As part of its goal to make quality, sequential arts education a reality in all public K-12 classrooms in Los Angeles County, Arts for All connects school districts with effective tools and resources to improve arts learning. The Arts for All School Arts Survey: Measuring Quality, Access and Equity in Arts Education is the most recent of these tools to be introduced. It was developed to measure access to and quality of arts instruction at the school site level as well as to develop a system for collecting and reporting the data. The results are useful to schools and school districts to find out what is working, what’s not working, and to point the way toward improvement. But the results can also provide a picture of what’s happening across a region.

Findings include:

• Secondary schools are doing moderately well in delivering the instruction they can currently afford to offer. They have expert instructors, monitor student progress, showcase their best work, and keep parents informed of activities and performances.
• College and career preparation in the arts resulted in very low index scores and merits further investigation.
• Elementary schools revealed a lack of accountability, an absence of school-wide plans for arts education, a lack of adequate time in the teaching day, and a constant pressure to meet academic targets in math and reading.
• Developing and adopting supportive arts policies could help set a clearer course for incremental change over time.