Congress makes the following findings:

(1) Arts literacy is a fundamental purpose of schooling for all students.

(2) Arts education stimulates, develops, and refines many cognitive and creative skills, critical thinking and nimbleness in judgment, creativity and imagination, cooperative decisionmaking, leadership, high-level literacy and communication, and the capacity for problem-posing and problem-solving.

(3) Arts education contributes significantly to the creation of flexible, adaptable, and knowledgeable workers who will be needed in the 21st century economy.

(4) Arts education improves teaching and learning.

(5) Where parents and families, artists, arts organizations, businesses, local civic and cultural leaders, and institutions are actively engaged in instructional programs, arts education is more successful.

(6) Effective teachers of the arts should be encouraged to continue to learn and grow in mastery of their art form as well as in their teaching competence.

(7) The 1999 study, entitled “Gaining the Arts Advantage: Lessons from School Districts that Value Arts Education”, found that the literacy, education, programs, learning and growth described in paragraphs (1) through (6) contribute to successful districtwide arts education.

(8) Despite all of the literacy, education, programs, learning and growth findings described in paragraphs (1) through (6), the 1997 National Assessment of Educational Progress reported that students lack sufficient opportunity for participatory learning in the arts.

(9) The Arts Education Partnership, a coalition of national and State education, arts, business, and civic groups, is an excellent example of one organization that has demonstrated its effectiveness in addressing the purposes described in section 814(a) of this title and the capacity and credibility to administer arts education programs of national significance.