National Arts Standards:
by Jamie Kasper
AEC, Associate DirectorRevisited, Reconceptualized, and Revised
In 1994, I was just graduating high school and getting ready to enter college as a music education major. I was a member of the first generation of college-goers in my family, so this was an interesting – and a little scary – time for both me and my parents. Little did I know that 300 miles away, in Washington, DC, something was happening that would also affect my professional life in a major way.
In 1992, the national professional organizations for dance, music, theatre, and visual arts began to talk about national standards. They had seen national standards conversations begin with mathematics in the 1980s and were ready to move forward to make sure the arts had a presence in the national consciousness. When the National Standards for Arts Education were published in 1994, they began to inform teacher preparation programs, K-12 arts education programs, and discussions about pedagogy and assessment. Our Pennsylvania standards were released in 2002; that committee chose to align the standards to the Discipline-Based Arts Education (DBAE) model, which at that time resided primarily at The Getty Center in Los Angeles. The National Standards were loosely based on DBAE, but the Pennsylvania Standards for the Arts and Humanities made this connection much more explicit, going so far as to align the four standards categories to the four pillars of DBAE: production, criticism, history, and aesthetics.
Fast forward nine years. It is now 2011, and standards are in the news again with the release of the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and Math. The national professional organizations – AATE, EdTA, NAfME, NAEA, and NDEO – have decided the time is ripe to revisit the National Standards for Arts Education. This time, however, the process is being led by a group that didn’t exist 17 years ago. This group, SEADAE (State Education Agency Directors of Arts Education), is comprised of the arts curriculum specialists who work at the state departments of education around the country. SEADAE, the professional organizations, the Arts Education Partnership, and The College Board have formed a new National Coalition for Core Arts Standards. This is the group that will be leading the revision and reconceptualization of the National Standards for Arts Education.
It remains to be seen if these new national standards will have the same impact as the initial standards published in 1994. However, one thing is different: the coalition is committed to working in an open environment where the field can follow the work as it develops. You can see the progress of this project at http://nccas.wikispaces.com.
