Due to the budget cuts enforced on high schools, students are left to find ways on how to develop their skills in art and design.

1. Art Students Forced
to Adapt to Budget
Cuts to Make the Cut
Karen Kesteloot

2. Budget cuts to arts education force online art
classes to replace missing skills to publicly
educated students so they can compete for arts
college admission. Funds are focused on the core
subjects resulting in students being unable to
make adequate art portfolios.
(Newswire.net --July 9, 2013) Guelph, ON -- Budget
cuts to arts education force online art classes to
replace missing skills to publicly educated students so
they can compete for arts college admission. Funds
are focused on the core subjects resulting in students being unable to make adequate
art portfolios.
Budget cuts to arts education force online art classes to replace missing skills to publicly
educated students so they can compete for arts college admission. Funds are focused
on the core subjects resulting in students being unable to make adequate art portfolios.
Early this year, US nationwide budget cuts in the arts have adversely affected public
schools. The Washington Examiner reports that the DC Public School cut $300,000US
from their arts program. The principal has already turned five full-time art teachers into
part-timers, against parent wishes, forcing the better teachers to leave.
Eugene Weekly also reports that Churchill High School of Eugene Oregon has limited
the sequential art courses switching them to electives. “Arts always, always fall
afterwards,” said Churchill art teacher Lance Eagen. “It’s always scheduled after ‘the
real classes’ are scheduled.”
According to the University of Michigan report, Education Budgets for Art Education
schools are forced to focus the limited funds they have on the subjects that are tested in
nation-wide assessments in order to gain federal funding and have little choice but to
reduce spending on arts education. The result is that students miss out on building the
fundamental skills critical in everyday life.
“Arts learning experiences contribute to the development of certain thinking, social and
motivational skills that are considered basic for success in school, work and life,” says
Sandra S. Ruppert in her book Critical Evidence: How the ARTS Benefit Student
Achievement. “These fundamental skills encompass a wide range of more subtle,
general capacities of the mind, self-perceptions and social relationships.”
More importantly, aspiring artists miss out on the opportunity to develop their skills and
a shot at a career in art or design. Only those families of adequate wealth can afford the
necessary private schooling that it takes to get into the best universities with higher job
Cropping a drawing for a college art portfolio

3. placement rates upon graduation. It begs the question; how many talented artists and
designers are the United States leaving out of the workforce and depriving the nation of
potential innovators?
Due to the unavailability of art programs in high schools students look towards websites
like PortPrep.com to serve as a solution. They train students how to build an art
portfolio, giving publicly educated students a chance to compete for placements in the
better schools.
PortPrep founder Karen Kesteloot said in a video, “We help you learn how to plan which
images to include in your portfolio…We teach you what colleges are looking for, how to
present your work in the best way to show your strengths…Getting into the better
schools is going to give you the better education that you need to have an excellent
start in your career."
Author: Christopher Jan Benitez
Senior Writer for PortPrep
PortPrep Studios
Karen Kesteloot, founder of Portprep.com
275 Woolwich St, Guelph, Ontario, Canada
N1H 3V8
info@portprep.com
(519) 803-2539
Sources:
http://www.eugeneweekly.com/20130411/shortchanging-our-schools/budget-cuts-affect-
music-arts
http://sitemaker.umich.edu/356.burba/education_budgets_for_art_education
http://www.nasaa-arts.org/Research/Key-Topics/Arts-Education/critical-evidence.pdf
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