Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the nation’s third-largest school district, has experienced numerous changes over the past four years including an increase in instructional minutes, school closures, Common Core† implementation, fiscal challenges, changes to student assessments and budgeting, an increase in high school graduation rates, and a decrease in student enrollment. Despite these fundamental changes, and as a result of the collective efforts of school leaders, community arts partners† , and local funders, the 2014–15 State of the Arts progress report demonstrates steady improvements in the district’s capacity to deliver arts instruction to all students.

The 2012 CPS Arts Education Plan elevated the arts to a core subject and articulates that a quality arts education must include instruction in every art form—visual art, music, dance, and theatre—that is ongoing and sequential. Additionally, this instruction is delivered in the following ways—by credentialed arts instructors teaching discipline specific classes, by non-arts credentialed instructors authentically integrating the arts with other content areas, and by community arts partners connecting students to professional works of art and practices both in school and in cultural venues. At the core of the CPS Arts Education Plan† is a set of highlevel goals that are central to its overall progress. This progress report outlines the results from the 2014–15 Creative Schools Certification data collection process. Ingenuity’s data collection efforts to support arts education access in CPS began in 2012–13 and resulted in a baseline report13 followed by a 2013–14 progress report.14 In the 2014–15 school year—our third year of data collection—86 percent of CPS schools completed the Creative Schools Certification survey in full, sustaining a significant participation increase from the baseline year. A higher proportion of elementary schools participated than high schools.