Ms. Heather Noonan

Taking Credit for Measuring Up

Posted by Ms. Heather Noonan, Sep 16, 2010 0 comments


Ms. Heather Noonan

Heather Noonan

CD-ROMs are hardly considered cutting edge technology today, but back in 1998 they were still something of a novelty.  So it was considered pretty big news when the 1997 National Assessment of Educational Progress in the Arts (NAEP) was released that year by the U.S. Department of Education in hard-bound format, online, and on disc.  This breakthrough was necessitated by the advanced nature of the assessment itself, which went beyond fill-in-the-bubble measurements to include performance-based assessment of student knowledge and skills in the arts.  In addition to thumbing through pages of data analysis for the 1998 arts NAEP, readers could also view sample student work. 

As arts education advocates, we should reach back to this moment in time more than a decade ago and remind ourselves and policy leaders how much the arts have to offer in the current education reform discussions regarding assessment of student learning.  The 1997 NAEP was not just the most comprehensive assessment in the arts (far more robust that the 2008 assessment that followed) - the performance-based measures and reporting set a new standard for national assessments of other core academic subjects to follow.

Now, the U.S. Department of Education is framing its drive toward re-imaging assessment in reading and math as a “Beyond the Bubble” approach, following on the President’s 2009 charge to states "to develop standards and assessments that don't simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test, but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking and entrepreneurship and creativity."

Given the image of the arts as a marginalized subject of learning, policy leaders – even those poised to champion implementation of the arts as “core” – too frequently assume we aren’t ready to play in the assessments game.  In addition to the inaccurate view of student progress in the arts as being too soft or magical to measure, there is a misperception, nationally, that the field of arts education is unprepared to consider wide-scale assessments.  Two simple points of fact can be brought forward as the arts community advances recommendations for improving equitable access to the arts through the next version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act:

  • Comprehensive national standards for what children should know and be able to do in the arts were created for Dance, Music, Theatre, and the Visual Arts in 1994. 
  • These standards provided the basis for the National Arts Education Assessment Framework, which was adopted by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment Governing Board and demonstrates that schools can and should measure student progress in creating, performing, and responding to works of art.

National arts education leaders have recently launched an effort to revitalize the 1994 standards.  Add to these facts the list of states that require assessment in some form and examples of states that have otherwise implemented arts assessments and we build a compelling case that the arts can not only be a part of the emerging assessment reform conversations, but can lead the way with knowledge and experience regarding the performance and portfolio-based measurement envied by other core academic subjects.

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