For the past twenty years, Boards of Education across the country have initiated ambitious efforts to restore arts and education opportunities to public and private school curriculums. However, due to poor performance in state assessment tests and a growing concern about students' ability to meet even the minimum mandatory levels, they feel enormous pressure to fulfill higher state standards. Anticipating a top-heavy academic response and the possible exclusion of diverse populations due to the narrowing of curriculums as a result, national reform reports of the 1980s, specifically the National Commission on Excellence in Education report, "A Nation at Risk," stated that "a commitment to excellence and educational reform must not be made at the expense of a commitment to the equitable treatment of our diverse population. The twin goals of equity and high quality schooling have profound and practical meaning for our economy and society, and we cannot permit one to yield to the other either in principle or in practice."
Across the U.S., school districts are realizing that the integration of the arts to teach various academic disciplines has far-reaching effects on students from a wide range of cultural and socio-economic backgrounds considered out of the mainstream. As a matter of course, States are mandating that each school district provide intervention services for these ever-growing numbers of students. Even amongst those students whose performance and results in mainstream academia rank higher, studies have shown time and again that integrating the creative arts in academic curricula increases their standards in reading, writing, listening and speaking, for information and understanding, for literary responses and expression, for critical analysis and evaluation and for social interaction. These are all mandatory assessment requirements laid out in National Standards English Language Arts Syllabus 2000.

Simultaneously, over the past twenty years, the audiences attending Broadway and touring shows in our country suffered a tremendous shortage of young people. While most Broadway producers' targeted older, upper middle class and ethnically mainstream audiences, young people turned to television, the Internet and action packed movies to satiate their creative appetites. The majority of educators and parents concur that these outlets generally served to distract from learning and to undermine students' ability to better read, speak, write or listen. Concurrently, producers realized they were losing grasp of their future audiences and inadvertently contributing to a national apathy, lack of art appreciation and general disenchantment with Broadway Theater amongst our younger generations. While not assuming to replace the function or mission of the classroom, producers with long-term investments in artistic standards and the economic health of our industry began to realize that supporting the schools in their oftentimes-daunting efforts could be mutually beneficial.

The producers of Wicked, In the Heights, Grease, Chicago, and Rent are unparalleled in their are unparalleled in their understanding of, commitment to, and passion for education. Well before studies revealed the mass exodus of young people from Broadway audiences, they were laying the groundwork for reaching out to our schools. These producers understand that students are tough critics whose thoughts and ideas need validation and who receive the most value from their education when they are thoroughly and interactively included in the process. They established partnerships with educators to develop future audiences of critical thinkers who would return time and again to seek out quality theatre. These producers understand that an appreciation and love for the arts instilled at an early age can create a lifelong commitment to and support of the arts.