History
The Center for Arts Education was founded in 1996 to restore and sustain arts education in New York City’s public schools after two decades of system-wide cutbacks in funding for classroom arts programs. The fiscal budget crisis of the 1970s immediately challenged the City’s commitment to arts education. Budget cuts resulted in teacher layoffs and the gradual abandonment of the arts as an essential element of students’ academic development. For the next twenty years, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers experienced a K-12 education without opportunities to receive instruction in arts education, aside from schools with private funding.
In the early 1990s, the New York City Board of Education (NYCDOE), New York City’s cultural institutions, and private-sector foundations grew increasingly, alarmed by the diminished state of arts education in New York City schools. By 1991, two-thirds of New York City schools still had no licensed arts or music teachers.
In 1993, Ambassador Walter Annenberg announced the single largest gift ever made to American public education: The Annenberg Challenge, a half-billion dollar, five-year challenge grant designed to support promising efforts at school reform throughout the country. In a collaboration, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and Board of Education envisioned a five-year plan, The Annenberg Arts and Education Initiative, to initiate arts education reform. This plan, created under the guidance of consulting firm Artsvision, proposed a sustainable model for institutionalizing arts education in New York City public schools.
In March 1996, The Annenberg Foundation approved the proposal and The Center for Arts Education was created to administer the initiative, serve as a liaison and oversee the distribution of funding to New York City’s schools. The Annenberg plan established The Center for Arts Education as an independent agency that was administratively distinct from the New York City Board of Education. The initiative began with a two-to-one $12 million Challenge Grant from the Annenberg Foundation, to be matched by a $12 million investment each from the public and private sectors, for a total $36 million.
In 2001 The Annenberg Foundation provided another $12 million to CAE to continue revitalizing arts education. This challenge grant was to be matched by an additional $12 million that would be used to fund additional rounds of Partnership grants. CAE also used this second challenge grant to fund new programs that would permit parents to take part in arts education, expose teenagers to arts careers, and enable existing Partnership schools to share their successes with other schools.
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