In too many of our nation's schools, arts education programs have been reduced or eliminated due to budget cuts and inadequate funding. Access to the few exemplary programs that exist is often uneven and influenced by differences in class, neighborhood, and educational policy. Ironically, these discouraging conditions coexist with a growing recognition that art is a powerful teacher. As Charles Fowler explains in a 1994 article in Educational Leadership:

We need every possible way to represent, interpret, and convey our world for a very simple but powerful reason: no one of these ways offers a full picture. Individually, mathematics, science, and history convey only part of the reality of the world. Nor do the arts alone suffice. A multiplicity of symbol systems are required to provide a more complete picture and a more comprehensive education....When used well, the arts are the cement that brings all the disparate curricular areas together. In the best schools, this is often the case. The arts are valued for their interdisciplinary potential. The result is a more cohesive curriculum in which students explore relationships across disciplines. Truth and understanding are recognized as a composite of perspectives, not just one necessarily partial and tentative view....Strong arts, strong schools. Where this relationship is understood, the arts are not the first to go when budgets tighten. Rather the arts are viewed as essential components of a general education. They are not just for the gifted and talented. Like math and science, they are of benefit to all....The arts are not pretty bulletin boards. They are not turkeys and bunny rabbits. They are not frivolous entertainment. The arts are our humanity. They are the languages of civilization through which we express our fears, our anxieties, our hungers, our struggles, our hopes. They are systems of meaning that have real utility. This is why schools that provide students with the means and the encouragement to explore these realms provide a better education. This explains, too, why the arts are a mark of excellence in American schooling.

- Charles Fowler, "Strong Arts, Strong Schools" in Educational Leadership, November 1994

In an effort to put the spotlight on arts education, the Challenge supports three separate arts education projects.

Minnesota Arts
A $3.2 million, two-for-one matching grant supports the Arts for Academic Achievement, a partnership of the Minnesota Center for Arts Education (MCAE) and the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS). One of the few districts in the country to include the arts as part of the core curriculum, MPS is working with MCAE to assure that all students reach or surpass the new content standards and to use the arts as a means to further reform. The approach calls for revamping the individual arts disciplines as well as integrating the arts into other curricula through partnerships between schools and arts organizations, businesses, or community groups. The initiative builds upon several strong foundation blocks - partnerships already at work in Minneapolis, including Partners: Arts and Schools for Students (PASS) and the original eleven schools in the Minnesota Arts and Education Partnership.

Recognizing that schools in Minneapolis have varied experiences with the arts, MPS is encouraging each school to pursue reform activities at a pace appropriate to its own starting point. Three categories sort schools as they begin their reform efforts: "exploration" schools are those with few experiences in the arts and only one arts specialist on staff; "committed" schools are those actively working towards integrating the arts across curricular areas, with two or more arts specialists on staff; "deep partnership" schools also have more than two arts specialists but have developed long-term partnerships with arts organizations, businesses, or community groups as well. In this first year of the initiative, MPS expects to work with twenty-five schools: five in the exploration category, fifteen in the committed group, and five in the deep partnership category. The goal is to move an increasing number of schools to the partnership group each year, ending in four years with thirty deep partnership schools (roughly half the district) and another twenty exploration and committed schools.

An eight-member coordinating council and twenty-member design team oversee the Minnesota Arts Challenge, and it is staffed by two.