Our Mission
Arts Ed NJ is a statewide collective impact coalition committed to ensuring that all PreK–12 public school students in New Jersey have access to a high-quality, sequential, and equitable arts education. Through collaboration, advocacy, and shared leadership, we champion policies and practices that celebrate diverse lived experiences and artistic expression—preparing the creative leaders of tomorrow.
What We Do
We create a strong PLACE for the arts in every school by:
Our Approach: Collective Impact
We use a Collective Impact model, bringing together diverse partners with a shared vision. This coordinated, equity-driven approach ensures that efforts across the state are aligned, strategic, and sustainable.
Core Values
Thank You to Our Funders
History
Arts Ed NJ is the only statewide service organization dedicated to advancing arts education for all New Jersey students. Established in 2007, as the NJ Arts Education Partnership, and originally co-sponsored by the NJ State Council on the Arts, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, and the NJ Department of Education, Arts Ed NJ became an independent 501(c)(3) in 2015. Arts Ed NJ continues to unify teachers, administrators, students, and the general public to advocate for the educational benefits of the arts, specifically the contribution they make to student achievement, social emotional growth, and a more equitable and creative society.
To date, the efforts of Arts Ed NJ have led to increased access to arts education for over 75,000 students to ensure New Jersey’s 1.4 million students receive the arts education promised and mandated by state code.
Since Arts Ed NJ’s founding, the organization has achieved many “firsts” and other achievements for educators, students and families in New Jersey, including:
- First statewide Census report in the nation on the status and condition of arts education providing accountability for state policies and highlighting both strengths and areas of improvement, and repeating it every five years since 2007 to demonstrate longitudinal growth and changes in arts education.
- Arts Ed NJ took over management of the NJ Governor’s Awards in Arts Education (2009)
- Worked with NJDOE to coordinate the revision of Core Curriculum Content Standards for the Visual and Performing Arts
- First state to include arts education in district accountability program (2009 NJQSAC)
- First state to publicly report state longitudinal data on arts education (2012)
- First state to include arts education measures in state school performance reports (2013)
- First state to release an interactive dashboard to allow citizens to review and compare arts education information for every school in the state. (2014)
- First state to pass grade weighting legislation for arts education courses ensuring students arts courses count towards their grade point average when they graduate (2016)
- First state to achieve Universal Access to Arts Education for all students in one art form. (2019)
- Partnered with the NJ Department of Education in 2014 to create an in-depth process to rewrite the 2020 standards.
- First state to develop an Arts Education & Social Emotional Learning Framework designed to illuminate the intersection between artistic practices and social-emotional learning competencies to allow for the intentional application of teaching and learning strategies focused on student well-being. (2020)
- First state to develop COVID-19 protocols Guidance for sustain all arts forms throughout the pandemic, which were later adopted by other states (2021)
- First Center for Arts Education and Social Emotional Learning established to serve the nation (2021)
- Launched a self-paced course to support implementation of the New Jersey Student Learning Standards in Visual and performing arts build capacity for arts educators and VPA across the state (2023)
- Added our first Youth Arts Education Council cohort (2024)