Arts vying for a place in school day – NGA Chairman Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) leading the charge

Arts in education advocates, including Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R), are on the offensive to try to keep the fine arts from getting squeezed out as the federal No Child Left Behind Act ratchets up pressure on schools to raise reading and math test scores.

Raising standards in arts education is a primary goal of Huckabee’s term as chairman of the Education Commission of the States http://www.ecs.org/ecsmain.asp?page=/html/projectsPartners/chair2005/Huckabee.asp , a nonpartisan interstate compact on education. His own state is emphasizing the arts as a regular part of schools’ curricula with a new law requiring 40 minutes of music and 40 minutes of visual art per week for every elementary school student.

By Joseph Popiolkowski, Stateline.org Staff Writer

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