Why Our High Schools Need the Arts

In this follow-up to her bestselling book, Why Our Schools Need the Arts, Jessica Hoffmann Davis addresses the alarming dropout rate in our high schools and presents a thoughtful, evidence-based argument that increasing arts education in the high school curriculum will keep kids in school. Davis shares compelling voices of teachers and their adolescent learners to demonstrate how courses in the arts are relevant and valuable to students who have otherwise become disenfranchised from school. This important book points the way toward rescuing the American high school from the inside out by ensuring that all students benefit from the compelling and essential learning opportunities that the arts uniquely provide.

In an engaging and accessible narrative, Why Our High Schools Need the Arts will inform the uninitiated, change the minds of doubters, and fuel the fight of those already committed to arts-related school reform. This timely resource:

• Takes key foundational principles presented in Why Our Schools Need the Arts and describes how they work in high schools.
• Presents research that indicates arts learning engages youth and provides them with a reason to stay in school and graduate.
• Provides real-life examples, with teacher and student voices, that school reformers need to hear.

Jessica Hoffmann Davis is a cognitive developmental psychologist and founder of the Arts in Education Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is the author of Why Our Schools Need the Arts, Framing Education as Art, and Ordinary Gifted Children. Visit the author’s website at www.jessicahoffmanndavis.com.

“With a voice that is at once discerning and empathic, challenging and generous, passionate and measured, Jessica Hoffmann Davis explains the role that the arts can play in transforming our high schools into oases of engagement, expressivity, and inclusiveness for all students. Why Our High Schools Need The Arts honors the relationships, imagination, and courage that are at the core of good schools. It is informative and inspiring, open hearted and open-minded, provocative and promising.”
—Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Harvard University

"As the nation looks for innovative strategies to appeal to the most disenfranchised of our students, Jessica Davis’ work clearly outlines an arts education strategy of enormous power and appeal that I believe could be game changing."
—William Strickland, President and CEO of Manchester Bidwell Corporation and its subsidiaries, Manchester Craftsmen's Guild and Bidwell Training Center, and author of Make the Impossible Possible.

“A must-read for anyone who cares about dropout prevention, Dr. Hoffmann Davis’ latest book is laid out like a map of the developing teenage psyche, leading the reader to a clear understanding of why learning in the arts is critical to adolescent development and engagement in school.”
—Kristen Paglia, Executive Director, Education and Programs at P.S. ARTS