Arts Education Partnership report lauds ABC Project in S.C.
AEP report ‘reflects back and projects forward’
Over 25 years ago, the U.S. Department of Education
and the National Endowment for the Arts
partnered with the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies
and Council of Chief State School Officers
to create the Arts Education Partnership (AEP)
to ensure that all students have equitable access
to an excellent arts education.
– AEP report
A new report from AEP takes a long look at the genesis of the partnership. While it’s no surprise to those involved in the work, casual readers might be surprised to know that South Carolina and a few South Carolinians at the right place at the right time figured mightily in how everything came together on a national level.
In a Part 2 of the report, former SCAC Executive Director Scott Shanklin-Peterson and Dr. Terry Peterson recount work with Dick Riley in Columbia as governor and Washington as President Clinton’s education secretary to get the arts included in sweeping educational reforms in the 1980s and 1990s.
The South Carolina Arts Commission (SCAC) is extremely proud of the ongoing work of the Arts in Basic Curriculum Project, a national model for integrating the arts into K-12 curriculum discussed at length in the AEP report. Together with the South Carolina Dept. of Education and the Winthrop University College of Visual and Performing Arts, the ABC Project continues serving the Palmetto State 31 years after starting and 33 years after the SCAC received a $20,000 Arts in Schools Basic Education planning grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to develop the it.
