Alaska: New Visions for Arts Education

In 2009, the Alaska State Council on the Arts (ASCA) adopted a special arts learning initiative: the New Visions project. This initiative was catalyzed by sobering results from a statewide assessment revealing that 73% of Alaskan districts had no arts curriculum, only six included the arts as a graduation requirement and less than 2% of the state’s teaching force was highly qualified in the arts. To address these shortfalls, ASCA launched the New Visions project to demonstrate high-quality arts education programs in three Alaskan school districts. New Visions: New Hope, a newly released progress report, documents the success of these programs. Key findings include:

4,433 students received arts instruction that they had not been receiving before;
300 educators received formal training in how to integrate the arts across the curriculum;
Two out of three school districts adopted formal visual arts curricula;
4,540 parents and community members were engaged in school-based arts programs.

For more information, contact ASCA Arts Education Program Director Laura Forbes.