Arts Education/Youth

The NEA commissioned WestEd to examine current trends, promising techniques, and successful practices being used to assess student learning in the arts throughout the country, as well as identify potential areas in which arts assessment could be improved. Although the original intent of the study was to identify strong models of assessment practices that could serve as examples for possible replication, the study found that such models were not available and are in fact a need of the field. Thus, this report provides a description of the current state of arts assessment, including a review of the high-quality literature available, common practices being used to assess student learning, and needs of the field to improve arts assessment.  

The Arts and Achievement in At-Risk Youth: Findings from Four Longitudinal Studies examines arts-related variables from four large data sets–three maintained by the U.S. Department of Education and one by the Department of Labor–to understand the relationship between arts engagement and positive academic and social outcomes in children and young adults of low socioeconomic status (SES). Conducted by James Catterall, University of California, Los Angeles, et al., the analyses show that achievement gaps between high- and low-SES groups appear to be mitigated for children and young adults who have arts-rich backgrounds.

As part of its goal to make quality, sequential arts education a reality in all public K-12 classrooms in Los Angeles County, Arts for All connects school districts with effective tools and resources to improve arts learning. The Arts for All School Arts Survey: Measuring Quality, Access and Equity in Arts Education is the most recent of these tools to be introduced. It was developed to measure access to and quality of arts instruction at the school site level as well as to develop a system for collecting and reporting the data. The results are useful to schools and school districts to find out what is working, what’s not working, and to point the way toward improvement. But the results can also provide a picture of what’s happening across a region.

Findings include:

• Secondary schools are doing moderately well in delivering the instruction they can currently afford to offer. They have expert instructors, monitor student progress, showcase their best work, and keep parents informed of activities and performances.
• College and career preparation in the arts resulted in very low index scores and merits further investigation.
• Elementary schools revealed a lack of accountability, an absence of school-wide plans for arts education, a lack of adequate time in the teaching day, and a constant pressure to meet academic targets in math and reading.
• Developing and adopting supportive arts policies could help set a clearer course for incremental change over time.

This first look report presents selected findings from a congressionally mandated study on arts education in public K-12 schools. The data were collected through seven Fast Response Survey System surveys during the 2009-10 school year. This report provides national data about arts education for public elementary and secondary schools, elementary classroom teachers, and elementary and secondary music and visual arts specialists. A later report will present findings on a broader set of indicators on the status of arts education in 2009-10 and comparisons with data from the 1999-2000 study where applicable.