Looking beyond COVID-19: Arts Education Policy Implications and Opportunities

In this concluding article for the special issue on COVID-19 and K-12 arts education, the authors look forward to some positive possible changes for the delivery of arts education as students return to school past COVID-19 and will address some of the barriers to these positive changes, including policy opportunities and implications. The barriers discussed are not new to arts education -- resource and funding challenges, a focus on remediation pulling students from arts classes, and a continued inequitable access to arts education for students in poverty and students of color. The article will discuss how the pandemic has exacerbated some of these long-standing challenges, as well as ways to address those challenges from a policy perspective as well as through advocacy work at the federal, state, and local levels. The article suggests ways to rethink how we approach areas of educational policy, particularly the accountability structures of public education, in order to address inequitable access now and in the long term.