P.S. ARTS
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Mission Statement
P.S. ARTS is dedicated to improving children's lives by providing arts education to underserved public schools and communities.
About This Cause
The P.S. ARTS mission is to improve the lives of children by providing arts education to underserved public schools and communities. As a leader in the field of arts education, P.S. ARTS maintains a serious commitment to the youth in Los Angeles, and since 1991, our purpose has been to ensure comprehensive, sustainable arts education for every child in our community, and to continue to increase the positive impact that our program has on the academic, social, and emotional wellbeing of the children we serve. P.S. ARTS was created in response to significant education budget cuts in the 1970s and 1980s, which cut local tax revenues for public schools and resulted in the systematic reduction and elimination of arts programs in California schools. Now in its 24th year of service, P.S. ARTS has grown from serving 285 students in one school to approximately 20,000 students in ten school districts throughout Southern and Central California, the large majority of which are living at or below the federal poverty line ($23,550 annual salary for a family of four). Despite the research that indicates numerous benefits associated with arts education, California public schools continue to cut back on arts programming due to continually shrinking budgets, competing priorities, and limited discretionary funding. As a result, the quality and frequency of arts education in our state’s public schools is highly variable. U.S. Department of Education data tells us that students in underserved communities particularly benefit from arts education due to the emphasis placed on self-esteem and problem solving, but they are far less likely to receive arts education in California public schools. Studies also suggest that participation in the arts is associated with increased high school retention (Arts Education Partnership, "Critical Links." [2002]), a finding that cannot be ignored when the dropout rate in Los Angeles County has climbed as high as 50% in recent years. Over the last decade, California public schools have witnessed between a 50 and 100 percent (depending on the discipline) decline in arts education. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has suggested that educational equity is “the civil rights issue of our time.” He states, “The arts can help students become tenacious, team-oriented problem solvers who are confident and able to think creatively.” P.S. ARTS classes directly compensate for the arts programming that has been eliminated from the communities we serve. At P.S. ARTS, we believe that sequential, discipline-based arts instruction belongs in the school day alongside other core subjects and we have modeled our programs accordingly. Whereas most arts service organizations in Southern California provide the arts as enrichment programming or short-term residencies, P.S. ARTS programs are based on a “mastery model,” providing sequential, year-long, in-school programs; we also offer four disciplines (dance, music, theater, and visual arts). We believe that the children we serve have experienced loss – economic, social, and familial—disproportionately to their more affluent peers, and P.S. ARTS is committed to a sustained, reliable presence in their lives. In fact, P.S. ARTSʼ long-term commitment to schools has been noted as a major strength in a program evaluation conducted by a former Harvard Business School non-profit program sustainability analyst. The great majority of P.S. ARTS students maintain a mentor/mentee relationship with our Teaching Artist for upwards of five years, or their entire elementary school career. Finally, many organizations and school district arts programs that operate on a short-term residency model often stand separate from the school curriculum and serve a select group of students and thus risk never exposing the arts to the children who need it the most. P.S. ARTS, on the other hand, is an established, trusted, and integral presence in the schools we serve and provides the students with a sense of stability and curricula cohesion, as well as a high-quality and high-volume arts education.