standards- arts

What Students Should Learn

There are four basic assumptions which have guided the development of standards in the Arts:

1. The arts are an essential part of the curriculum and should be an important component in the educational program of every young American.

2. The arts require study. Disciplines in the arts cannot be learned through random or casual experiences any more than math or
biology can. The arts require regular, systematic programs of sequential instruction leading to clearly specified outcomes.

3. Arts programs should be directed to all students, not only to the talented. The arts belong in the schools because they enhance the quality of life. Their importance in every society makes them legitimate subjects of study. They bring joy, enrichment, and fulfillment to every human being. They are the essence of civilization. They cannot be solely the property of an elite; everyone must have access to the arts.

4. The arts are not a single discipline, and arts education is not a single entity. Although these disciplines have much in common,
they are different in their media, their traditions, their means of expression, the ways they are learned, and their methods for
assessment. It is important to recognize their connections and commonalities, but any instructional program based on the view that the arts are a single discipline is unlikely to be effective.

Who determines what is taught?

The answer to that question may be unclear in many disciplines, but is especially confusing in the arts. Two of the most common
influences are almost totally missing: textbooks and standardized tests. Textbooks are widely used in music through grade 8, but
are almost nonexistent elsewhere in the arts. A few standardized tests are available in music and the visual arts, but they are much less widely used than in the other basic disciplines. Music and art test results are not featured prominently in local newspapers. Virtually no such tests exist in theater and dance.

Standards Development

The Consortium of National Arts Education Associations (CNAEA) presented the national, voluntary standards for arts education to Secretary of Education Richard Riley on March 11, 1994. These standards represent a remarkable consensus of many constituencies with an interest in arts education concerning what every young person should know and be able to do in dance, music, theater, and the visual arts at the end of grades 4, 8, and 12.

There are two types of standards--content and achievement standards. "Content standards" specify what students should know and be able to do. They identify the strands of content that are important throughout the discipline. For every content standard there are multiple "achievement standards" which describe the specific skills and knowledge and, when possible, the level of achievement that students are expected to attain by the end of grades 4, 8, and 12. These levels have been categorized as "basic", "proficient", and "advanced".

Proficient is the level sought for every student. Basic reflects distinct progress toward the proficient level, but without having yet
reached that level. The advanced level is significantly above the proficient level and normally requires either unusual talent or time for learning beyond that available to the average student.

The following is excerpted from A. Glatthorn's Content of the Curriculum, 1995 (pp. 153-57).

Examine the Standards

National Standards as reported by McREL: This is an attempt to synthesize all of the professional organizations, state agencies and national organizations who have proposed standards in content areas for all the nation's children, with benchmarks at early and upper elementary grades and the middle and high school levels. You will need to select "Browse Standards" and then your content areas.

Michigan Department of Education: Select your content area from the list on the middle, right side of page of the front page, under K-12 Curriculum. The Arts page will include a good deal of information about the Arts in Michigan. Look for the link to the Michigan Curriculum Framework, and for Music, click down through the document to Strand 5, pages 15-25, grades K-12.