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Home > Interviews > Interview with Peter McWalters
Voices of Innovation
Interview with Peter McWalters, Rhode Island Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education and co-chair of the National Task Force on the Arts in Education
To what extent have Rhode Island school districts changed their curriculum to align themselves with testing to measure NCLB standards?
I have districts that not only don’t get it but they don’t want to get it. So we're a long way from delivering on both the tactical and the resource and the approval mechanisms but it is still core to the Rhode Island secondary middle school reform strategy. We've been arguing among ourselves how you assure access and we're coming to the conclusion that the place to assure access is actually a K-6/K-8 conversation so that you grow a demand, and from middle school on we want to embed it in pathways assurances that a child has to have access. So there are two different strategies: one is a guaranteed minimum and for all kids elementary and the other is enough so a pathway can be met and we're also very much dependent on those pathways being supported by partnerships beyond the high school and middle schools themselves. I would say of the two cuts of that right now we actually have better support from the partners than we do from the districts other than the benchmark districts. Listen 
With many areas suffering from budget cuts this year, how can Rhode Island school districts ensure the continuity of arts learning, especially in under resourced areas?
I would say right now we aren't. I'm going to confess, our frustration right now is as I sit here budgets are being cut and we're trying to revisit a regulatory requirement which we were reluctant to do, but even if we do that it won't be adopted until fall or spring of this coming school year. So I would say right now that we are a good example of a state that has the rhetoric and the public policy part right but it's not embedded enough either in the state budget, or in the regulatory environment. So no matter what the state says in its public policy guidelines unless it's required in regulation or paid for by the state, locals are cutting it. And that's the tragedy right now. Listen
What efforts have been made in Rhode Island to train teachers to integrate the arts into their lessons?
We had a mixed capacity at the department level. We've had individuals here who are well connected to the arts community, the arts network and all the way back to '86 with the literacy and the arts agenda and then cultural voices in the arts, some social studies pieces. We've had a wonderful shared experience of teacher development but it's by individual capacities here supported by commissioners, not only myself but an arts community that can provide the substance if you have the agreement. I have an image that most of our teacher development here is endorsed if not sponsored but supported by the department but actually carried out by an aggressive and well-connected and penetrating network of arts community.
When the regents put the arts as a proficiency requirement for graduation and it's in a development stage right now, the arts teachers who were already in the arts community turned instinctively to the arts network so what I've observed is that most districts that right now are meeting any of our requirements around either having standards or having rubrics for decision making and holding kids to standards of performance in the arts, most of that has been supported by a network of professional development between the arts teachers and the arts community. It's been endorsed by us but it really hasn't been organized by us. And I don't think we would have, we would be nowhere if that wasn't there. And yet it's not only there, I can take you places where the arts component of the graduation requirement has a higher content and competency standard at the professional level of the teachers than the English department does. Listen
What impact does arts education have on helping students develop 21st Century Skills and preparing the future workforce of Rhode Island?
You either get this one or you don't. For all the rhetoric about 21st century skills and the global economy and all of that, the idea that you can get all kids to be competitive and to be self-directed and to be able to work in teams and solve problems and to be able to communicate effectively without rehearsal, all of those are pleading for access to the one place in the classic education system that actually understands it, and that's the arts. I am one of those that has no problem sitting with any organization, school, school district, teachers, anybody and saying, "for those of you who want to meet the expectation of all kids to high standards or this issue of the innovation community, if you don't understand the power of the arts, the position you need both for the access performance and competencies, then you really don't understand what the challenge is." That's how fundamental this is to us. This is not an extra, it's not an add-on, it is like a core aspect to the very conversation. Listen
What does arts learning mean to you personally?
I was in Rochester, New York which is where the Eastman School of Music is, and Kodak and Xerox and places with the sensibility of the arts both as refined high ends and quite honestly commercial production. I was a parent of children that were in my own school system and we kind of coincidentally and accidentally had an opportunity to open a magnet school. So we went down the road of a performing arts high school and through that collaboration we were able to build a $30 million performing arts high school that had the kind of production capacity of Broadway, if you will, and we had instrumentation and music arrangements that were part of the Eastman School that they actually rented space from us, that's how high end quality it was. So it was arts, performing arts, theater, music and visual. As an administrator, I actually began to understand the power of it as a kind of pedagogical piece. But as a parent, I understood the developmental side of that and I ended up with my own kids going through my own performing arts school. I learned that quality programming that had integrity to it and had open access to it were natural avenues for all of the other social issues of trying to get integration and tolerance and access to the socialization kinds of things. That is probably the most profound part of this for me. Listen
Why is arts education important to the community and what can parents and community members do to help maintain a well-balanced curriculum for their students?
Even though we have kind of public policy rhetoric, we actually have to go out and tap that same capacity and have the community both advocate and demand the access for their children is guaranteed in this kind of regulatory environment. I just wanted to make sure I ended with is this tie into this innovation economy conversation and global economy, 21st century piece. It's really through the arts that I believe you can actually convert that from a competitive kind of "there are more engineers in China than we have," to a global village view, that not only brings a tolerance and inclusion to it, but supports the fact that you can't be in a global economy without a global village view.
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