Americans for the Arts

Scott Shuler

Arts teachers across the country are currently scrambling to cope with new teacher evaluation systems. Teacher support and evaluation systems have long been recognized as important means for improving teaching and learning, but states are increasingly requiring local districts to link evaluation to student growth, assign numeric ratings, and ratchet up consequences, such as using ratings to determine salary increases or job security. The U.S. Department of Education has encouraged these developments by making the implementation of new educator evaluation systems a precondition for waiving onerous NCLB requirements and sanctions.

Although quality teacher supervision and support systems are essential to ensure teacher growth, many emerging teacher evaluation systems pose serious challenges for arts educators, as well as issues of fairness.

Among those challenges is the expectation that arts teachers measure student growth, often without the support of arts-expert supervisors or district-wide teams to develop appropriate measurement tools. Another is the expectation that a majority of students or even all students be assessed and monitored, in spite of the fact that some arts teachers are responsible for more than 1,000 students and see those students for very limited time.

One fairness issue arises when states or individual schools use school-wide scores on tests in non-arts areas to determine arts teachers’ evaluations. Another issue is the lack of arts-specific professional development to support teachers as they adapt to new, often complex systems. Yet another issue is the fact that most arts teachers are observed and evaluated by administrators who lack training or expertise in an art form.

Jamie Kasper

Here in Pennsylvania, we are currently mired in educator effectiveness. Before I left the elementary music classroom in 2007, my effectiveness as a teacher was measured by variations on these steps:

1. Around May 1, I would meet my principal accidentally in the hall. That person would inform me that he/she had forgotten to observe my class that year and said our spring performance would serve as my evaluation.

2. In mid-May, I would herd approximately 100 kindergarten students into our gymatorium. In between tears, loud exclamations of “Hi, Mommy!” accompanied by violent waving, dresses pulled over faces to hide from the audience, and other manifestations of 5-year-olds’ stage fright, we managed to sing, play instruments, and move. I may or may not have noticed my principal standing in the back of the room.

3. A few days later, I was called into the office, told everything was great, and asked to sign a paper saying just that. Then I went back to my classroom.

Two significant events in the accountability landscape have occurred in Pennsylvania since then. In 2010, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded Pennsylvania an $800,000 Momentum Grant. The purpose of the grant was to develop an evaluation system that included student achievement as one significant part. The Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE), working with other stakeholders, closely examined Charlotte Danielson’s revised 2011 Framework for Teaching Evaluation Instrument and piloted it in 2010-2011 with three school districts and one intermediate unit. This measurement tool included four domains on which teachers would assess themselves and also be assessed by their supervisor:

Aliza Sarian

What if your child (or a friend’s child) was told that because his music teacher doesn’t have a way to conclusively assess the way he plays the French horn, his seat in the orchestra would be determined on how high he scored on his spelling test?  How could you explain to him his value as a musician?

As a theatre teacher in a New York City public school, I’ve been told I have a unique perspective on the arts’ role in education.  What I consider to be the day-to-day of my job—making connections for my students, finding meaningful ways to grade their work objectively and articulate the significance of those grades to their parents, and finding ways to sneak performance and storytelling into other subject areas—other arts education professionals tell me is what makes my voice one worthy of a blog post on evaluation and assessment.

Evaluation and assessment are at the core of what I do as an educator and as a classroom teacher.  I make that distinction because as an educator, I am constantly looking at the work I do and reflecting on how it can be improved.  As a classroom teacher, the kids, parents, and administrators demand the feedback to help students become better speakers, writers, and learners.  In my world of arts education, assessment and evaluation are invaluable.

This post, however, is not about how I use assessment or evaluation in my world.  This is to introduce you to the new teacher evaluation system revealed in New York public schools, optimistically called Advance. Like all evaluations it is being put in place to raise the quality of teaching in New York and hold teachers accountable for doing good work in the classroom—an absolute necessity for educators (or anyone, really).  And, in an ideal world, we would stand up and cheer, grateful that someone cares how we are doing as teachers.  In fact, Advance is based on seven “Guiding Principles” that state that evaluation should:

Talia Gibas

Last February, when my fellow Arts Education Council members and I agreed on “the trifecta of standards, accountability and assessment” as the topic of AFTA’s September arts education blog salon, I noticed how ominous those words sound. Sitting in the council meeting, I pictured a pitchfork stuck in the ground, with the three prongs of standards, accountability and assessment serving a dark warning to any arts educators who dare get close to it.

I happen to think that standards and assessment systems can be good things, so the fact these thoughts crossed my mind is testament to how much baggage the words carry, particularly in the arts. They are also, for better or worse, here to stay. Recognizing they are tools that can be applied well or applied poorly, how does an arts education community begin incorporating those tools into practice in a meaningful way?

Last year, in Los Angeles County, we decided to try and start a broad conversation about arts assessment. We invited the research firm WestEd, which a few years earlier had conducted a comprehensive study of the state of arts assessment across the United States, to deliver a full-day seminar on assessment strategies, open to as many people as we could comfortably cram in a large meeting room.

We also asked WestEd to deliver smaller, more hands-on workshop sessions focused on rubrics. Why rubrics? We conducted an informal poll of school districts applying to us for matching funds for artist residencies, asking in which areas of assessment they felt they needed the most support. Rubrics were by far and away the most popular answer.

This was the first time that Arts for All had ever offered broad-scale professional development on arts assessment, and the first time in a long while that we had offered professional development to arts organizations and school districts simultaneously. How did we do in helping our constituents sort through all that baggage?

Elizabeth Laskowski

I have been teaching instrumental music in the same small inner-city elementary school district for going on six years.  I’ve worked at several schools in the district, some of which have been supportive of the arts, and some have been less than supportive.  Even in the most supportive schools, however, my classes have always been considered not as important as the “real” subjects taught in the homerooms.  Presenting research on links between test scores and participation in instrumental music fell on deaf ears.  I frequently came to work to find that my classroom (on the stage) was being used for something, whether it was an assembly of some sort, school pictures, or a dance, and my objections were always met with a vague response detailing how next time they’d let me know in advance.  Students were often kept from going to my classes because their general education teacher needed more time with them.  This was deemed simply more important because they are tested in those other subjects and not in my class.  At one of my schools, I was even denied paper and pencils because the office manager had to “save it for the teachers.”

Enter our state’s NCLB waiver and the MCESA assessments.  Maricopa County Education Service Agency partnered with WestEd to come up with a series of brand new tests for non-tested subject areas such as Art, Music, Theater, PE and Dance.  So far, they have only created a computer-based standardized type test, so it does not yet encompass practical learning such as actually playing an instrument or singing.  Our students are tested at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year.  The results of the test will detail how effective we are as educators, and it will be wrapped into our evaluation score.

I have had three evaluations in five years of teaching.  Two of those were for my M.Ed. requirements a few years back.  Most years I simply get a filled out evaluation in my mailbox at work, which I am told I need to sign.  Some years I don’t get anything at all.  Administrators simply don’t feel the need to see if the band teacher is creating and implementing effective lessons.  With MCESA’s new evaluation and assessment process, not only will I be evaluated by my principal multiple times, I will be evaluated by a instrumental music instruction specialist from MCESA.

Margaret Weisbrod Morris

Assessment?  Let’s get real. Bringing this word up with colleagues in community arts education is like dropping a tadpole into the lemonade. They start checking status updates on their phone or make an exit to “feed the meter.” If this is you, take 5 minutes to read this. It might help. If not, you are only out the time it takes for Facebook to refresh on your phone.

Assessment undoubtedly brings value to arts education, but in the context of community arts education I can never escape the feeling that I missed an important memo. I read, search the web, talk to colleagues go to workshops & conferences, read the AFTA / AEP / NAEA / NEA news, stay up to date on research, and think. A lot. I am familiar with the plethora of solid tools, good research, and logical standards out there, but they never seem to get to the heart of what is happening here. It is like fitting a square peg into a round hole. Why is that?

It is because there are fundamental differences between out-of-school learning environments and schools.  Learning in any environment covers the same basic quadrants: knowledge acquisition, skill building, practical application, and extended learning. There a few elephants in the room on this topic, but the one I am going to acknowledge is failure. To achieve in school, students cannot fail. To fail means you are not learning. Conversely, out of school, students fail, make mistakes and change course. Here, failure does not hinder your success. To the contrary, it is part of the process, because to fail means you are actively pursuing an idea. Schools and out-of-school learning environments complement each other, but have an opposing focus. They are two sides of the same coin.

Ayanna Hudson

The NEA has required applicants to address assessment of student learning in their applications to the NEA's Art Works Arts Education category for many years. In our guidelines we state: "The National Endowment for the Arts is committed to rigorous assessment of learning in the arts. High quality assessment of knowledge and skills is critical to improving arts learning and instruction." In particular, we ask how applicant organizations use assessment aligned with state or national arts standards to measure learning.

Throughout the course of reviewing applications over the years, panelists and NEA staff observed that many applicants with wonderful projects serving children and youth were not clearly articulating their assessment methods. There seemed to be some organizations deeply committed to, and already expert at, authentic assessment of learning in the arts, but the majority of applicants spoke about assessment in broad terms, mixing up program evaluation and assessment, or citing assessment methods that did not seem authentic to the arts, for example mixing up the word "test" with assessment. Were people really assessing, say, music performance using a pencil and paper test? And what were organizations doing with the results of their assessment efforts; were they using the data to improve teaching, deepen learning, inform program design?

O.David Dietz

In an ARTSblog post by Erin Gough on July 23, 2013, teachers are encouraged to be champions for the arts in ways that are often not a part of college preparatory curriculum. Erin notes that “too often, teachers believe that as long as their students leave their class with a little bit of technical skills and a lot of inspiration, they've done all they can to prove their value.” She then continues to connect the role of student achievement in the arts, in the form of student performances, plays, musicals and visual art presentations, to the role of teachers as advocates for student achievement in the arena of public policy makers.As a retired music educator (one of Erin’s teachers, I’m proud to say!) I would concur that my experience with arts teachers would support the premise that these teachers shy away from the very people and decision-making opportunities that ultimately affect both their art and their ability to be employed. Advocacy for advocacy’s sake is not the realm in which these teachers thrive and provide leadership. However, arts teachers do thrive and provide leadership in a realm that is important to public policy makers at all levels: student achievement.

Current trends in educator effectiveness systems require that evidence of student achievement be attributed to teacher evaluation, often in equal proportion with teacher observation. Arts teachers have long known that student achievement is the primary focus of instruction, and they have provided evidences of that achievement in the ways that Erin describes: student performances, plays, musicals and visual art presentations. However, student achievement must now be examined from the perspective of each individual student that a teacher instructs, and not from the conglomerate success achieved by an art show or a music/theatre/dance performance.

In a recent survey conducted by the College Board of nearly 1000 K-12 principals and superintendents, more than 75% of respondents said that nationally, arts education should be given a greater priority level than it currently holds in American schools. They also indicated that they believe that the primary benefits of arts education are that they strengthen students’ creative thinking abilities, bolster cognitive development, contribute to a well-rounded educational experience and enhance students’ emotional well-being. However, when asked what factors could most effectively work in favor of keeping arts programs in schools, school leaders responded the arts curricula need to clearly address state educational standards (in the arts as well as in other subjects), college admission requirements, and the Common Core standards. These two sets of answers at first seem unrelated, or at least as if they reflect completely different sets of priorities, but they are both true: the arts do provide significant and wide-ranging benefits including those cited by the administrators surveyed; recent research credits arts participation with bolstering creative thinking skills, increasing graduation rates, and improving students’ overall engagement with school. On the other hand, arts educators also know that the security and continuity of their programs often relies on their ability to draw connections between the activities of their classrooms and the content and skills emphasized in non-arts subjects. These kinds of connections don’t need to feel forced or artificial: arts experiences do authentically engage students in habits of problem solving, presenting their own original ideas, and analyzing and interpreting the ideas of others – all skills central to the Common Core, and to studies across the curriculum.

Nelle Stokes

Film historians are still arguing about who invented the motion picture camera in the late 1890s. Depending perhaps on the birthplace of the historian, it was either Thomas Edison in America, or the Lumiere brothers in France. More recently, the digital revolution has resulted in an explosion of online media production by homegrown filmmakers of all ages, across the globe. Every sixty seconds, another 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube.

It should come as no surprise to the arts education world that Media Arts has been announced as the ‘fifth arts discipline’ that will be part of the new National Coalition for Core Arts Standards (NCCAS). Due to be released in 2014, the standards will cover dance, media arts, music, theatre, and visual arts for grades PK-12.

These new standards are designed ‘to affirm the place of arts education in a balanced core curriculum, support the 21st-century needs of students and teachers, and help ensure that all students are college and career ready.’ I’ve been honored to be a part of the Media Arts Writing Team—a diverse group of dedicated educators, administrators and practitioners from around the country, working in the fields of video, gaming, design, theatre, media, film, animation, and digital imagery.

Since the Neolithic Revolution, apprenticeships were the career pathway towards master artist status. In addition, one had to have a patron to provide access to the resources of their craft. Twelve thousand years later, we have codified the artistic learning experience into a matrix of what students should know and be able to do, through specific benchmarks known as standards.

The first National Standards for Arts Education were issued in 1994. A coalition of national arts and education organizations will issue a twenty-first century update of the standards in early 2014.

Kristy Callaway (Executive Director of the Arts Schools Network and member of arts education council at Americans for the Arts) interviews Jim Palmarini (Director of Educational Policy at Educational Theatre Association and member of the leadership team of the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards) about the process of updating the national arts education standards.

Kristy: Please set this up for me. What is the back-story of the writing teams? How were they selected and assembled?

Jim: We have five writing teams working to rewrite the national standards in the content areas of dance, media arts, music, theatre, and visual arts. In October, 2011, the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards (NCCAS) leadership issued an online application process. We had more than 360 applicants, most of who were highly qualified and experienced in one or more arts discipline. What we were seeking in each team was a balance of individuals who had expertise in teaching, standards and curriculum writing, assessment, and, of course, practical knowledge in their area of expertise. The leadership of NCCAS selected the team members. The College Board managed the selection of the media arts team.

The full five teams have met twice in person—most recently this past July—but most of their work has been done virtually in webinars, phone conferences, and email discussions. Writing grade-by-grade PreK-12 standards is intellectually challenging and complicated work, especially when you are working to both honor what is unique about each art form and trying to find common ground across the content areas. And nobody is getting paid—this is a voluntary effort by a dedicated cadre of individuals who truly believe in the value of standards for students and educators.

Editor’s note: This piece was originally published in the newsletter for the National Art Education Association, and has been reprinted with permission.

Dennis Inhulsen

Nearly one thousand art educators from all parts have reviewed and provided feedback to our Next Generation Visual Arts Standards. I am pleased to report that reviewers have supported our work as “agree” or “highly agree” with 85% to 92% approval in all categories.  As chair of the team of art educators writing the standards, I am proud and amazed by their perseverance and professionalism demonstrated throughout the process. While still a work in progress, we are on a positive path to support art education for all students and the teachers that serve them.

What are Standards?

The Common Core State Standards Initiative define standards as:

Educational standards help teachers ensure their students have the skills and knowledge they need to be successful by providing clear goals for student learning.

Source: http://www.corestandards.org

Further, educational standards, are developmentally appropriate, assess with reliable measures, and pay close attention to the gaps of demonstrated learning for all students. Standards in education can be traced to the early 1980’s when a “Nation at Risk” was published prompting legislation by congress through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

Standards for Arts Education were first published in 1994 after the standards movement in education was well underway. Since the birth of the standards arts teachers have been increasingly held accountable to them. Our new standards reflect new practices in art education aligned to new challenges teachers face such as demonstrating growth in art for teacher effectiveness ratings and to help teachers with qualities that matter most transferring learning into adulthood. NAEA in partnership with the National Coalition of Core Arts Standards in the local autonomy of teachers and is striving to write standards that can be adapted to a wide variety of teaching and learning conditions. The standards further make the case for more learning in and through the arts.

Through feedback review it was noted that there is a fine line between standards and instruction & curriculum. Indeed, standards in the new Common Core for English Language Arts & Math oftentimes have a tone suggesting “how” to teach not “what” to teach. Like our standards, they are a hybrid of sorts providing enough detail for teachers to assimilate for unit planning.

Kristen Engebretsen

I hope that everyone has enjoyed reading the thoughts from leaders both in and outside our field during this blog salon in honor of National Arts in Education Week.

As we design and teach our youth programs, we need to keep the end in mind. Where are our students going to end up? How can we help them get there? Our schools’ guidance counselors can’t do everything—they are overburdened, have little arts content expertise, and limited interaction with each student.

That means that it is up to teachers, parents, community members, and those of us that work at arts organizations to guide our students. We need to give students real world experiences, provide them field trips to community organizations and businesses, inform them about career options, and guide them to areas where they are motivated and can excel.

During the salon, we heard examples of how this is already happening:

1)     Alyx’s story about helping students with their first job.
2)    Deutsche Bank’s collaboration with the Partnership for After School Education to create a comprehensive Youth Arts Career Guide.