The National Standards of Music

National Standards are gaining more and more ground in DC. Read this article first. As always, arts are left out of the discussion. I doubt many people care, but I believe that long term, this is important for the arts to get on the same menu as English, Math and Science. There already are national standards for the arts.

Will these be recognized? How will national standards in math and English be incorporated to current ones?

To be honest, the Illinois State Learning Standards are worthless for the arts. Read them, and then return to the national standards. Even a layman can see how much better the national standards are.

I wish there was more accountability in the arts. I wish our assessments were reported in the school report card. I'm not sure how many arts educators agree with me. School accountability is here to stay and I think some subjects have been slow on the uptake. Can you imagine schools losing federal funds because their don't meet AYP based on the arts. Can you imagine administrators losing their jobs? I can only see positives from this.

What would my standards look like? Here are two general points:

1. Students must be able to create art.
2. Students must be able to appraise art. (Notice I did not use appreciate.)

The first point is probably WAY ahead of the second. Let's be honest, we really aren't good at teaching art appraisal. We struggle to appraise teacher quality for heaven's sake! Hopefully the national standards are more intricate and go further than what we currently have. Many people claim this would lead to a national curriculum. Um......did I miss something? Don't we already have that somewhat? All students take two standardized tests (ACT, SAT) which reflect basic curricular material. All students take similar subjects and I believe most curriculum are already fairly close to each other. You lose autonomy for accountability but you gain quality. More on this soon....