K-5 teachers explore City’s arts education framework leading up to pilot implementation this fall

On August 21, 2025, the Office of Arts & Culture hosted a day of in-service instruction for Portland Public Schools (PPS) teachers to discuss and demo Portland’s first-ever arts education framework. City Code related to the Arts Tax calls on the Arts & Culture team to work with school districts to provide students with a high-quality arts education, and the new framework will create a common definition and set of metrics for assessing excellence in arts education. 

Led by the City’s Arts Education Program Manager Dawn Isaacs in partnership with the PPS Visual and Performing Arts team, the goal of the conversation was to prepare PPS teachers to implement a pilot of the arts education framework this coming school year (2025-26). 

“We’re really excited to launch this framework pilot because it is a collaborative effort that will illuminate strengths and needs across elementary arts programs,” says Isaacs.  

Inspired by arts education frameworks in place around the country, Portland’s arts education framework was developed over the last year through close collaboration between the city’s six school districts, PSU’s Regional Research Institute, and the Arts & Culture team. At the conclusion of the pilot, the framework will be implemented across Portland’s school districts and charter schools as a way to define and assess the conditions necessary for an excellent elementary arts education, including conditions and structures like staffing, budgets, instructional minutes, materials, and more. 

During the gathering, educators also looked closely at how the Arts Access Fund works, the City’s role in managing the fund, the impact of the fund over the past decade, and more. 

4 takeaways from the PPS high-quality arts education framework in-service day gathering

• Because it’s going to highlight what’s happening, what conditions exist, and what schools’ and districts’ strengths and weaknesses are, the data collected through the framework might help communities advocate for more resources. However, the framework won’t just be a tool for advocacy. Portlanders have been investing in arts education and access in schools across town for a decade—and the framework will help the City of Portland and school districts be accountable to taxpayers for how that investment is being used.
• The framework will not articulate or assess instructional practices; in other words, it won’t evaluate what an individual teachers is teaching within their classroom. Rather, it will provide a zoomed-out view that helps identify which conditions are necessary so that a high-quality arts education can happen within classrooms.
• During the pilot period, there will be opportunities for educators to provide feedback on specific dimensions and on using the tool overall. Data from the pilot will be used in meetings between the City of Portland and district leads to set initial goals for full implementation.
• When Portland’s arts education framework is implemented in full during the 2026-27 school year and data is collected for that year, individual school and district-by-district reporting on key metrics—including identifying strengths and areas of focus for improvement—will be made available to all Portlanders via a forthcoming public dashboard.  

Educators share their perspectives on the importance of an arts education

Over the course of the day, several educators reflecting on their “why”—why they’re driven to make arts accessible for their 5-to-10-year-old students. Their perspectives were inspiring and vital, including:

• "My why is to plant seeds and grow joy."
• "Students have emotional intelligence but don’t have the verbal language to express it yet. When it comes to splashing paint on a piece of paper, they can do that, and it’s a full expression—a type of freedom they may not have in other contexts."
• "Just like we teach science and math to help students process and describe the external world, we teach art to give language for students to be able to process and describe their external world."
• "Binary thinking is prominent, and the arts can help students break through that to fill in the spaces in between and sit in uncomfortable spaces."
• "The arts represent what’s best about being human."
• "Self-discovery and building brain connections—art builds connections between neurons that help students in all other subjects."