This shift to a developmentally aligned instructional approach represents a critical evolution in how CPS structures arts education across the district. For too long, access to high-quality arts instruction has varied widely by grade band, school type, and neighborhood—resulting in fragmented student experiences and missed opportunities for deeper learning. By aligning instructional expectations to students’ developmental stages, while preserving flexibility in delivery, CPS can address long-standing inequities and ensure that every student progresses through a coherent, meaningful arts education continuum. This model also provides a common language and structure that supports stronger curriculum design, more targeted professional learning, and clearer communication with families and communities.
Strategies:
- Develop supports and expectations that help schools align their arts instruction to this framework, while allowing for variations in staffing, scheduling, and resources. Outline best practices for instruction, organize exemplar resources, and provide a framework to guide school leaders, teachers, and partners in implementation.
- Form a city-wide task force of educators, teaching artists, program designers and evaluators to document and catalogue best practice examples of arts experiences rooted in each of the four developmental phases. Develop integrated curriculum frameworks, planning guides, assessment tools, and professional development syllabi.
- Identify, highlight, and learn from exemplary school practices, starting with Fine & Performing Arts schools, in order to scale these approaches across the district.
- Scale up high-quality professional development targeted to non-arts educators, with a focus on arts integration. After participating in a specific professional learning sequence, which may include collaboration with a teaching artist in their classroom, educators will earn a certificate in arts integration, enabling them to serve as arts integration leaders in their schools.