It’s been five years since Illinois became the first state in the country to put the arts on the same footing as math and science as vital features of a public school education. But the progress toward educational equity and access is at risk due to the uncertainty surrounding whether the arts will stay on the same plane as those subjects, as the state rethinks how to measure the factors that go into a top-tier education.
The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) plans to move to a new model that will completely eliminate a system that used numerical values to rate school performance. Known as “weighted indicators,” these values helped the state assess how well a school is meeting the needs of its students, whether through academic indicators like test scores and grade point averages (GPAs) or meta-indicators like college and career readiness.
Arts educators are concerned that if the arts—including dance, media arts, music, theater, and the visual arts—go unscored under the new system, they could be at risk of becoming invisible or optional, which might weaken school districts’ investments in those subjects. If local school administrators decide to hire fewer arts instructors, they would be forced to reduce program offerings and other resources for students, ultimately depriving them of a well-rounded education in the most vital years of their academic development.
State education officials have viewed the arts as essential and have framed equitable access to an arts education as one of their top priorities.
“I’m really disappointed and sad for the children in the state of Illinois,” says Nicole Upton, the executive director of Ingenuity, a nonprofit arts organization based in Chicago. She’d like to see the ISBE reconsider the decision.
State education officials have viewed the arts as essential and have framed equitable access to an arts education as one of their top priorities. But despite assurances from board members, the ISBE has yet to unveil comprehensive plans to ensure that the arts will be ranked on future school performance reports.
These moves signal to school districts in Illinois that the arts are not an essential component for academic and social growth, a message that music educator Stacy Williams-Jackson believes is “unacceptable.”
Williams-Jackson teaches jazz and strings at Lincoln-Way High School District 210 in New Lenox, a suburb southwest of Chicago. She has been the chair of their music department since 2002 and serves as the president of the Illinois Music Education Association (ILMEA), a nonprofit organization that advocates for equitable access to a comprehensive music education.
“I want to live in a state where the inclusion of fine arts in every Illinois learner’s educational experience is as valued as those ‘core’ subjects for which our school districts are charged to produce excellent outcomes,” she says.
For 50 minutes a day, five days a week, Williams-Jackson teaches her students to collaborate with their peers to create human connections through music. “Perseverance, collaboration, trial and error, discernment of quality, appreciation for effort, struggle and beauty, these are all skills these young people take with them throughout their lives through the study of fine arts,” says Williams-Jackson.
These skills help students produce better academic outcomes as well. National Endowment for the Arts researchers have found that students who earned little to no arts credits were five times more likely to not graduate from high school compared to those who had arts classes. Students who had intensive arts experience in high school were three times more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree than students who did not, which is true even among students from high socioeconomic backgrounds. In addition, students who had rich art experiences had higher overall GPAs.
Ingenuity has created comprehensive maps of arts education in Chicago for more than a decade. After Illinois added the fine arts to its ratings systems, their 2023-2024 “State of the Arts” report noted that 39 percent of Chicago public schools have access to arts programs, an increase of 14 percentage points over the 2020-2021 school year.
However, arts organizations are already predicting reductions in funding for the arts. “Carrots and sticks,” says Andrew Schneider, the director of government affairs at Arts Alliance Illinois. “There should be a carrot to improve. Being a top-quality school comes with prestige, funding incentives, and so on. Without a [ratings system], what is that going to be now?”
Unfortunately, the federal “Arts in Education” program may be consolidated into a new K-12 block grant, which means that there would be no dedicated arts funding for schools. The sweeping cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services have already made it increasingly difficult for arts organizations to connect with public schools to provide art programs.
Despite these losses, Chicago still has a strong arts education infrastructure. Over the past decade, the Chicago Public Schools’ partnership with Ingenuity has enabled the district to connect K-12 students with over 400 partners in the arts.
One high school program, the Chicago Shakespeare Slam, an annual regional competition, offers students the opportunity to work with the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. They learn performing arts techniques and are exposed to other tools that teach them how to engage with the challenging texts.
High school students often dread reading and analyzing Romeo and Juliet, Othello, and other plays written for 16th-century English audiences. The Shakespeare Slam helps students showcase their literacy skills: They flex their creative and competitive muscles by fostering relationships with other students and instructors to find their individual voices through creative storytelling.
In the first round of the competition, students re-enact scenes from Shakespeare’s catalogue. In the second and final round, students collaborate to create their own performances: They connect his plays to modern texts of their choosing, such as Taylor Swift lyrics or the latest Hollywood movie hit.
Beyond Chicago, many students in suburbs and rural towns don’t have the city’s rich resources—museums, galleries, theaters, music venues, and philanthropic support. They lack the city’s vibrant arts scene or highly esteemed schools and universities. Williams-Jackson notes that this is true even at her school located just outside of Chicago. “Our district is not without struggles,” says Jackson. “Our board of education eliminated our fine arts requirement many years ago, and the upcoming two-year world language requirement will irrevocably squeeze out the opportunity to fit fine arts classes into our students’ schedules. But for now, we are grateful for the students and support we have.”
Many school environments could very well stagnate further should the ISBE fail to keep the arts on a par with other key subjects. “We know that when things are weighted, people pay attention to them. It’s a lost opportunity to make sure that the arts are really being considered across school districts all over Illinois,” says Upton.
Corrections: Ms. Williams-Jackson is the president of the ILMEA. Darcy Nendza is the executive director. The Ingenuity statistics have been updated to reflect the correct years and percentages.