White House Panel Releases Report Pushing Arts Education Funding

The Los Angeles Times (5/11, Boehm) reports on a new report with which the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities hopes to "reverse a decades-long decline in arts education" un US public schools. The report, titled "Reinvesting in Arts Education: Winning America's Future Through Creative Schools," is "intended to help advocates press for more money, better teaching approaches and a fresh mind-set that doesn't treat arts learning as a frill or an afterthought, readily cut when school budgets grow tight." The Times notes that First Lady Michelle Obama is scheduled to discuss the report-which touts "success stories" about arts curricula in schools-at a Wednesday White House event. The piece notes parenthetically that Education Secretary Arne Duncan, in the foreword to the report, "writes that the report 'shows us the link between arts education and achievement in other subjects.'"