Update on the national standards work
The National Coalition for Core Arts Standards (NCCAS) is seeking a project director to coordinate and facilitate the writing and delivery of new Pre-K-14 arts standards for dance, media arts, music, theatre, and visual arts.
The current National Standards for Arts Education have been adopted or adapted by forty-nine state departments of education, and have become the benchmark document by which K-12 arts learning is measured in dance, music, theatre, and visual arts. Curriculum designers, teacher training programs, funders, and federal and state policy makers have relied on the 1994 national arts standards to help guide their decision-making.
NCCAS will begin revision of the current standards this fall, and will release the next generation standards in December, 2012. Interested applicants should go to NCCAS Project Director to review and download the application guidelines. The Deadline for applying is August 26, 2011.
SEADAE President Deb Hansen notes;
“Development of National Core Arts Standards is a critical and very timely, state-led effort to strengthen learning in the arts. The current National Standards in the Arts, ground-breaking in 1994, continue to guide effective learning today. Yet much has changed in what and how students learn. The design of intentional learning goals will inform future state and local work, including curriculum re-design, instructional planning and delivery, student assessment, teacher accountability, and program evaluation. SEADAE looks to the collaborative expertise of its states’ educators and its national content and cultural partners to strive for equity, access, and excellence in arts education for all students across the nation.”
NCCAS is committed to developing a next generation of voluntary arts education standards that will build on the foundation created by the 1994 document, support the 21st-century needs of students and teachers, help ensure that all students are college and career ready, and affirm the place of arts education in a balanced core curriculum.
Membership in the coalition was formalized and a strategy framework developed following a February meeting at the New York City headquarters of the College Board. NCCAS governing organizations are:
American Alliance for Theatre and Education (AATE)
Arts Education Partnership (AEP)
Educational Theatre Association (EdTA)
MENC: The National Association for Music Education (MENC)
National Art Education Association (NAEA)
National Dance Education Organization (NDEO)
State Education Directors of Arts Education
The College Board gathering of the coalition was the culmination of a state-led organizing process that began in May, 2010, at a meeting convened by SEADAE in Washington, D.C. and attended by the above groups, eighteen state departments of education, and eight other national arts and education organizations. In the past year, state directors of arts education and the NCCAS partners have held a series of web-based meetings designed to help refine the needs, expectations, and timeline in the arts standards rewrite process.
NCCAS will make the creation of the new arts standards an inclusive process, with input from a broad range of arts educators and decision-makers. The revised standards will be grounded in arts education best practice drawn from the United States and abroad, as well as a comprehensive review of developmental research.
In creating the next generation of core arts standards, the primary goal of NCCAS is to help classroom educators better implement and assess standards-based arts instruction in their schools. Toward that goal, the revised arts standards will address 21st-century skills, guide the preparation of next-generation of arts educators, and embrace new technology, pedagogy, and changing modes of learning.
NCCAS’s current timeline includes the creation of discipline writing teams in November, 2011, which will be followed by a six-month period of writing, review, and revision draft work.
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