Dive Brief:

• New York's Westchester County is fulfilling its Common Core requirements with an innovative approach from Purchase College’s Arts in Education program.  
• The programming brings "teaching artists" into classrooms to help introduce lessons aligned to the Common Core's language arts requirements. 
• The program, which is called the School Time Series Teaching Artist Program, is currently in elementary and middle schools, and it's paid for with a $15,000 grant from a local non-profit called Arts Westchester. 

Dive Insight:

Common Core has been associated by many with high-stakes testing and the draining of artistic pursuits in schools. This is a refreshing idea that does exactly the opposite. Instead of teaching Common Core lessons through test drills, the lessons are brought to life through exactly what so many schools are lacking these days: arts and creativity. 

Of course, it is important to note that Westchester is an affluent county. The ideal goal would be to get programs like this into low-income, urban communities where art access is far more limited, and even standard arts programming has been cut.