Erie Arts Opportunity Local Education Fund Purpose Statement

Erie Arts Opportunity Local Education Fund Purpose Statement

Erie Arts Opportunity Local Education Fund, Inc. (EAOLEF) was created in 2006 to help public school students in Erie County, particularly those from families with low socio-economic status, to receive a well-rounded education including music, visual art, theatre, and dance. Because of the narrow focus of the high-stakes standardized tests that have resulted from the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Law legislated on January 8, 2002, many students have been left behind with regard to the arts in public education.

The purpose of local education funds (LEFs) nationally is to support underfunded public school districts. There are very few LEFs that specifically support the arts in public education and we have been unable to find any whose primary goal is to drastically increase (a) the amount of certified arts instructors, (b) instructional time, (c) resources, and (d) the quality of arts curricula in public schools. Most arts efforts support artists in residence, field trips, and other short-term arts enrichment goals. The long term goal of our organization is to create an endowment to sustain public school arts curricula in Erie County for years to come and to create a model for those in other locations to refer to as they start local education funds that support the arts in public education. While it is not our goal to teach to the standardized tests that currently drive public education, research shows a correlation between participation in the arts and higher test scores, especially for students with the lowest socio-economic status.[i]

A summary of findings from seven separate academic studies revealed that the arts:

• reach students in ways that they are not otherwise being reached;
• connect students to themselves and each other;
• transform the environment for learning;
• provide learning opportunities for the adults in the lives of young people;
• provide new challenges for those students already considered successful;
• connect learning experiences to the world of real work;
• enable young people to have direct involvement with the arts and artists;
• require significant staff development; and
• support extended engagement in the artistic process.[ii]

In the world of the future, we need to lead students to think outside of the box. Elliot Eisner, in his “10 Lessons the Arts Teach” states:

1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.
2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.
3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.
4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.
5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.
6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties.
7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real.
8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.
9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.
10. The arts' position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.[iii]

Past funding sources of Erie Arts Opportunity include Wal-Mart, Best Buy, donations from Directors and other individuals, and instrument donations from the community. Wal-Mart provided money to EAOLEF for McKinley Elementary School to help send their chorus to perform in the Boscov annual Thanksgiving Day Parade. Other financial donations from individuals have made it possible for schools to purchase sheet music. Through the instrument donation program of EAOLEF, Burton Elementary School acquired a $1,250 piano.
Other funding sources are being explored. Erie Arts Opportunity has formed partnerships with the Erie Philharmonic, WQLN, The Erie Playhouse, Erie Kids, and the School District of the City of Erie with the intent to apply and receive Federal funds, particularly from an Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination (AEMDD) grant. We were prepared to apply for this grant this year, but it was not funded. The AEMDD grant is a program that “supports the implementation of high-quality, standards-based arts programming that raise the content level of arts instruction in schools and may integrate arts education with other content areas. Arts programming may be in music, dance, drama, media and visual arts, including the folk arts.” Ken Adams, the Dean of Education at Edinboro University, has graciously agreed to help with the planning, implementation, and measurement of objectives associated with the AEMDD grant.
Like a fledgling bird Erie Arts Opportunity is ready to fly. We are no longer in the infancy stages of obtaining board members and forming a connection with the community. However, we are lacking in some key components of infrastructure, specifically areas of financial management, program evaluation, revenue development, and strategic marketing. Additional help is needed to procure equipment necessary to the ongoing activities of the organization. EAOLEF seeks assistance from the Erie Capacity-Building Collaborative in these areas to spread our wings and, in turn, help the children of Erie County soar.

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[i]http://www.americansforthearts.org/public_awareness/artsed_facts/highlights/multiple_arts.asp

[ii] Champions of Change, 1999 pp. 9–11

[iii] Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications. NAEA grants reprint permission for this excerpt from Ten Lessons with proper acknowledgment of its source and NAEA.