Ingenuity State of the Arts Report 2016-17 Ingenuity_SOTA_2016-17 | Page 54

COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS
A CLOSER LOOK:
SINGLE-YEAR
PARTNERSHIPS
VS. RECURRING
PARTNERSHIPS
A healthy partnership between a school and a community arts organization
can play an important role in increasing arts education opportunities for
students and enhancing the overall arts education environment in a school.
While partners cannot replace the important consistent instruction provided
by certified arts instructors, partners can bring additive experiences, ideas,
and resources to the school that may not otherwise be available to its
students. Simultaneously, a healthy arts education environment in a school
often leads to more—and more successful—partnerships.
Full-time certified arts instructors are key to student arts access, well
beyond their instruction. As the chart below illustrates, since the first year
the Creative Schools Survey was conducted, the higher a school rates on
the CSC—a measure with staffing at its core—the more partnerships with
community arts organizations those schools tend to have. 32 When a school
has demonstrated an investment in the arts through staffing, minutes
of instruction, access to arts courses, and offering sequential arts
instruction in multiple disciplines, that school is also more likely to seek
outside resources that can add to what they are already providing.
SCHOOLS RATED HIGHER ON THE CSC TEND TO HAVE MORE PARTNERSHIPS
7.5
5
2016–17
2.5
School CSC Score
1—Excelling
2—Strong
3—Developing
4—Emerging
5—Incomplete
54
SCHOOL YEAR
The duration and extent of these relationships between schools and
community arts organizations may also play an important role in reinforcing
the value that partnerships bring to schools. When an arts partner is able to
be part of a school environment over multiple years, the students and staff
at the school come to know more about what to expect from that partner
and may be able to adapt their work to take further advantage of what the
partner has to offer. On the community arts partners side, a long-standing
relationship may help that partner better know the needs of a school and its
students, giving them insights that can help them adapt and improve upon
their curriculum. Differentiating a program in even subtle ways can have
important benefits for schools, students, and partners.
INGENUITY | STATE OF THE ARTS
32
A similar analysis that focuses on the number of program types offered rather than the number of
partnerships yields comparable results.