By the time she gets to "Wrrrrristy-wristy Wrist," the artist has won the attention of the 20 or so prekindergarten students. The chant of the "body-drum" warm-up made up on the fly is just tricky enough to be fun as it rolls off the tongue.

She introduces a new motion to go along with each body part. The boy in the red shirt, who five minutes ago had to be cajoled into the circle, is now glancing left and right at his classmates to make sure he's got the right moves, as he quickly adjusts to the new rhythm. "Shoullllllllll-der," he says with a grin.

For the next seven weeks, Marcia Daft, a professional composer, music director and pianist, will lead sessions at Washington DC's Hearst Elementary School, demonstrating to classroom teachers how the performing arts can be used to teach curriculum topics.

At Hearst Elementary, children receive art instruction from a full-time art teacher, and sing songs in a music class directed by a full-time music teacher. They look forward to Arts Celebration Week in June. Hearst is in the minority of schools that would get a gold star for arts education curriculum. In some schools, a one-week dose of sessions and workshops conducted by Marcia Daft is the extent of the arts curriculum.

Artists in the Classroom
Daft participates in the Wolf Trap Institute's Early Learning Through the Arts Residency program, which has teamed Master Artists—visual artists, musicians, dancers, actors and more—with teachers in more than 400 classrooms in the metro Washington area. Founded in 1981 with federal Head Start funding, the successful program has now been replicated in 13 other regions nationwide.

Artists in the program coordinate with the teachers to make sure the sessions they plan play to their strengths. "We call two weeks before we go," says Daft, "to find out what their interests are—music, movement, drama. Then we talk about the curriculum to see what they will be covering, whether it's shapes, letters—underwater animals!"

For today's class at Hearst, she has brought a cassette player, a bag of elastic cloth loops and some colored cards. The children use their arms and legs to make shapes with the loops and they stretch their imaginations around Sister Square and Brother Triangle, characters in one of Daft's song exercises.

Going Where They're Needed Most
The arts program at Hearst Elementary succeeds in part due to community buy-in, readily available in high-population areas like Washington, DC, with its museums, theater troupes and choruses. According to a report from the Arts Education Partnership, community involvement is the most critical factor behind a successful arts program. Despite this, the artists' trips to smaller towns, which lack such resources, are often the most rewarding.

Daft has worked extensively throughout central Virginia and along the Kentucky border. "You come to these teeny towns where maybe they've seen musicians, but they might not have had a professional dancer or actress come in. It's usually a major eye-opener and a wonderful experience for kids."

It is an eye-opener for the teachers as well. Through personal instruction and professional development workshops they discover that they have the ability to bring the arts into their own classrooms. For schools without a regular arts curriculum, this kind of instruction is what allows a one-week or seven-week visit from an artist to "stick" with a community. "I have teachers who are still sending me cards three years later," says Daft. "They say, ?I still use that tape you gave me!'"

First on the Cutting Block
At the end of March, the funding for Daft's work in Virginia's rural communities was cut due to a budget impasse in the state legislature. Wolf Trap hopes that the Virginia branch of the program can be resurrected eventually, but its return now depends on politics and an unpredictable economy. Hearst Elementary Principal Betty Shamwell used to teach in Virginia and shakes her head when reminded of the situation there. "That's where they need this program the most!" she says.

The dire need for a program like the Wolf Trap residency in rural Virginia communities and schools is indicative of the status of arts education funding across the country. Artist residencies, which ideally would merely supplement a school's regular arts curriculum, have become, in a way, the last line of defense. Their absence will now add to a void that public school budgets have not been able to fill.

Despite the cuts to the Virginia program and similar cuts in other regions, Wolf Trap Director of Education Miriam Flaherty sees an encouraging trend: the adoption of arts education standards that elevate arts to the same level as other subjects. "Many states now have standards in the arts, and unless there are standards in place," Flaherty says, "the message to the schools is that the subject is not important."

Until a solid grounding in the arts is widely accepted as the "fourth R" in a child's education, its position will remain more precarious than that of the other three. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, recognition of the arts as a core subject for all children in the Goals 2000 legislation has encouraged many states to create a framework for how the arts can be considered a basic part of education.

Debate will certainly continue over whether standards and tests are the most effective tools, but it is a victory for educators that the arts are finding themselves on the same playing field with math, English and science. If that trend continues, then perhaps Wolf Trap and organizations like it will no longer be solely responsible for rounding out a child's well-rounded education.

• The National Conference of State Legislatures provides a database of arts education policies in the states.
• Learn about standards and exemplars of arts education through the Kennedy Center's ArtsEdge.
• The U.S. Dept. of Education offers the report, Arts Education and School Improvement Resources for Local and State Leaders, updated in 1999.