Questions & Technical Support: If you do not receive your school’s survey by email by Tuesday, April 21st or have questions about the survey, please email ArtsCount at artscount@schools.nyc.gov.

The Office of the Arts and Special Projects has created a webcast for principals to help them complete the 2008-2009 Annual Arts Education Survey. The webcast took place on April 23, 2009 at 10:00 AM, please visit the following link to access the archive: http://www.learningtimes.net/oasparchives

For the Teacher Section: Please note the various categories provided. We are differentiating between certified arts teachers and certified common branches or non-arts teachers teaching the arts (both full time and part time status). DO NOT enter certified teachers who do not have arts licenses in the first and third columns.

For Elementary Schools: To complete the elementary participation section, plan ahead. Information is being requested for every class in your school. We recommend having a copy of your school schedule with you as you fill in the tables on the survey. You may want to bring paper copies of the charts to your meetings with teachers, or grade leaders and department heads over the coming weeks so you can build your information base over time. Other wise you will be scrambling to compile a great deal of information in a short timeframe.

For Middle Schools and High Schools Require Involvement of HSST/ATS Programmers: To complete the middle school and high school participation data, you will need to attain aggregate percentages by grade from your ATS or HSST programmer. We have noticed many mistakes in ATS and HSST arts coding, so please DOUBLE CHECK your numbers. You might have to do some of these calculations by hand if the initial data does not appear to be accurate. The middle school survey includes a question about 6th grade. If you do not serve students in the 6th grade, please skip to the next question.

For the Sequences Section: The middle school and high school surveys ask about 3 and 4-5 year arts sequences. Please keep the following definitions in mind when you answer these questions:

1) The definition of a 3 year sequence is 6 semesters in a course of study of one art form;
2) The definition of a 4-5 year sequence is 8-10 semesters in a course of study of one art form.

for the Screened Programs Section : Also in the middle and high school participation sections, the survey asks about screening for admission and particular programs local to each school. Note that we are only referring to arts screening. So if your school screens for other academic indictors or qualities, but not for arts, DO NOT mark "yes" in this section.

For the Arts Spaces Section : We differentiate between two categories of classrooms: Dedicated arts spaces and Appropriately Equipped arts classrooms. Classrooms can be dedicated, or appropriately equipped, or both dedicated and appropriately equipped, or neither. Dedicated arts spaces are rooms that are designated only for the art form. Appropriately equipped classrooms have the proper materials and equipment needed to teach the art form effectively. Please refer to the pop-up definition by rolling over "equipped".

For the Cultural Partners Section: The survey asks the respondent to classify each arts partner as a dance, music, visual arts, theater, or film organization. Even if the organization provides services in multiple art forms, please select arts discipline that best fits your students' participation with each organization. If you are specific in this section, we will be able to do more analyses with your data. The survey allows for only six arts and cultural organizations to be reported. We understand that some of you receive services from more than six providers, but due to space constraints, we ask that you limit your reporting to the six cultural organizations with which you have the strongest partnerships.

For the Challenges to Providing Arts Education Section: Please rank the challenges that your school faced this year.