Chicago Public Schools officials on Wednesday announced a plan aimed at increasing the quality of arts instruction by establishing a comprehensive arts curriculum and a data-driven system to measure effectiveness of teaching.
CPS CEO Pedro Martinez and other district officials discussed the CPS Arts Education Plan 2.0: Cultivating Creativity at a City Club of Chicago event. Martinez said the new plan builds off the progress from the district’s first expansive arts plan, which was released in 2012.
That plan established a goal of one art teacher for every 350 students. In the baseline report, 56% of schools met the standard; in the 2023-24 school year, 77% did, according to the new plan.
Martinez said that while access to arts education has expanded in the decade since that first plan, it takes more to ensure students are receiving quality lessons.
“It’s not just having the arts; we have to make sure the rigor is there, we have to make sure the quality is there,” Martinez said.
To that end, while the new plan will still focus on increasing access, it will place a spotlight on instruction. The plan calls for the development and implementation of a districtwide pre-K-12 arts curriculum based on the different ways students learn as they age, from exploring their creativity in kindergarten to choosing a discipline as they enter high school.
The “flexible instructional framework” will ensure every student has a similar arts education experience regardless of where they go to school, according to the plan.
The plan also recommends the development of a new system to track the effectiveness of the arts instruction.
“With the many disparate ways quality is tracked within CPS, there is no unified system to measure the effectiveness of teaching in arts education,” the plan states. “A new system will need to be created that includes existing classroom conditions data and arts indicators of educator and student mastery.”
It also recommends increasing training opportunities for arts teachers and an audit of arts facilities districtwide to understand which schools are well-equipped to teach arts and which need improvements.