Cultivating a Sustainable Educator Community

What is the current state of the educator community ?

In 2002 and 2007, AEP published two reports focused on the arts teaching workforce: Teaching Partnerships and Working Partnerships. These reports defined the arts teaching workforce to include certified teachers, teaching artists, higher education faculty and educators in arts and cultural institutions. AEP has defined arts education more broadly in the years since to include all learning that occurs in homes, schools and communities. The previously defined groups, as well as with parents and guardians, early childhood caregivers, community elders and others who serve as educators, all contribute to children’s arts learning.  

While all adults who interact with children can serve as teachers and mentors, K-12 public school teachers impact the largest number of young people. However, the number of teachers overall – including arts teachers – has continued to decline in recent years. Researchers working in education and the economy published reports about a looming teacher shortage even before the COVID-19 pandemic, and those shortages are accelerating as we continue to recover. 

Since 2004-05, about 8% of teachers leave the profession each year. While the number of leaver teachers remains steady, the interest among young people in pursuing a teaching career continues to decline. This trend poses a challenge for making teaching an appealing career option for young people. As a result, school districts, states and teacher-preparation programs must adapt. Understanding the issues in the teacher workforce requires an acknowledgment of the interconnected issues involving teacher recruitment, preparation, development and retention.

The arts teacher workforce (comprising of dance, media arts, music, theatre and visual arts teachers in K-12 schools) faces its own unique challenges. Arts teachers commonly believe that teacher evaluations don’t accurately reflect their quality of arts teaching and can often times feel undervalued in their subject areas and isolated from their peers and the broader school community. We hope this resource page can help identify these challenges, spark conversation and share information and potential solutions.

The Teacher Workforce

Teacher workforce research is often broken up into four distinct categories:

      1. Recruitment
      2. Retention
      3. Preparation
      4. Development

Click on each petal to the right to read a definition and some questions to think about when learning to build a sustainable educator community.

0 %
of public school teachers
remained in the same school.
0 %
of public school teachers
changed schools or districts.
0 %
of public school teachers left
the field of education.
0 %
of public school arts and music teachers remained in the same school.*
0 %
of public school arts and music teachers changed schools or districts.*
0 %
of public school arts and music teachers left the field of education.*

* These statistics are from the Current and Former Teacher Data Files of the 2021–22 Teacher Follow-up Survey. This survey only polled visual arts and music teachers, which is reflected in the data above. There are currently no data on these statistics for dance, media arts and theatre teachers.

Teacher Shortages
Teacher Licensure

Where are there arts teacher shortages?

The U.S. Department of Education’s most recent report lists 21 states as experiencing teacher shortages in the arts.

US showing the 21 states named as experiencing teacher shortages.
A row of vintage design alternating flowers.

What resources exist about the teacher workforce ?

A row of vintage design alternating flowers.

What work has AEP produced about the teacher workforce ?

Support Effective Educators and School Leaders Success Stories

ArtsEd Amplified Posts About Teacher Workforce

Town Hall for Local Arts Education Supervisors

On May 22, 2024, AEP hosted a Town Hall for Local Arts Education Supervisors, led by Jonathan Juravich, an Ohio elementary art teacher. 

Jonathan leads his school’s Building Culture and Environment initiative and serves as the Elementary Art Department Chair for the district.” His personal and professional focus is on the importance of Social and Emotional Learning in our daily lives. This is the topic of his presentations, including his TED Talk “How Do We Teach Empathy,” his limited series podcast “The Art of SEL,” and his Emmy award winning digital drawing program “Drawing with Mr. J.” He is the 2018 Ohio Teacher of the Year and was one of four finalists for 2018 National Teacher of the Year. In 2023, he was named the National Elementary Art Teacher of the Year by the National Art Education Association.

A row of vintage design alternating flowers.

What organizations exist that support the educator community?

Assistance for Arts Education

The goal of the Assistance for Arts Education is to disseminate what’s being accomplished through AAE grant funding, partner organizations, share evidence-based resources and arts education specific toolkits for implementation of quality programming to students to expand equitable access to quality arts education resources.

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Educational Theatre Association

The Educational Theatre Association is an international nonprofit that serves as the professional association for theatre educators.

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Grantmakers in the Arts

Grantmakers in the Arts is a national association of public and private arts funders that provide members with resources and leadership to support artists and arts organizations.

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National Art Education Association

The National Art Education Association is the leading professional membership organization exclusively for visual arts, design and media arts education professionals.

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National Association for Music Education

The National Association for Music Education is a collaborative community that supports music educators and advocates for equitable access to music education.

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National Association for Media Arts Education

The National Association for Media Arts Education is a national organization with the purpose to advance and promote standards of excellence in media arts education.

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National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent federal agency that funds, promotes and strengthens the creative capacity of our communities by providing all Americans with diverse opportunities for arts participation.

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National Dance Education Organization

The National Dance Education Organization is a non-profit organization that supports dance educators in every setting and genre.

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The Pathways Alliance

The Pathways Alliance is an uncommon coalition of leading organizations dedicated to supporting and implementing diverse and inclusive educator preparation pipelines, including teacher residency programs.

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Prepared to Teach

Prepared To Teach helps states, districts and programs design affordable, sustainably funded residencies that attract and retain strong, committed teachers.

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Teach Music Coalition

In response to the teacher shortage, Teach Music Coalition has been formed to help find resources and solutions to the immediate, short term and longer-term challenges facing the music educator workforce, working to retain, shepherd and recruit the next generation of music educators.

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Well-Rounded Education Programs Office

The Well-Rounded Education Programs Office administers discretionary grant programs that support activities designed to advance literacy skills, provide professional learning opportunities to teachers, support arts education and identify and meet the special educational needs of gifted and talented students.

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Connect With Us

We would love to expand this page with additional information for the field. Please use this form to share your thoughts, ideas, etc.!

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About the Author

Professional headshot of Mitra Chamanbahar. Mitra is smiling and has long brown hair. She is wearing a dark blouse with white polka dots and a gold, chain necklace.

Mitra Chamanbahar

Project Manager

As project manager for the Arts Education Partnership, Mitra collaborates and communicates with the AEP team and partners to promote high-quality arts education. Prior to joining AEP, Mitra worked as a Colorado licensed visual arts educator in elementary education settings. She is dedicated to critically developing students’ learning opportunities and equitable arts experiences.

Recruitment
Definition:

Regarding the strategies, policies and practices used by higher education and school officials to engage new K-12 teachers.

Questions to Consider:

General:
How are colleges/universities attracting young people to their arts teacher preparation programs?

Young Person:
What would make you feel like teaching in an arts discipline would be a sustainable career?

Retention
Definition:

Regarding the strategies, policies and practices used by school officials to maintain K-12 teachers in the workforce.

Questions to Consider:

Arts Teachers:
What efforts need to be made for you to feel integral to the school community?

What compensation and benefits efforts would you like to see to support your work?

Administrators:
What type of arts specific supports are offered to your arts teachers?

Preparation
Definition:

Regarding the programs, courses and practices to equip new
K-12 teachers with the skills, practices and behaviors for their role, and if required, state certifications.

Questions to Consider:

General:
What are the qualifications for a certified arts teacher?

What pathways exist for arts teacher certification?

New Arts Teachers: 
What prepared you for your first year in the classroom?

Definition:

Regarding the ongoing learning opportunities for K-12 teachers to increase their knowledge in effective teaching practices.

Questions to Consider:

General:
What arts specific professional development opportunities are available for teachers both within and outside of the school district?

Arts Teachers:
What evaluation measures do you feel do not reflect the context of the arts teaching practice?

Administrators:
How is the work of arts teachers taken into consideration when determining evaluation metrics? 

Title: 2280 Pasos Bajo un Cielo Nublado | Artist: Hernán Jourdan | Medium: Film

When I was asked to create a work of art exploring literacy, I wanted to create a dance but I had no dancers or a studio, so I chose to use my own body in the space I had, my yard. Fluent Nature is video of micro-choreography that explores what cannot be expressed with words, how nature has its own language, and how placing the human body in nature changes the story.

Title: What Is Me and What Is Not Me | Artist: Alex Chadwell | Medium: Music

My thinking on arts and literacy centers around the concept of literacies and artmaking as both sense-making and meaning-making processes that organically and inevitably overlap, intersect, and reciprocate. Compositionally, What is me and what is not me is a sound collage of sorts (there is no notation for the piece, and I'd be hard pressed to recreate it accurately) that abstractly and aurally represents the relationships between literacies and artmaking.

Title: A Curious Honeybee | Artist: Gideon Young | Medium: Film

Offering welcome through traditional and digital elements of literacy, A Curious Honeybee provides an experiential learning environment by activating visual, musical, natural, and emotional literacies.

Title: Tercera Llamada | Artist: Karilú Forshee | Medium: Audio

La Carpa Theatre is a project that I am currently directing in the Detroit Latinx community. The project aims to strengthen and uplift youth voices through devised theatre, in the style of the Mexican Carpas. This audio was created in the theatrical environment envisioned for our project. The ways in which literacies are re-defined are at the heart of La Carpa Theatre's mission.

Title: Literaseas | Artist: MJ Robinson | Medium: Graphite and ink on paper with digital edits

Title: A Riddle | Artist: MJ Robinson | Medium: Graphite on paper with digital edits

Title: False Binaries | Artist: MJ Robinson | Medium: Graphite on paper with digital edits