These two stories were listed one above the other in EdNews, the aggregator of k-12 news.

The New York Times' Sam Dillon's July 25 story on a Center for Education Policy study suggesting that in order to make AYP in math and reading, schools are cutting back on the time spent on every other subject, but especially soft subjects like the arts.

Your editor remembers the same stories when the states initiated their own standards and accountability laws. People who don't know what they're doing do what they know, and too many educators decided that if the old methods weren't working, more time ought to be spent doing them - just to make sure. But sometimes the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line. It turns out that better means of engaging children in learning all of their subjects is likely to have a higher payoff. And while appreciating the arts without being able to complete a job application is a cruel irony, being able to fill out a tax form without knowing anything of the arts is a Pyrrhic victory for society.

A day earlier, the New York Post's Chuck Bennett wrote: While arts education has long been a component of elementary-school curricula, principals will now be held accountable for the success of their music, art, theater and dance programs in grades K-12, the Department of Education announced yesterday.... "When the new school year starts in September, we are going to hold schools accountable for student progress in the arts, just as we hold them accountable for improvements in subjects like math and reading," said Mayor Bloomberg...

It's a laudable policy shift, and one that might lead educators hoping to avoid improvement status to rethink the strategies of working harder and longer (the brunt of which falls on kids in a double wammy of more boring drills and less interesting breaks from the tedium), and consider strategies that amount to working smarter.

So, yes, there is a business angle to these stories. Providers with programs that infuse the basics with the arts and the arts with the basics, or that adopt new pedagogical strategies to engage kids, are bound to be more attractive. They ought to be making themselves known in New York.  Eventually the rest of the country will catch up.