2022-23 Creative Schools Certification Data for Over 600 CPS Schools Now on artlook®

For the first time since the 2019-20 school year, school-level data from the Creative Schools Certification is now available on Ingenuity’s arts education data platform, artlook®. 

artlook® tracks school-level and arts partner data to help Chicago arts education stakeholders expand arts education access, quality, and equity in every CPS school. The data from the Creative Schools Certification, or CSC, identifies the level of arts access and quality in every CPS school using a five-point scoring rubric. 

This rating appears on each school’s artlook® profile, along with other arts education data. The Creative Schools Certification is designed to help school personnel develop plans and partnerships to address gaps in arts equity, sustain the arts in their school, and develop innovative arts education models that can be replicated across the District. Over 600, or 94% of Chicago Public Schools have provided in-depth data about their arts programming for the 2022-23 school year. Ratings from the Creative Schools Certification are also displayed on CPS school profiles.

Chicago Public Schools and Ingenuity updated its arts scoring rubric in 2019-20¹. Along with the updated Creative Schools Certification rubric, there are four new elements shared for the first time: school-level data on arts learning standards², arts inclusion in school governance³, per-student arts expenditures (further reading and analyses here), and arts instructional approaches. The following information will also be listed on school profiles4 :

• Overall rating on the Creative Schools Certification
• Creative Schools Roadmap 
• Arts staffing ratio
• Average weekly minutes of arts instruction (elementary schools only)
• Percent of students enrolled in art least one arts course (elementary schools only)
• Arts disciplines offered 
• Arts partnerships
• Staff participation in arts-specific professional development
• Family/community engagement
  

The following is an example of the Creative Schools Certification data displayed on a school’s profile:

All this information provided on artlook® aims to encourage school leaders to both showcase their school’s strengths and explore other schools’ arts offerings across the District, better support families and students making decisions based on CPS arts programming, and help arts organizations improve existing school partnerships and identify new partnership opportunities. Ingenuity is slated to publish the eleventh edition of the State of the Arts Report this April. The report will provide sector-wide analyses of 2022-23 data from the Creative Schools Certification across CPS schools. The data published on artlook® is publicly available and is the basis of the annual State of the Arts report for Chicago Public Schools. 

Ingenuity is a backbone arts education 501(c)(3) with core programs in data, advocacy, grant-making and professional learning. The organization’s collective-impact approach to arts advocacy drives partnerships, insights and investments in the arts for 330,000 students in Chicago Public Schools. A nationally recognized arts advocacy leader, Ingenuity has advanced the most progress in CPS arts education in 40 years.

1 The new iteration of the rubric, as well as how it differs from the original one, is detailed on Ingenuity’s website.
2 Arts learning standards guide instructors with their instructional planning. A new set of Illinois Arts Learning Standards was approved by the Illinois State Board of Education and was implemented starting with the 2018-19 school year. The Creative Schools Certification tracks whether arts teachers in schools use the updated 2018 IL Arts Learning Standards, National Core Arts Standards, IL Fine Arts Standards Goals 25-27, other standards, or no specific learning standards.
3 The Creative Schools Certification tracks representation of the arts in a school’s governance. This includes three forms: an arts teacher participates in a Local School Council, an arts-specific goal in a school’s Continuous Improvement Work Plan, or an arts teacher on the school’s curriculum team.
4 In accordance with the CPS School Quality Rating Policy, Creative Schools Certification data from the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years during the COVID-19 pandemic was not published on artlook®.