I graduated from a school of the arts.
It included grades 6-12. It was a lottery system in a magnet school. No tuition.
The arts included were drama, photography, music, band, visual art (sculpting, drawing, painting, etc.), media art (computers, journalism (school paper)), and dance.
I was a drama "focus" (ie, Major).
You were allowed to stay in the school as long as you took arts classes. If you stayed within a specific major in all your years at the school (meaning you took classes in your art each year you attended the school) then when you graduated you received a special diploma that means you were elegible for scholarships in the state's universities (only state schools, not private colleges).
In our drama department, we had several different types of classes and had four mainstage shows a year, including one musical. The school also had sports (almost everything minus football and men's basketball) but these did not count as arts. They were extra-curicular.
In terms of core classes - everyone was required to take a certain amount of english, math, sciences, social studies, foriegn language, etc. The school offered four different "tracks" for getting a degree, and each means you get a different dilpoma.
In my case, I was required to take 4 english, 2 foriegn language, 3 sciences, 3 math, 3 social studies, 11 electives (arts classes and other). Might be forgetting something. And you were also required to take specific classes in each academic field, in addition to getting up to a specific point in each field. For example, it was required to take World History and U.S. History for social sciences. Then other options includes Socialogy and Psychology. You had to take two years of foreign language OF THE SAME language. Etc.
I also went to a regular public high school my freshman year. So I know what I missed.
I hated public school. Loved the school for the arts. The teachers expected you to do all your work and you were not treated special. The only thing different from public high school was you were allowed to miss class (with teacher's permission) for rehearsals/activieis in your arts. You had to be passing the class and have mostly all your work done in order to be excused. You had to make up tests. Some teachers didn't let you miss for tests.
The teachers were the same as public high school teachers. Except the arts teachers were exceptional in that they only had to focus on specific arts. In public high school, an English teach may also teach drama.
Our theatre dept. had a huge black box theatre as well as the auditorium. There was a technical theatre dept. and the acting dept. Many different classes, from children's theatre to shakespeare to ensemble to comedy, etc etc etc.
In the end, it prepared me for college better than the public school would have. I have special training in my desired career that I could have never gotten in any other public school. I also had much more training than I would have. Public high school typically does one play a year. My school did four mainstage and then several other dozen smaller shows a year!!
"The Spectacle has, indeed, an emotional attraction of its own, but, of all the parts, it is the least artistic, and connected least with the art of poetry. For the power of Tragedy, we may be sure, is felt even apart from representation and actors. Besides, the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet."
--Aristotle
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