Ingenuity State of the Arts Progress Report 2015-2016 | Page 5

Even as CPS continued to face deep fiscal challenges, many
schools prioritized staffing in the arts..

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Ingenuity identified 579 active community arts partners serving
schools in the district. The number represents the largest pool
of active partners in the four years of surveys—with 96% of CPS
schools reporting a partnership with at least one community
arts partner.

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Twenty Chicago-based foundations and corporations reported
supporting arts education by donating $8,484,365. The
addition of $2,402,404 from Ingenuity's Creative Schools Fund
brought the 2015-16 community investment in arts education
to approximately $10.9 million..

Ingenuity identified 1,402 arts instructors in the
2015-16 school year, an increase from the 1,337 that
were identified the previous year.
The percentage of reporting schools with at least one
full-time equivalent (FTE*) reached 92% in 2015-16.
Staffing data have shown consistent improvements
over the past four years. In 2015-16, 73% of schools met
or exceeded the goal of one full-time equivalent for
every 350 students, an increase from 68% in 2014-15.
While the percentage of high schools that have one
full-time arts instructor for every 350 students has
held steady at around 90% for each of the past four
years, the percentage of elementary schools that met
this threshold has increased each school year, from
42% in 2012-13 to 68% in 2015-16.

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On average, elementary schools offered access to arts instruction
to 97% of students. However, not all of these students had access
to the 120 or more minutes of weekly instruction laid out in the
CPS Arts Education Plan; 59% of schools achieved this goal in
2015-16, up from 40% in 2012-13.

Perhaps in part because this year’s Survey invited high schools
to include media arts as a separate arts discipline, more high
schools than ever before reported offering their students three
or more arts disciplines—50 % of high schools offered 3 or
more disciplines, and more than half of these offered three
or more multi-level disciplines.

executive summary

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Along with the more detailed analyses that
are presented in this report, these key findings
show how the environment for arts education
in Chicago has, overall, improved over the
past four years and how school leaders, arts
instructors, community arts partners, and
local funders have worked together to sustain
and build upon these improvements. These
successes provide reason for optimism.
Just as importantly, the successes to date
highlight the need for these stakeholders to
continue their concentrated efforts; sustained
improvement is not a foregone conclusion.
Continued investment, attention, and arts
education advocacy will be essential to
overcoming the challenges that remain and
ensuring that every CPS student has access to
a quality education that includes the arts.

*Refer to Glossary

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