Art Is Building STEAM in America’s Classrooms
Over the last few years, you’ve probably heard business leaders talking about the importance of STEM—Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics—education. Now, with designers earning as much respect as coders, people are talking about STEAM, where the “A” stands for Art.
Teachers’ requests on DonorsChoose.org reflect this new emphasis on fostering creativity. From 2011-2012, art projects grew twice as quickly as projects in other subject areas. This growth reflects donor interest as well as teacher demand: Over that same timeframe, 72% of all arts projects on our site were fully funded, while the funding rate in other subject areas was 67%.
Last year, an anonymous philanthropist fueled this trend by funding 50% of every arts project on DonorsChoose.org from a high-need school. More than 1,000 donors rose to the challenge and donated $300,000 to complete 1,052 art projects reaching 191,000 students.
Along the way, we generated a lot of data about the arts education resources most needed by our country’s public schools. For example, here are the most frequently recurring words in art projects on DonorsChoose.org:
Half of the art projects on our site address another subject in addition to art:
If the activity on DonorsChoose.org is any indication, STEM should indeed become STEAM.
