Art education remains widely available in U.S. public schools, but access varies by art form, school level, staffing model, and instructional frequency. In November 2024, 93% of public schools reported standalone music, visual arts, media arts, dance, or drama/theater classes during the regular school day. Older national data show how visual arts access and specialist staffing were organized in 1999–2000, while more recent workforce and degree data describe the people entering and teaching the field.
Contents
- Current access in public schools
- Elementary visual arts availability
- Secondary school arts access
- The arts-teacher workforce
- Arts degrees and teacher education
- Student instruction and participation
Current access in public schools
The latest school-level indicator in this collection comes from the November 2024 School Pulse Panel Survey. It measures whether schools reported particular offerings during the school year, rather than how many students enrolled or how much time each student received.
According to the National Endowment for the Arts report Arts Education in U.S. Public Schools: Insights from the November 2024 School Pulse Panel Survey:
- 93% of U.S. public schools reported standalone performing or visual arts classes during the regular school day.
- 79% reported at least one arts-instruction activity outside the regular school day during the school year.
- Among public schools offering standalone arts classes, 73% required students to take at least one music, visual arts, media arts, dance, or drama/theater class.
These figures describe school availability and requirements. They do not establish that every student had the same schedule, specialist teacher, course duration, or opportunity to study visual art specifically. They also use a November 2024 measurement period, so they should not be treated as a direct replacement for older elementary, secondary, or student-level measures.
Elementary visual arts availability
The National Center for Education Statistics report Arts Education in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools: 1999–2000 provides a historical baseline for regular public elementary schools. During the 1999–2000 school year, 87% offered visual arts instruction during the regular school day. Music was more widely available at 94%, while dance was offered by 20% and drama or theater by 19%.
Availability did not always mean that a full-time specialist taught the subject. Among elementary schools that offered each discipline, the shares employing full-time specialists were:
| Elementary offering | Schools with a full-time specialist |
|---|---|
| Visual arts | 55% |
| Music | 72% |
| Dance | 24% |
| Drama or theater | 16% |
The visual arts figure therefore combines two different conditions: whether instruction was offered and whether the school employed a full-time visual-arts specialist. In the 1999–2000 data, more than half of elementary schools offering visual arts had such a specialist, while the remainder used another staffing arrangement. The statistic does not identify the qualifications or employment status of every person providing instruction.
The same NCES source reported an average visual-arts class period of 43 minutes in public elementary schools. Students in elementary schools offering visual arts received an average of 44 hours of visual-arts instruction during the school year, and 88% of those schools reported that students participated throughout the entire school year. These measures are historical and should remain labeled as 1999–2000 figures; they are not current estimates of elementary instructional time.
Secondary school arts access
The 1999–2000 NCES data also show a different pattern in regular public secondary schools. Visual arts was offered by 93% of schools, and music by 90%. Dance was available in 14%, while drama or theater was available in 48%.
Specialist staffing was more common at the secondary level among schools offering each discipline:
- 91% of public secondary schools offering music employed at least one full-time music specialist.
- 94% of those offering visual arts employed at least one full-time visual-arts specialist.
- 77% of those offering dance employed at least one full-time dance specialist.
- 84% of those offering drama or theater employed at least one full-time drama/theater specialist.
The secondary visual-arts access rate of 93% was close to the elementary visual-arts rate of 87% in the same school year, but the staffing context differed. A full-time visual-arts specialist was reported by 94% of secondary schools offering visual arts, compared with 55% of elementary schools offering it. This comparison is limited to the 1999–2000 survey and compares schools offering the subject, not all public schools.
The arts-teacher workforce
More recent workforce estimates are reported by the National Endowment for the Arts in Measuring the Arts: D.2, Who Teaches the Arts in Schools?. During the 2020–21 school year, approximately 251,000 arts teachers worked in U.S. public elementary and secondary schools. The estimate rose from 204,000 in 2011–12 to 251,000 in 2020–21, covering the two reported school years rather than a continuous annual series.
The 2020–21 estimate included approximately 105,000 arts teachers at the public elementary level and 146,000 at the public secondary level. The source also reported these characteristics for public-school arts teachers:
- 67% were female.
- 33% were male, compared with 23% of all public elementary and secondary teachers.
- 85% were White, 7% were Hispanic, and 2% were Asian.
- 4% were Black, compared with 6% of all public elementary and secondary teachers.
- 18% were younger than 30, compared with 14% of all public elementary and secondary teachers.
- 46% held a bachelor’s degree as their highest degree, compared with 38% of all public elementary and secondary teachers.
These comparisons describe the composition of the arts-teacher workforce and the broader public-school teacher workforce in the source’s 2020–21 reporting. The categories are not a complete account of every racial or demographic group, and the figures should not be read as measures of teacher quality, student outcomes, or certification status.
Arts degrees and teacher education
Postsecondary degree data provide another view of the pipeline into arts study and, for some graduates, arts teaching. The National Endowment for the Arts report Measuring the Arts: D.1, Who Majors in the Arts? states that U.S. institutions awarded 127,250 degrees in visual and performing arts fields during the 2022–23 academic year. Institutions awarded another 155,520 degrees in other arts-related fields.
Within visual and performing arts fields, the 2022–23 awards included 19,080 associate’s degrees, 89,810 bachelor’s degrees, 16,590 master’s degrees, and 1,770 doctoral degrees. Fine arts was the largest visual-and-performing-arts bachelor’s field, with 22,570 degrees.
Other arts-related fields accounted for 15,140 associate’s degrees, 108,090 bachelor’s degrees, and 31,110 master’s degrees in the same academic year. These categories are reported separately by the source, so they should not be merged into a single undifferentiated arts-degree total.
The dataset also reports a substantial change in one specialized field: digital-arts bachelor’s degrees increased from 340 in the 2010–11 academic year to 2,690 in 2022–23. The two endpoints are reported academic years, not a forecast or a claim about a constant annual rate of growth.
For the teacher-education connection, art, music, dance, and drama teacher-education programs awarded 4,300 bachelor’s degrees in 2022–23. This is a degree count in named teacher-education programs, not a count of all arts majors who might later enter teaching through another route.
Student instruction and participation
The NCES table Average National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) music and visual arts scale scores of 8th-graders…: 2016 reports student-level indicators for 2016. The average 8th-grade NAEP music scale score was 147 on a 0–300 scale, and the average visual-arts scale score was 149 on a 0–300 scale. These are assessment scale scores, not percentages correct and not measures of course grades.
Instructional frequency varied between music and visual arts. For music, 8% of 8th-graders attended a school where music was not offered. Among all 8th-graders, 5% attended music instruction less than once a week, 23% attended once or twice a week, 19% attended three or four times a week, and 45% attended every day.
For visual arts, 14% of 8th-graders attended a school where visual arts was not offered. The reported frequency distribution was 7% attending less than once a week, 24% attending once or twice a week, 18% attending three or four times a week, and 37% attending every day.
| 2016 8th-grade instruction frequency | Music | Visual arts |
|---|---|---|
| School did not offer the subject | 8% | 14% |
| Less than once a week | 5% | 7% |
| Once or twice a week | 23% | 24% |
| Three or four times a week | 19% | 18% |
| Every day | 45% | 37% |
The student indicators and the school-offering indicators answer different questions. A school can offer visual arts without every student receiving it at the same frequency, and a reported class period or annual instructional total does not describe the content or quality of each lesson. Taken together, the figures show why art education statistics need a clear measurement date, geography, school level, discipline, and unit of analysis.