Course Pathways

Ten Reasons Visual Art is a GREAT idea:

1. Students who take four years of art and music classes score, on average, 100 points higher on the SAT

2. The arts unify us regardless of age, race, or ethnicity.

3. The Arts drive our economy: $764 Billion to GDP ; 4.9 million jobs (2018) and expected to grow by 43%

4. The Conference Board reports that creativity is among the top 5 applied skills sought by business leaders- with 72% saying that creativity is of high importance when hiring

5. Art education requires students to use their eyes and hands to give form to ideas generated in the brain- a discipline that Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel proved boosts brain power

6. Art education equips students to form mental images, which can be used to solve problems- an ability that chemists, engineers, and architects use to create models and that inventors use to think up new ideas.

7. The arts teach that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.

8. Visual art teaches students that mistakes happen and lead them to higher order thinking to solve that mistake.

9. 4%- The drop out rate of students with high arts participation and low-socioeconomic status- five times lower than their socioeconomic peers

10. Art can be therapeutic. Say what needs to be said without words.

A "little" visual arts education is simply not adequate and would be considered unacceptable in any other core academic area (Yes! Art is a CORE SUBJECT!). Teaching students to be creative is a deliberate process, much like teaching literacy or math, and is certainly just as important. The skills learned through participation in the visual arts help to equip our nation's youth for the challenges they will face in shaping the future. The visual arts are essential to a high-quality and balanced education.