48 squares of three-inch-by-three-inch paper, is featured in the exhibit. Most pieces in the small show are based on designs created by published origami masters.

Origami USA website

Dodd, Alexander Call for Study of Access to Arts Education
Introduce Resolution in Recognition of Music Education
May 8, 2007
Today Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) sent a letter to David Walker, the Comptroller General of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), requesting that the GAO conduct a study on access to music and arts education in the American public school system since passage of the No Child Left Behind Act. This week, Senators Dodd and Alexander also introduced a resolution recognizing the benefits and importance of school-based music education. Senators Dodd and Alexander are members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), and are Chairman and Ranking Member of its Subcommittee on Children and Families.
“No child should be deprived of the chance to explore his or her creativity in a nurturing educational environment,” said Dodd. “Picking up a musical instrument, a paint brush, or a script can allow a child to discover a hidden talent and can serve as a much-needed positive influence in the midst of the many difficult decisions that young people face today. I am hopeful that the GAO will act quickly to deliver findings about the current condition of arts education in American public schools so that we can seek to improve it during the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act.”
Added Alexander: “Music Education is important. I had some great teachers, but my piano teacher, Miss Lennis Tedford was the best. From age five until my high school senior recital, I spent thirty minutes with her each week. ‘Don’t play that monkey business,’ she would say, as she could always tell when I’d been playing too much Jerry Lee Lewis. From Miss Tedford I learned more than music. She taught me the discipline of Czerny and the metronome, the logic of Bach, the clean joy of Mozart. She encouraged me to let my emotions run with Chopin and Rachmaninoff. She made sure I was ready for the annual piano competition, and that I performed completely under control. I still thank her for the discipline and love of music she gave me each time I sit at the piano today.”
A companion resolution – introduced by Reps. Jim Cooper (D-TN) and Jon Porter (R-NV) – passed the House of Representatives on April 26 by unanimous consent.
The full text of the letter is below:

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Wednesday night, May 23, local band Marvin’s Gardens, will be playing at the King’s Club (114 King Street). There will be jazz from 6-9 p.m. All proceeds will go to benefit Grade 5 Strings! Strings players invited to bring their instruments to play with the band.
$5 at the door.

Tanya Schevitz:

The National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts is accepting applicants for cash awards of up to $10,000 and an opportunity for arts enrichment programs.
The early deadline, which provides for a 30 percent discount on the $35 application fee, is June 1. The final deadline is Oct. 1. High school seniors or graduates who will be 17 or 18 years old on Dec. 1 can apply for the money.

Grade 5 elementary string students need your help. There are ways you can support the hundreds of ten-year olds who are in Grade 5 strings and this year’s Grade 4 students who would like the chance to take the course next year:
A. Bring your child to play his/her instrument at Thursday’s Budget Hearing – April 19th at 6:00 p.m., Memorial High School Auditorium.
If your child would like to “play” in support of Grade 5 strings, there will be an opportunity to do this at Thursday’s budget hearing to be held in the auditorium at Memorial High School ( http://www.mmsd.org/145.htm). Students from grades 5-12 are welcome. There will be adults present to help coordinate the playing of a few songs from the strings festival. If you want to play, please come at 6 p.m., so we can organize the students.
B. Email the School Board – comments@madison.k12.wi.us – let them know:
1. you support the program for all children,
2. what this course has meant to your child if your child is/has
taken elementary strings,
3. you would like the newly formed school board community task
force on fine arts to have a chance to do it’s work, which
includes:
a. identifying the community’s fine arts education values and
goals,
b. identifying ways to increase low-income/minority
participation in the arts (45% elementary string students
are minority, 35% are low income), and
c. identifying funding priorities for the School Board
C. Speak at the Budget Hearings – 6:30 p.m. – Tuesday, April 17th at La Follette High School Auditorium and Thursday, April 19th at Memorial High School Auditorium:
There are two public hearings next week on the budget – Tuesday, April 17th, 6:30 p.m. at La Follette High School and Thursday, April 19th, 6:30 p.m. at Memorial High School – both public hearings are in the school’s auditoriums. If you come, you need to sign if you want to speak. You can sign in and not speak but say you support the program. Each person who speaks is given 3 minutes.
For nearly 40 years, MMSD has had an elementary strings program. Two years ago, elementary string instruction was cut in half. Last year, Grade 4 strings was cut entirely. This year, Superintendent Rainwater is proposing to cut Grade 5 strings, which would eliminate all string instruction during the school day.
Thank you for your support of Grade 5 strings and a strong fine arts education for our children.

Please write the School Board about what is important to you and your state legislature about funding our public schools. Following is a copy of my letter to the school board on Grade 5 strings:
Dear School Board Members (comments@madison.k12.wi.us),
I am happy to serve as a member of the newly created Fine Arts Task Force for the next year. The second charge to the committee is: ” Recommend up to five ways to increase minority student participation and participation of low income students in Fine Arts at elementary, middle and high school levels.”
I noticed in the Grade 5 strings report you received last week there was no information on low-income and minority student enrollment. Our task force received this specific demographic information at our March 26th meeting along with additional information, so I would like to share it with you, because I think it is important. As the program has been cut in the past two years, the low-income and minority student enrollment (numbers and percentage) has remained strong [but the cuts have affected hundreds of low-income students as the numbers show]. For this school year, 44% of the string students are minority students (47% of all Grade 5 students are minority students), and 35% of the string students are low income (44% of Grade 5 students are low income students). This information is captured in the attached Chart for the this year and the previous two years when the program was offered to students in Grades 4 and 5. I’ve also included information on special education student enrollment. I was not able to access ELL information for the previous years.

Decreasing academic opportunities to develop skills at a younger age is more likely to hurt participation at higher grades for low income and minority students who often lack support outside school to strengthen and reinforce what is learned in school either at home or through additional, private opportunities.
I hope you make the decision to give the Fine Arts Task Force an opportunity to complete its charge before making additional cuts to courses, because these cuts may prove to be more harmful to those students we want to reach than we realize. Also, if changes are made, I hope they are done equitably and with time for transitions. I’m asking this not only for arts education but also for other programs and activities Madison values in its public education. Eliminating elementary strings entirely would be the third year of major cuts in either funds or instruction time for students in this program. This seems to me to be overly harsh, especially when you consider that no extracurricular sports have been cut (nor would I support that).
Elementary strings is one arts course, but it has taught up to 2,000+ children in one year and is valued highly by parents and the community. I have 500+ signatures on a petition, which I will share with the board next week that says: “Madison Community Asks the MMSD School Board: Don’t Cut, Work with the Community to Strengthen and Grow Madison’s Elementary String Program. I have many emails with these signatures, and I’m planning to ask folks to write you about what this program means to them, so you hear their words and not only my words.
As I stated when I spoke before you earlier this year, there are those activities where a mix of public and private funding along with fees and grants might work for the arts and for extracurricular sports, for example. Please consider support of this and please consider helping with transitions toward different approaches.
Thank you for your hard work and support for public education.
Barbara Schrank
P.s. – note, I am speaking as an individual and not on behalf of the fine arts task force.
I would also like to add for SIS readers – I know due to the current financing scheme, the state is not funding public schools adequately nor fairly and is placing a huge burden on personal income and property taxes. I also know there have been cuts in previous years to the arts, increases in class sizes, fewer SAGE classes, etc. Just so you know, that is not the point of this letter. I see the need to work both locally and at the state. I also feel we need to be doing something more than referendums at the local level, and I don’t mean cut or referendum. I think in the areas of extracurricular sports, some of the arts, we may be able to put in place a financial package of public, private, fees, grants – but this takes time and planning and commitment by our school board following public discussions on the topic.
Not all minority children are low income, but by far, the majority of low income children are minority. By not working with the community on funding for this high demand, highly valued program, several hundred fewer low income students are receiving skill-based training on an instrument, which scientific research is showing more and more has a positive effect on other areas of academics.
No where else in this city do so many low-income children have the opportunity to learn how to play an instrument and to do so as inexpensively per student. This is a program where “thinking outside the box” for the School Board could come in handy, so we can continue this academic program as part of the school day for so many children.

Parents and Students distributed to attendees of the recent Spring 2007 Strings Festival the following information in a flier:
Madison Community Asks the MMSD School Board:
Don’t Cut, Work with the Community to Strengthen and Grow
Madison’s Elementary String Program

Superintendent Rainwater has proposed cutting Grade 5 strings, which would eliminate the nearly 40-year old elementary strings program. This does not have to happen and you can help:
1) Email the School Board (comments@madison.k12.wi.us), letting the School Board know:
a. You support elementary strings and a vibrant, strong fine arts academic education for all Madison’s school children as important for and fundamental to a student’s personal and academic growth, and
b. You support and want the newly formed School Board Community Fine Arts Task Force to have a chance and time to explore ways to continue and to sustain elementary strings, and all arts education, in Madison’s schools, without further cuts to programs.

Alan Borsuk:

The Progressions program of the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra, which gives kids mostly from Milwaukee Public Schools a start on classical instruments, is one of many arts programs in the city that are benefiting from a new $1 million fund created by the Milwaukee School Board.
That amount is being matched by private donations or contributed services from each of the organizations receiving the MPS grants.
Many in the arts community are viewing the new support as a strong boost for efforts to give city kids some of the arts education that has been shrinking in recent years under budget pressures.

As the district considers the total elimination of strings education in our elementary schools, a recently published study provides yet more evidence of the benefits of musical training.
Music Training ‘Tunes’ Human Auditory System
Science Daily — A newly published study by Northwestern University researchers suggests that Mom was right when she insisted that you continue music lessons — even after it was clear that a professional music career was not in your future.
The study, which will appear in the April issue of Nature Neuroscience, is the first to provide concrete evidence that playing a musical instrument significantly enhances the brainstem’s sensitivity to speech sounds. This finding has broad implications because it applies to sound encoding skills involved not only in music but also in language.
The findings indicate that experience with music at a young age in effect can “fine-tune” the brain’s auditory system. “Increasing music experience appears to benefit all children — whether musically exceptional or not — in a wide range of learning activities,” says Nina Kraus, director of Northwestern’s Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory and senior author of the study.
“Our findings underscore the pervasive impact of musical training on neurological development. Yet music classes are often among the first to be cut when school budgets get tight. That’s a mistake,” says Kraus, Hugh Knowles Professor of Neurobiology and Physiology and professor of communication sciences and disorders.
For further information about how music instruction impacts intellectual development, readers are encouraged to explore the work of psychologist Glenn Schellenberg:
Schellenberg, E.G. (2005). Music and cognitive ability, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 322-325.
Schellenberg, E.G. (2004). Music lessons enhance IQ. Psychological Science, 15, 511-514.

An Unfinished Canvas, Arts Education in California: Taking Stock of Policies and Practices by Katrina Woodworth, Roneeta Guha, Alix Gallagher, Ashley Campbell, June Park, and Debbie Kim:

Policies recently enacted at both the state and federal levels demonstrate a commitment to arts education. In 2001, the California State Board of Education adopted content standards for the visual and performing arts. In 2002, the federal No Child Left Behind law, with provisions recognizing the arts as a core subject, was signed into law. Beginning in 2005-06, students seeking admission to the University of California and California State University systems are required to take one full year of arts education coursework during high school.
Despite expectations and enthusiasm for instruction in the arts, little information about California students’ access to and performance in the arts is available, and statewide information about the delivery of arts education is lacking. Several recent studies suggest that arts education is in jeopardy—and perhaps in decline—and that schools are struggling to incorporate arts in their curriculum. Recent studies also point to disparities in access by school demographic characteristics, as well as differences in offerings by discipline. None of these studies, however, systematically examine the status of arts education in all four arts disciplines across all of California’s schools.

Sharon Noguchi has more.

Once derided as non-essential fluff and an expensive luxury, the arts have languished in California schools for nearly three decades.
Now, a Menlo Park think tank has recommended that California students spend more time in school to learn music, drama, theater and visual arts.
In a statewide survey of 1,123 California schools, researchers at SRI International found that 89 percent of schools fail to meet state standards for arts education.
Nearly one-third of the schools surveyed offered no art courses that met the standards, and K-12 enrollment in music courses dropped by 37 percent over the five years ending last June.

I pulled my blog from yesterday, because I think my main point got lost in too much unnecessary rhetoric. Basically, I would like to see the School Board support efforts to develop multi-year education funding plans for Fine Arts Education and extracurricular competitive sports. I would like to see the School Board be equitable in their cuts and help transition to a mix of public/private financing if that is needed in the future. I don’t see any reason to whack at or eliminate one program vs. another – it’s disruptive and unnecessary and plans cannot be made.

According to a meeting I had with the Superintendent, he says MMSD will require $300,000 to fund elementary string instruction and that private funding and/or grants will be needed to continue Elementary String Education in the Madison public schools. Without this funding, he is likely to again propose cutting this Madison public school tradition of nearly 40 years.
I’m exploring setting up a specific fund for string education at either the Foundation for Madison Public Schools or the Madison Community Foundation, so tax deductible contributions can be made in support of the curriculum. Madisonians United for String Education for Students (MUSEs) is a working title for a group of parents who want to keep elementary string instruction in our public schools for our young children. We welcome your ideas on next steps. Personally, we feel if this is the route we have to take, an endowment fund will be needed to ensure the course continues into the future.
I met last week with the Superintendent who said he a) supports elementary string curriculum instruction during the school day, b) would accept proposals for privately funding elementary string education. I also said the support and/or leadership of the Fine Arts Coordinator was important to such an effort, and he agreed, saying the Fine Arts Coordinator would be supportive.
Public schools surrounding Madison have strong, growing elementary string courses, because the community values the course and this is the foundation course for more advanced instrumental training/experiences in middle and high school. Plus, elementary string courses make their school districts attractive to parents deciding where to live and to send their children to school. Many parents want their children to have the experience of learning to play an instrument and to make music with other students. Private lessons can cost $2,000 or more per year – few families can afford this, especially low income families. That’s what’s special about Madison’s elementary strings program. In Madison, in previous years, Grade 4 and 5 strings taught about 500+ low-income students annually.
String instrument instruction offers a number of benefits for children – they can be sized to a small child, they are “easy” to take home to practice, all types of cultural and popular music can be played on the string instruments, and these instruments lend themselves to ensemble playing. Furthermore, learning how to play an instrument prepares you for playing a string or band instrument in middle school or for chorus, because you learn how to read music. Through the one- to two-year elementary course, children experience the joy of making music and performing through discipline and practice. Also, by offering this course Madison’s public schools stand shoulder to shoulder with what the surrounding school districts value and offer their children.
Lastly, I’m also be looking at various financial information to develop some proposals for the School Board’s consideration. I welcome your support and ideas.

David Shenk:

How can we explain the vast differences in musical ability? How can one species produce Paul Simon and William Hung? Are we born with musical talent, or do we develop it? Let’s sort through the research:

Action and Help Needed: I am beginning to work with some parents and others in the community to raise awareness and possibly financial support for all fine arts education. If you are interested in learning more, or would like to help, let me know (schrank4@charter.net or 231-3954). I will be posting on the blog more of what we are doing, including surveys and petitions of support.
Due to the proposed budget gap for next year and the Superintendent’s preliminary discussion idea to cut up to $300,000 from elementary strings, our focus will be on this course in the short-term. Elementary strings is only one piece of Fine Arts Education, but there is no other organization that teaches so many low income children how to play an instrument for about $200 per child vs. $2,000 per child in private instruction. We would like to resolve this issue this spring, working collaboratively with the administration and the school board.
The School Board would like proposals from the community re supporting elementary strings. I have begun working with parents and others on this topic, and I welcome ideas and support from readers of this blog. In addition to various proposals for School Board consideration, which I’m being encouraged to submit, we feel there is a need to raise awareness of the importance of a strong, vibrant standards-based, academic fine arts education. For an instrumental curriculum that meets national and state standards, course instruction begins in Grade 4 and classes are held at least twice weekly during the day.
The demand for elementary strings from parents and students has been and continues to be strong; but sadly, I feel the administration (not the School Board) has been a barrier to moving forward in partnership with the community, preferring each year to cut and to whittle away the course each year rather than gather the community together to bring ideas and solutions to the table. Last November, I asked District Administration for the following basic information: number of elementary string students, number of FTEs, number of middle and high school band and string students, number of FTEs, and revenue collected. I have not received this information, which I need to work on proposals, even though I have asked for the information repeatedly. The administration may have a lot on their plate, but I was only asking for basic information needed to develop some proposals for board consideration. I thought, perhaps the administration is working on their own proposals to continue this course, but that is not the case.
Up until a few years ago, there were nearly 2,000 4th and 5th grade students taking elementary strings, 30-40% of these children were low income (600+ children). During the 1990s, as the district’s low income population increased, enrollment in elementary strings doubled from about 1,000 students in 1991 to more than 1,900 in after the year 2000.
Elementary strings has been part of the Madison schools for more than 40 years. Growing school districts around Madison offer this course, and the enrollment is growing. Grandparents and parents who live in Madison took this course when they were in elementary school. The large string festival is one of other opportunities that make our elementary schools unique. If we want to keep parents sending their children to Madison, and to keep the needed diversity in our schools, I think this course is important and unique to Madison.
I hope some of you will join me in supporting a vibrant fine arts education for our children and working on proposals for elementary strings. Thank you for reading this blog item,
Barb

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Cherokee Middle School’s 8th grade orchestra plays the famous Led Zeppelin tune Stairway to Heaven: [4.2MB mp3].

Molly Snyder Edler:

Artists Working in Education (AWE) presents “A Celebration of Children’s Art,” a collection of work created this summer by kids who participated in AWE’s Truck Studio Program.
“A Celebration of Children’s Art” hangs in the Milwaukee City Hall Rotunda, Sept. 19 through Oct. 6. There is an opening reception on Tuesday, Sept. 19 from 5 to 7 p.m. at City Hall, 200 E. Wells St.
The exhibit features paintings, collages, plaster casts and fiber arts pieces made by four to 14-year-olds who were instructed by professional artists, art teachers and college-level art students through the Truck Studio Program.
“All of the work is created by children in Milwaukee’s most challenged neighborhoods,” says Sally Salkowski Witte, AWE executive director. “To me, it’s entirely appropriate that their artwork is positioned, at least for a short time, where those who have a great deal of power to make a difference will pass by every day.”

Artists Working in Education website.

Randy Kennedy:

In an era of widespread cuts in public-school art programs, the question has become increasingly relevant: does learning about paintings and sculpture help children become better students in other areas?
A study to be released today by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum suggests that it does, citing improvements in a range of literacy skills among students who took part in a program in which the Guggenheim sends artists into schools. The study, now in its second year, interviewed hundreds of New York City third graders, some of whom had participated in the Guggenheim program, called Learning Through Art, and others who did not.