Minnesota’s Art Education: Survive in Public Support but Struggling with Teacher and Funding Shortages

By Zhaolan Wang

The city view during the night in Minneapolis, a photo taken by Zhaolan Wang in 2024.

While Minnesota values arts, teacher shortages and funding problems may become a challenge in sustaining arts education.

Minnesota has been facing a shortage of resources for arts education after the pandemic. Experts from the University of Minnesota’s art department said people need to emphasize arts education because of the significant role the arts play in fostering creativity and academics.

In 2012, 81% of Minnesota’s families reported their school-aged children received an arts and music class in school, which is well above the national rate of 69%, 41% of children have taken an art or music class after school or have attended a live art event in the past year, according to a research about students participating in artist activities.

Minnesota now ranks third in per-capita public funding for the arts. Most of the 300 arts organizations listed by the State Arts Board receive some public funding, according to a MinnPost news article about Minnesota’s arts and culture scene.

These dollars have produced new or revitalized galleries, museums, local orchestras and musical groups, historical societies and heritage sites, theaters, and architectural and beautification projects.

However, a teacher shortage continues to plague Minnesota as the 2024 school year begins, according to Audacy News.

Betsy Maloney Leaf is an assistant professor in the arts education department at the University of Minnesota, she said nationwide, education training programs and teacher training programs have seen a dip in enrollment.

“I think the biggest challenge for arts education is making sure that students continue to have access to arts learning and making sure students have an opportunity to express themselves and learn multimodally,” Leaf said.

Sources for art education in Minnesota:

Statistics for the 2023 to 2024 school year show a whopping 86% of K-12 public schools in the United States documented challenges in hiring teachers, according to Audacy News. Minnesota has 18,000 job openings for elementary school teachers and 14,000 for high school teachers over the next decade in estimate.

Leaf said in her experience, art is mandated. Kids in K-12 schools in Minnesota must have experience with arts at all grade levels.

“Oftentimes, I hear from districts that they can’t find credentialed teachers, that they want to hire theater, dance, media arts teachers, but they can’t necessarily find enough licensed people,” Leaf said.

Pandemic-era funding for arts and after-school programs dries up, according to the MinnPost.

“That is true across different program areas, not just specific to arts, and it’s happening not just in Minnesota, but across the country. And of course, part of that probably has to do with the pandemic,” Leaf said.

Over the last few years, $200 billions of pandemic aid helped fill gaps in school budgets across the country. Minneapolis Public Schools received roughly $250 million and used it on everything from extra social workers to extra programming, according to the Minn Post.

Leaf said the funding will not impact the art education program because that is federal funding and directed to schools, school districts and state departments of education.

“The way that the funding works at the University of Minnesota is that we don’t necessarily get to access that,” Leaf said. “I would say, yes, generally, some of the additional supports and offerings that have been afforded to schools because of pandemic funding or other funding, federal funding initiatives are going to trickle down and make an impact on what students have access to, not even just in multi-tiered support systems, but also in terms of specialists.”

Why does art matter to Minnesota?

Residents of the Twin Cities area attend live arts and cultural events at a higher rate than residents of the Chicago and New York areas, 59% of Twin Cities metro area residents reported attending a live arts and culture event in the past year, according to a Minnesota Compass research

The research shows people who create or perform art may develop problem-solving skills needed to complete a tricky project, learn perseverance in mastering a new artistic technique, boost their self-confidence, and even become better communicators along the way.

Art educators at the University of Minnesota generally said art education is the best way to exercise people’s creativity and expression ability. Arts education can also help improve student achievement.

Leaf said we should make the claim that arts are important because they give people habits of thinking that no other discipline does.

“Oftentimes, schools over-emphasize written and verbal communication, but students learn and demonstrate their knowledge in many modalities beyond written and verbal communication. In fact, some students may excel in being able to communicate in ways that are not verbal and written, and we need to be able to meet students where they’re at. And arts can do that,” Leaf said.

In a national sample of 25,000 students, those with high levels of arts learning experiences earned higher grades and scored better on standardized tests than those with little or no involvement in the arts, regardless of socioeconomic status, according to Minnesota North Star research.

M. Isabel Besser Verastegui, the arts education teaching specialist at the University of Minnesota, said creativity is one of the main benefits that art education has.

“A good art teacher should have students reflecting on art and the world. So, you have a lot of students doing critical thinking,” Verastegui said. “Students have had to decide how are they going to do their artworks, and how their topics are chosen for their artworks have a lot of relationship with decision making.”

An 11-year national study that examined youth in low-income neighborhoods found that those who participated in arts programs were much more likely to be high academic achievers. Some of them participate in a math and science fair and win an award for writing an essay or poem, according to the research.

Scheckre Wheeler was creating her art in a ceramic studio at the University of Minnesota in the 2024 fall semester, a photo taken by Zhaolan Wang.

Scheckre Wheeler, a second-year student studying visual arts at the University of Minnesota, said art major and ceramic matters for her because there’s art in everything and everywhere.

“Somebody had to create the sidewalk outside and somebody had to plan the layout of a parking lot. Somebody had to draw the pictures and the children’s books that people read and someone had to design the building we’re in,” Wheeler said. “Everything is based on creation, and most of those things stem from an art form.”

Art Career in Minneapolis:

The newest data shows two in five Minnesotans create or perform art, the most common artistic activities are needle and fiber arts, playing a musical instrument and working with metal, 1% of Minnesota’s workforce are artists, compared to all workers, a greater share of artists are self-employed and have a college degree, according to Minnesota Compass.

The estimated data on arts employment from 2001 to 2021 shows in Minnesota there are a total of 85,015 people in arts employment.

The United States Bureau of Economic Analysis puts the total value of the arts sector in Minnesota at $12 billion annually and 3.6% of the economy, only slightly smaller than the construction industry, according to the Minn Post.

The top five best-paying related digital artist jobs in Minneapolis are data from the ZipRecruiter.

The average wage for a career in the arts ranges from $27 to $53 per hour, according to the ZipRecruiter research.

Verastegui said she thinks there’s a lot of possibilities in the job market for students, for people that want to pursue art.

“So, if you are pursuing digital arts, you can do your own art. You also can work in cultural places and museums. You can work in different entities that work with art in general and they can be educators, so you have different possibilities when you stop being when you pursue an art career,” Verastegui said.

The University of Minnesota’s art department provides different career experiences and advice for students.

Verastegui said the other opportunity in the art program is social justice focused. It’s not only about a student’s career but also about all the education pathways at the university.

“The curriculum and instruction department attaches great importance to social justice,” Verastegui said. “We reflect that in our teaching.”

After graduation, students could embark upon a wide variety of careers like studio practice, teaching, nonprofit arts organizations and creative services, according to the University of Minnesota.

Wheeler said she enjoyed working with other people and working with her hands in her future career.

“There’s a lot of people who work in the ceramic studios who are going into dentistry, because there’s a lot of connections there, and there’s a lot of people working in painting who are going into medicine because it helps with small motor skills and things like that,” Wheeler said.

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