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Testimony to the Joint Committee on Education

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Thank you, Chairman Antonioni and members of the committee. It’s an honor to speak before you. My name is Karen Adelman Foster, and I’m on the Natick School Committee, here today as an individual member, not on behalf of the committee. I have an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in fiction writing, and run a freelance communications business doing media relations, ghostwriting, and marketing. I officially qualify as artsy.

However, I’m not here to tell you why art is good. Or why creativity is the future of economic success in Massachusetts or the US as a whole. Or how for some kids, the humanities “extras” like debate club, band, or robotics teams are what keep school from feeling like jail. Or how actually doing work in the various disciplines of arts and humanities – instead of exclusively learning about others’ work – does not replace core knowledge or rigor, but adds to and reinforces it.

I think we can assume that’s the beginning, not the end of the conversation, and go ahead with the how – how we make sure kids get that vital aspect of education.

This is where I come in as a School Committee member. Hands-on arts and humanities can be a hard case to make to taxpayers. “No, we get no ‘credit’ for arts nationally or on the state level. No, I can’t show you a metric that reflects that arts and humanities improve scores. But we know it makes a better school system. We know it in our heart of hearts.” I don’t know about the taxpayers you know, but the ones I know have no interest in my heart of hearts.

Would a town’s creativity index prove to a have direct relationship with a town’s housing values? If so – and I suspect it would – such an index would allow the demonstration of the real-world value of the so-called extras, and voters would know what was at stake. When I go out next time looking for an override, I want this creativity index, or something like it, in my back pocket.

I want a creativity index as a management tool, too, as the committee goes about setting educational goals for the system. It would allow the proper ten-thousand-foot view of our school system’s culture and comparable systems’ cultures, and would free us from dependence on anecdotal evidence.

The bottom line is that if we accept the practice of arts and humanities as an integral part of learning, there’s every reason to make it measurable so there can be accountability. If we accept that it has value, there’s every reason to make its invisible value visible, to allow voters, and taxpayers, and people choosing a town an informed choice.

Please support the establishment of the Special Commission. If such a group can find a way to measure the unmeasured, to put a value on the invaluable, we all win. The voters, the taxpayers, the kids, and the future of the Commonwealth.