Over the past three decades, countless educational, cultural, and philanthropic leaders have worked tirelessly to improve access to the arts for all students in Chicago Public Schools. Since its inception in 2011, Ingenuity has been working in partnership with these same leaders toward the goal of an arts education for every student in every CPS school. Ingenuity underpins its work by gathering a deep set of data that provides a clear understanding of the specific arts needs of each school and the district as a whole. This report presents findings from the first year of comprehensive data collection, the 2012 -- 13 school year, and sets the baseline against which Ingenuity will annually measure district-wide efforts to expand arts instruction.

Nearly four hundred schools participated in this data collection, which makes this report the most current, comprehensive view of arts education in Chicago. This report also offers an analysis of progress on the CPS Arts Education Plan and shows data related to its implementation in schools. The key to looking at the state of arts in the city's schools is taking a closer look at some of the Plan's high-level goals, which stand out as central to its overall progress.

• Make the arts a core subject by dedicating 120 minutes of arts instruction per week in elementary schools. (1a)
• Create a system to track the quantity of elementary-level arts instruction. (5a)
• Set minimum staffing requirements in the arts at one certified full-time employee per school or an improved ratio. (1d)
• Require each school to maintain a budget for the arts. (6a)
• Match at least one community arts partner to every school in collaboration with an arts, or other instructor. (4b)
• Launch the Creative Schools Certification to establish school and network-level supports to help principals plan for and implement the arts. (3c)
• Integrate the arts into the school progress report card. (5d)

The move to standards-based education reform created a set of federal and state standards by which student performance is defined in an attempt to create more accountability. The intent of these high-stakes test is to promote accountability and learning. Student success on standardized testing is meant to be a measure of the quality of education and student learning, an assumption that is also not always accurate. Students do better on standardized tests when they have had quality education from the time their academic characters are formed, from the age of three (Perry preschool Study; Abecedarian Study). Students do well when they have high quality teachers that can help them overcome potential obstacles they may face (Illinois experience). Students do well when their teachers, schools, and school districts use methods and techniques that have been proven successful (NYSED). And lastly, students do well when their schools are adequately funded and their teachers well paid. A comprehensive approach to accountability using all of these components has the best chance of closing New York State's achievement gap.

This report summarizes laws and programs that have been implemented in other states, which could be used to achieve a more comprehensive accountability system in New York. There are three interrelated parts to the present report. The first presents accountability laws and systems from the states of Maryland, New Jersey, and New York. The second part describes the North Carolina preschool program More at Four, the Abbott Preschool in New Jersey, and the New York Universal Pre-Kindergarten program. The third part describes initiatives to hire and retain high-quality teachers that have been implemented in Illinois.

When a school is closed, the facility is shut down, school staff is displaced, children are sent to other schools, and the community loses a vital resource. If Chicago Public Schools (CPS) follows the city's Commission on School Utilization March 2013 recommendations, 80 CPS neighborhood schools (13% of the entire system) will be closed, disrupting the lives of nearly 25,000 children.

CPS expects that students will need to travel an added 1 to 1½ miles to get to their new schools. Over the years, CPS has mobilized three different types of arguments to justify school closings: underperformance, cost savings, and underutilization. We examine each of these here.