From Breadth to Depth: Chicago Public Schools Doubles Down on Arts Education Access and Quality

CHICAGO – Chicago Public Schools is launching a bold new plan that not only ensures every student across the District has access to arts education, but aims to strengthen the quality of instruction and opportunities. The CPS Arts Education Plan 2.0: Cultivating Creativity, builds on the extraordinary and intentional efforts of the District’s first plan from 2012 to expand access to the arts and sets out ambitious goals to achieve a standard of excellence across arts programming.

“Our District, along with our many partners across the arts community, has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to making sure every child in Chicago has access to robust, high-quality arts education,” said CPS CEO Pedro Martinez. “This latest arts education plan shows how much we can achieve when we come together to invest in our students. Let’s take this impressive work and double down on it, so we can become a national model for what meaningful arts learning can look like in a public school district.”

This latest Arts Education Plan details the significant expansion of arts access over the past decade, and the next steps toward ensuring every student experiences transformative arts learning. It will also do something few other districts across the country have done, which is to build an innovative, data-driven model that can measure the quality of arts instruction across all CPS schools.

“Our District is leading the way nationally, showing that CPS can and will make sure every child has access to the arts and now, we are taking it even further to ensure the education is high quality and robust,” said César Torruella, CPS’ Executive Director of Arts Education. “This plan lays the foundation for a community wide effort to ensure every CPS student has the opportunity to reach their creative potential.”

The District’s aim is to shape a more creative, equitable, and strategically-coordinated future for arts education in Chicago—one that prepares students not just as artists, but as innovators, problem-solvers, and leaders in a rapidly evolving world. The latest Arts Education Plan is anchored in two main goals that reflect the District’s values and aspirations:

Goal 1: Access to Arts Education: Every student will have equitable access to sequential, developmentally-appropriate arts instruction delivered by certified educators across a range of disciplines. The plan prioritizes improvements in staffing, instructional time, arts course offerings, teacher recruitment and retention, school conditions, access to facilities and resources, and partnerships targeted to areas of greatest need.

Goal 2: High-Quality Arts Education: CPS will define, support, and scale high-quality instruction in the arts—grounded in rigorous curricula, meaningful assessments, effective instructional models, and sustained professional learning. This goal also underscores the importance of arts partnerships and introduces a new approach to measuring instructional quality through systems of data and research, ensuring continuous improvement and alignment with student needs.

Ingenuity Inc., CPS’ long-time partner in arts education strategy and impact, and key advisor of the latest plan, last month released its annual State of the Arts report, which used data from a historic 99 percent of all CPS schools – 640 out of 649. This level of information provides the most comprehensive picture of arts education in CPS to date. The report found a surge in the number of schools excelling in providing access to quality arts education, along with other metrics showing significant progress since the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the same time, the report also pointed to the importance of bringing more stakeholders together across the arts education sector to further close the access gap so all students have equitable opportunities for arts learning.

“This plan represents a bold step forward—not just in expanding access to arts education, but in asking the deeper, more complex question of what quality really looks like for every student, in every school,” said Nicole Upton, Executive Director of Ingenuity. “Grounded in data and shaped by the voices of those who live this work every day, it will serve as both a roadmap and an anchor for everyone supporting arts education in CPS—from teaching artists and educators to principals, funders, city, and district leaders. Fulfilling its recommendations will take the continued, collective will of all those invested in the education and well-being of our students.”

To learn more about the District’s Arts Education Department and Arts Education Plan 2.0: Cultivating Creativity, visit CPS’ website.