Jackson Elementary School is nine blocks and several income levels from the gilded balconies of Abravanel Hall, home of the Utah Symphony. Jackson is the kind of school where parents can barely make ends meet, much less pay for music lessons; the kind of school where, not too many years ago, the walls were covered with gang graffiti.
In the past decade, Jackson has made headlines for a one-of-a-kind music program with a radical premise: that every child can play the violin — and in fact will play the violin, four hours every week. By learning to play the violin, the theory goes, the students will end up doing better in their other subjects and feel better about themselves, and in that way the school itself will flourish.
Next week the students of Jackson Elementary will perform at Abravanel Hall, where 200 violin bows will rise and fall, more or less in sync, and the sweet, sad, triumphant notes of the Pachelbel Canon will float through the air. The benefit concert is both a celebration and a plea — because in the face of budget cuts and an economy that has hit one sour note after another, the students will be playing to keep the violin program alive.
"It's sad we have to grovel," says Jackson fourth-grade teacher David Lither.
These are the realities for arts programs in hard times. Jackson's violin program, believed to be the only one like it in the nation, provides a window into those realities. But the threats to arts in the schools, say arts educators, extend to the whole state. Those threats include cuts
in funding for artists-in-the schools programs, and the gradual shrinking of regular arts curricula. Arts education is further threatened, they argue, by proposed changes in high school graduation requirements that could reduce the number of electives available to students.
"You can start feeling like you're in the fetal position," says Carol Goodson, fine arts specialist for the State Office of Education.
Utah's ambivalence toward arts education starts in the elementary schools, says BYU professor Tim Bothell. Because singing and drama have long been a part of the children's Primary program of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there has been a culture of not pushing for a strong arts programs in Utah's grade schools, he says.
Many states provide designated state funds for certified arts teachers at the elementary level, but Utah never has, says Bothell, who is part of a research team studying the effects of a private program called Art Works for Kids. That pilot program, begun by Beverly Sorenson, wife of multi-millionaire philanthropist James Sorenson, has paired artists (some with Ph.D.s and master's degrees) with classroom teachers in 12 schools in an effort to integrate the arts into math, geography and other academic lessons. The program, now privately funded, originally also received state funds, but those were pulled when the state budget began to falter after Sept. 11.
The Utah Arts Council has also had to trim its artists-in-residence program in Utah schools, down to 50 grants per year from 130 in the flush 1990s. State funding has also been reduced for POPS (Professional Outreach Program in the Schools), which brings the ballet, symphony and other performing groups to the schools.
The amount and quality of regular arts instruction is up to individual school districts and varies widely throughout the state. Provo provides a music specialist in each elementary school, for example, and Jordan provides none, a fact that always surprises parents who move here from other states, says Brenda Hales, executive director of curriculum staff development for the Jordan District.
In the Granite School District, students once had general music instruction three times every two weeks — but those positions have been eliminated. General music instruction is now provided by classroom teachers, who may or may not feel comfortable teaching it, notes Granite music curriculum specialist Clinton Frohm.
Opportunities have shrunk even more at the junior high level, says State Office of Education fine arts specialist Goodson. Teacher positions in choir and drama have been eliminated in schools where enrollment has dropped, for example. The fine arts, sighs Granite's Frohm, are usually the first to be cut when cuts are required.
The debate over the value of arts education is now heating up, fueled by the Utah State Board of Education's proposed high school graduation standards and legislative action. Anger over the proposal — or at least over what the proposal seems to imply — is aimed in part at the coalition of business people (the Employers Education Coalition, or EEC) whose recommendations are embodied in the school board's proposal and in an education omnibus bill, SB154, passed by the Legislature earlier this year.
Utah is the nation's second-lowest, behind North Dakota, in per-pupil spending, 38th in the country in teacher pay, and the nation's leader in high class sizes. Yet, Utah is the ninth highest taxed state in the nation. Education, along with other state agencies, has taken two years worth of state budget cuts. So the rationale for the proposal is this: Can Utah afford to keep paying for a slew of electives or should the money be focused on core academics?
That question is being tackled by legislators, who plan to study the matter over the next two years. Already, though, one legislator has proposed giving state money only to a "basic education," which has yet to be defined, but could focus mainly on English, math, science and history.
It's hard to argue with the state school board's goals to raise the bar for what students ought to know before they graduate, says music curriculum specialist Frohm. But there will be unintended consequences for the arts, he argues.
The proposal would increase from 15 to 18 the number of credit hours needed in core curriculum subjects. Right now, kids in some districts earn up to 32 credits between ninth and 12th grades, although the state average of required credits is actually 25.7.
There is an oblique recommendation in the proposal to encourage all districts to move from an eight-period block schedule to a six-period day. Though mentioned almost as an afterthought, the suggestion worries some educators and parents, adding to the fear of impending doom.
Under the proposed graduation requirements, a six-period day would give kids just six elective courses their entire high school careers; with an eight-period schedule there would be nine electives. These elective credits would have to cover foreign language, drivers education, physical education, job internships. Electives also include the four years of LDS seminary instruction for the nearly 83,000 Utah high school students who take advantage of "release time."
The result, says Frohm, is that even though 1.5 credits will be required in fine arts, most students will have little time left over for the extra music, drama and art they might want to pursue.
Talk to arts teachers, administrators and parents and you'll quickly hear an undercurrent of disdain for the business coalition that recommended the graduation requirement changes.
"Every child is not going to be an American Express clone," says Michael Hamblin, an elementary music specialist in the Granite District.
"These businessmen can afford to give their kids (private) music lessons," says Granite School Board member Sarah Meier.
"We're the main consumers of education, not the business community," says Gayleen Gandy, the mother of six children in the Granite District. Gandy and others are mobilizing to fight the proposed graduation standards, making phone calls, sending e-mails and making appearances at arts and sports events as the school year winds down.
"These elective classes give our kids the edge to get scholarships," says Gandy, whose three older children have taken drama and music classes since junior high. "I'm convinced they got through those difficult junior high years because of the drama program," she says, adding that the teacher in that program was "surplussed" last year and that the one remaining drama class is now taught by a science teacher with some drama background.
Kim Burningham, president of the state school board, admits that the graduation requirement proposal includes "some ticklish areas." It is not the board's intent, he says "nor will it be necessary" to cut the arts programs offered to students. "I don't want to see those opportunities denied to people," he adds, "but I want to see all kids master the core."
The school board will hold hearings on the proposal this summer.
Over at Jackson Elementary, the students are rehearsing the Pachelbel Canon one more time. Music teacher Carol Storr's younger students, not yet old enough to play the violin, are practicing their routine, waving blue scarves back and forth as the mournful whole notes give way to the song's joyful round.
It has been 10 years since Utah opera tenor Michael Ballam, at a meeting with a room full of school superintendents, challenged them to fund an experimental program to test the theory that music can change children's academic and emotional lives.
The Salt Lake School District agreed; Jackson Elementary, on Salt Lake's sometimes beleaguered west side, was chosen; and the violin program was launched with 100 violins and two teachers. The program was funded for three years and renewed for another three. After that an anonymous private donor stepped in to fund three more years. Now all of that has dried up, says violin teacher Trish Wade.
Every child in every school — not just the gifted students,
even children with IQs of 50, not just the ones whose parents can afford an instrument or private lessons — should get the chance to have a program like Jackson Elementary's, says Wade. "It's one reason it's important that we exist. If we can show how powerful this is in the lives of children, then people will say we need to come up with more programs. If nobody shows the way, it won't happen."
Proving exactly how powerful the arts are in children's lives, however, isn't easy. The privately funded Art Works for Kids is currently sorting through research to come up with some answers. At Jackson, though, there have been no "authoritative studies," says Wade.
There seem to be clues, though. Jackson's brick facade used to be covered with gang graffiti and now it's not. Reading scores at the state's near mastery level have gone up from 39 percent to 57 percent in the past three years.
But the school has also installed a video camera outside and has begun a new literacy program, so it's hard to know what to attribute to the music program, points out Jackson principal Ernie Nix.
"Sometimes people want to come in the door and say 'music is responsible for the whole world,' " says Nix. "But we don't want to say that." Still, teachers and administrators say they can see a difference in the school over the past decade. "The tone of the school changed" gradually, says former principal Marilyn Phillips. The children, she says, became more disciplined, listened more attentively, were more courteous.
David Lither's fourth-grade class shares a room with students with behavioral disorders, some of the most unruly children in the school. "But you can walk into a music class when we're playing and you would not be able to tell a BD child from one that's not," Lither says. Three of his least able readers are the best at music, he says, and have gained two years reading growth this year. "The music absolutely helps the reading," Lither says.
Brain scans have shown that when a person plays music the whole brain is engaged, not just one hemisphere or the other. Countless national studies have shown that music study translates later into complex math and reasoning skills. And, too, music helps children work cooperatively and express emotions that otherwise might stay mute, says Wade.
"What I want to accomplish when I teach," she says, "is that there are no limits. That they can grow up to be anything they want to be . . . that they can be contributors." She wants them to see that if they can learn a hard thing like music, then they can do other hard things, too.
There has been no money to do a scientific study of music's effects on the students at Jackson, no money to do a longitudinal study of students who have graduated and moved on to adolescence and beyond.
Instead, Trish Wade offers a page of quotes from students and parents, written after singer Ballam performed with the school. The quotes, tender and heart-felt, reveal how great the distance is between Ballam's world and theirs — and how much the gap has closed.
"Never before have I heard a song as beautiful," wrote a girl named Shasta. "Do you live in a trailer or a house?"
"How do you feel about music?" wrote Denise. "The way I feel about music is it kind of relaxes me. My favorite classical music song is Beethoven's Ninth, Ode to Joy. What is your favorite? When you played with us I felt I was going to mess up because if I messed up my friend next to me was going to mess up and the person next to them was going to mess up like a chain reaction. But I still had fun."
Ballam, along with symphony flutist Erich Graf, will perform with the Jackson students on Tuesday, June 3, at 7 p.m. at Abravanel Hall. The space has been donated, so in that way Jackson is luckier than most schools, which have not developed such close relationships with influential people. Tickets are $8, but violin teacher Wade knows that ticket sales alone won't save the program.
The school is looking for additional donations, she says, from "someone with a big heart."
E-MAIL: jarvik@desnews.com