Ascend cited in two national publications for integrating the arts in its Common Core-aligned education

In “Prioritizing the Arts Over Test Prep” in The Atlantic and in “Do the arts go hand in hand with Common Core?” in The Hechinger Report, writer Sara Neufeld explores Ascend’s commitment to integrate the arts in its Common Core-aligned education at a time when many schools are eliminating their arts programs, or revising their curriculum to focus on test prep.

“Ascend Learning is going to great lengths to ensure students living in the world’s cultural capital aren’t deprived of art, as so many poor, minority kids in urban America are. Inside renovated buildings that could pass for high-end galleries, students are not only taking art and music classes, but teachers incorporate art into academic subjects,” writes Ms. Neufeld. “And while they carefully monitored student readiness for this month’s high-stakes state exams, they refused to throw out their curriculum in favor of test prep.”

In The Atlantic, Chief Executive Officer Steven Wilson describes Ascend’s deeper purpose, “It’s to equip our students with the broad capacities that can take them anywhere in life, whatever they want to do and whatever a changing world brings them.”

For more information about how Ascend integrates the arts into its curriculum, visit our videos page.

Send questions or comments to blog@ascendcharterschools.org.

Photo credit: Kevin Hagen