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.

Keywords:

• Teacher workforce
• arts education
• school characteristics
• descriptive statistics
• access

Notes

1 For a review of STEAM as it relates to arts education policy and practice, see the special issue Arts Education Policy Review released on STEAM in 2018 (Katz-Buonincontro, 2018).

2 For a helpful overview of studies that examine trends in arts education before ESSA was introduced, see Sabol (2013).

3 NCES surveyed 846 schools in 2022 and approximately 72% reported increases in chronic absenteeism, defined as students missing 10% or more of the school year. (National Center of Education Statistics, 2022)

4 I exclude the 1990–1991 SASS survey data because the estimates I generated from this data are very inconsistent with other years.

5 Theater and dance were added as assignment options on the second SASS survey wave utilized.

6 For example, in the 1999–2000 survey wave only about 4% of all teachers were employed part-time.

7 This could be due to a change in the way in which ED students are reported in schools participating in CEP, which became available in North Carolina in 2015