subject. 41 states, however, require that art classes be offered at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. Art magnet schools, common in larger communities, use art(s) as a core or underlying theme to attract those students motivated by personal interest or with the intention of becoming a professional or commercial artist. Despite state requirements, budget cuts and increasing test-based assessments of children, as required by the federal government's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act, are credited for the reported loss of art instruction time in schools. The NCLB retains the arts as part of the "core curriculum" for all schools, but it does not require reporting any instruction time or assessment data for arts education content or performance standards, which is reason often cited for the decline of arts education in American public schools. Although the number of art educators stayed the same, fewer art classes were taught because art educators were required to teach other subjects such as language arts and math. History of art education provisions In the 1970s, provisions for arts in education were limited, at the discretion of individual states. Local schools, school boards, and districts were the main actors in deciding whether arts education was provided. Where art education was offered, it consisted of exposure-based experiences with cultural organizations outside of the school and was not integrated into the classroom curriculum. In the next couple of decades, budget cuts as a result of fiscal crises heavily stripped school budgets to the point where positions for art teachers were essentially eliminated in order to retain core subjects. At this time, the arts were seen as nonessential to the development of critical thinking and there did not exist a standard curriculum for teaching art in public schools. As such, provisions were scarce if at all present in the 1980s and 1990s. However, the significance of an arts education emerged as data found academic performance improvements and socio-emotional and socio-cultural benefits, among other positive effects, stemming from the stimulative nature of the arts. Key players in advocating for and providing art education included a blend of public entities (schools, government agencies, etc.), private organizations, and community centers. This emerging acknowledgment of the importance of art education was matched by a decline in provisions at the beginning of the 21st century. With the implementation of NCLB, public schools prioritized meeting Academic Performance Index (API) growth targets, downgrading the