How much art should be required to graduate high school in Kansas?

Deena Horst still remembers when she started her career as an art teacher several years ago, and how students would hide in their arms when she would ask them to fill a blank sheet of paper.

"(It was a) lack of confidence," Horst said. "But after we started having art from kindergarten to 12th grade available, children don't do that anymore. They don't hide. They may say, 'I don't know how to do this,' but they problem solve."

Horst, retired from teaching and now a member of the Kansas State Board of Education, was one of several board members and teachers Tuesday who raised concerns with a proposed set of changes to the state's graduation requirements.

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While the preliminary proposal would keep a 21-credit floor in order to graduate from high school, it would reorganize how classes from certain subjects count to toward that minimum. A few new classes, such as 0.5 units of personal finance or financial literacy, would be added to Kansas high schoolers' required course load.

But the recommendation also puts certain other units on the chopping block, including halving physical education and fine arts requirements to 0.5 credits each.

"My concern is that by removing the arts from a full credit to even a half credit in competition with something else, that we not only have the issue of a lack of confidence that we're promoting, but we are ignoring the fact that arts are embedded across all curriculum," Horst said.

Task force co-chair: To add personal finance, fine arts had to come out

The proposed changes are the result of months of work from the Kansas State Board of Education's Graduation Task Force, which has met for the past year and presented its preliminary findings to the board in May.

Jim McNiece, a board member from Wichita who chaired the task force, said the task force's goals throughout the process were to increase the number of Kansas high school graduates while also increasing the value of their diplomas.

To that end, the proposed changes focus heavily on flexibility for students and administrators, especially in creating individualized plans of study and rethinking how non-classroom experiences might also count toward high school graduation credit.

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While schools have traditionally measured a semester-long class as half a credit, nothing in state statute or state board policy precludes local boards of education from granting credit to students who are able to meet competencies in other ways, McNiece noted.

The state graduation requirements are also solely a minimum, and many local school boards have additional requirements. Artistically-inclined students may also choose to pursue additional fine arts classes beyond any required minimums.

The addition of personal finance as a proposed graduation requirement comes after years of interest in increasing financial literacy among Kansas high school graduates, including discussions in the state legislature.

But that addition has come at the cost of reducing requirements for certain subjects in the proposal, such as fine arts, said McNiece, a retired high school principal. He hesitated to say that the task force ranked subjects by importance, but in adding a 0.5 unit of personal finance, a 0.5 unit of fine arts had to come out.

Teachers: Art should be considered a core subject

As the graduation task force developed its preliminary recommendations in the spring, fine arts teachers and advocacy organizations had lobbied the task force to avoid reducing the fine arts requirement.

The last time the board had modified Kansas' high school graduation requirements was in 2002, when the board had voted to add a unit of fine arts in the first place. Fine arts classes in Kansas include dance, media arts, forensics, music, theatre and visual arts classes.

The board on Wednesday heard from representatives of the Kansas Music Educators Association, who raised several concerns with the direction of music education in Kansas schools.

John Taylor, a retired music educator and executive director of advocacy organization, shared various pieces of research that show the strong correlation between quality music education and student success.

He said that while the organization would love to increase the required number of fine arts classes, they understand the competing pressures from other subjects and simply ask the board keep the status quo.

"Anything less than that — cutting the credit down to half or zero, or enlarging that list — that would be below our expectations on this process," Taylor said.

In the two decades since, Kansas high schoolers have benefitted and graduated as more well-rounded citizens, said Kathy Schroeder, president of the Kansas Art Education Association. She and several other Kansas art teachers were in the board room audience Tuesday.

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Even though the fine arts have historically been treated as separate from "more important" classes like language arts and math, Schroeder said their classes should be seen as just as essential.

"When we look back and try to figure out what civilizations are like, they're looking at the arts," Schroeder, an art teacher from Hesston, said. "It's not only what defines our civilization, but it's what survives our civilization ... and often, the arts contain math and science, and we learn about other parts of culture from art. We are the core, and we are the foundation."

Where graduation requirement changes stand

After Tuesday's discussion, McNiece said the task force still has work to do, and he expects its proposed graduation changes to continue to evolve. The task force is set to present its final recommendation late this summer or early fall.

At any rate, any changes to the state's graduation requirements may be months or even years away, since any board action would need several regulatory steps, including a public hearing.

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But board members emphasized any changes should focus on increasing student success while giving them more flexibility in how they reach it.

"This is a process where we should be the least prescriptive," said Melanie Haas, a board member from Overland Park. "We should avoid any unnecessary complexity."

Rafael Garcia is an education reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached at rgarcia@cjonline.com. Follow him on Twitter at @byRafaelGarcia.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas State Board of Education may reduce fine arts graduation credits