The Arts Education Partnership provides information and communication about current and emerging arts education policies, issues, and activities at the national, state, and local levels. Their major projects and activities include commissioning and disseminating research about critical arts and education issues; maintaining and linking databases on state-level policies for arts education; and convening national forums around significant themes and issues in the field. The Arts Eudcation Partnership’s partners include federal arts and education agencies, state departments of education, state arts agencies, national arts and education organizations, and arts and education collaboratives at the state and local level.

In 1996, Meryl Streep hosted a 12-minutes video, “The Arts and Children” in 1996, created for the Goals 2000 Arts Education Partnership. The Partnership is a national coalition of business, education, arts and government groups committed to maintaining and enhancing arts education in the nation’s schools. “Young people who learn the arts do better in every phase of their lives,” says Streep in the video. “The Arts and Children: A Success Story shows why the arts must be part of the education of every child in every school in America,” says Jane Alexander, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. “This video powerfully captures the need for quality arts education in our schools,” said United States Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley. “I urge school administrators and school boards across the country to consider its message.”

Hello, I’m Meryl Streep. The video you are about to see is about our children. And about the challenges that face them in school, life and work in today’s society. You’ll see evidence of powerful ways to help them meet those challenges – the arts. Experts from business, science and the academic world discuss research that proves young people who study the arts do better, in every other phase of their lives. But the most eloquent voices are those of the students and their teachers. Let’s join together to keep the arts strong in the lives of our children. It’s important for them and it’s important for us.