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While last week officially marked National Arts in Education Week, dedicated advocates know that school-based music education requires advocacy throughout the year. COVID-19 is disrupting how, where, and what students are learning in unprecedented ways, but the value of arts education remains high: Arts Education Is Essential.

For far too long, inadequate data about the state of arts education in schools has allowed structural inequities to persist, which has prevented many students from experiencing, learning about, and becoming practitioners of the arts in their schools. Earlier this month, the National Endowment for the Arts and Education Commission of the States released a new suite of resources that has been two years in the making–the Arts Education Data Toolkit.

Last month, the Appropriations Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives advanced all twelve of its funding bills for FY21, followed shortly by passage by the full House of a package containing nearly all of them.

Late last month, the League joined a group of more than 50 national organizations that collaborated to issue a statement of support for arts education particularly in the context of COVID-19.

Federal emergency funding provided in the CARES Act is now available to states through block grants and emergency relief resources intended to support the new costs of adapting to learning needs amid the COVID-19 crisis. Funds are primarily targeted to Title I schools, and state and local education policy leaders are given opportunities to choose how to direct these COVID-19 relief resources.

With bipartisan support from Congress, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) received an increase for fiscal year 2020 for a total funding level of $162.25 million, while the Assistance for Arts Education (AAE) program fund at the U.S. Department of Education actually received a $1 million increase for a total funding level of $30 million.