Texas 'Students Do Without Art,' but streets still open to graff writers

I was interested to see the headline from Business Week on Texas' failure to resolve its school funding crisis: "Texas School Finance Fix Eludes Perry as Students Do Without Art." Grits would add a coda to Business Week's art reference, captured in a headline from this 2009 post: "Kids do less art in school, more in street; Lege reacts with hammer." That post argued that:

Texas schools have seen the arts de-prioritized to focus on the TAKS test. As a result, Texas experienced "a drop in middle school fine arts participation from 75 percent student participation in 1999 to 66 percent in 2006."

Perhaps relatedly, during this same period in Texas graffiti crimes soared; the amount of graffiti in Austin, for example, increased 400% from 2002 to 2007. But all legislators can think to do is increase punishments, not artistic opportunities.

How 'bout it? Do you believe the fact that Texas youth are doing less art in school and more graffiti in the streets is a coincidence? Might providing more legitimate outlets for youth creativity produce the added benefit of reducing illicit tagging?