In next week’s issue of Volume One, we’ll be running the most comprehensive feature story in the magazine’s whole dang history. The topic: how arts education is dying. Or more specifically: the increasing importance and decreasing presence of the arts and creativity in our schools. The article was handled by our managing editor Trevor Kupfer. Here’s a snippet:

• Since DeLong music teacher Cathy Reitz started 28 years ago, she has noticed that grading and scores have become more important. "Yet I often don't see the real fruits of my class until years later when I see a former student still involved in music, going to concerts, teaching their children songs they learned at school, being a consumer of music, etc. How do I grade that?”
• It is this insistence on testing that School District Superintendent Ron Heilmann credits as a main cause of the subject hierarchy. “We have an assessment culture that increasingly demands that we turn out high school graduates who can demonstrate core competencies in traditional subject areas,” he said.
• In general, teachers don’t like the testing-based model. And if you want to get them really riled up in a conversation, mention No Child Left Behind.
• “Whoever thought of that title clearly gets irony,” Ken Robinson wrote in a column for The Huffington Post. “The fact is this legislation is actually leaving millions of children behind. I can see that's not a very attractive name for an education bill – ‘Millions of Children Left Behind’ – but it's closer to the truth.”

Trevor focuses heavily on local teachers and the situation right here in the Chippewa Valley, and he pulls in a lot of research and concepts from national players in art education. Get excited. Like a thunderstorm of information upon the horizon, it’s coming. Seriously, set aside a few hours on October 15 to enjoy it.