Arts Education Standards, Assessment Focus of NEA Webcast
The National Endowment for the Arts will host Improving Arts Learning through Standards & Assessment: A National Endowment for the Arts Research Roundtable, a webcast and roundtable discussion, on Tuesday, February 14, 2012 beginning at 8:30AM and running to 3:00PM EST. No pre-registration is necessary. To view the webcast simply log on to the NEA’s website at the scheduled date and time.
As the field of educational assessment advances, and as alternatives to standardized tests emerge, the tools used to evaluate student learning, such as portfolio reviews, are beginning to gain greater currency. Given this development, it is even more important to examine arts educational standards and assessment tools to ensure that arts learning can become a vital force for enhancing 21st -century skills. This is the first time that the NEA will take a comprehensive look at this issue via the roundtable, webcast, and new research report, Improving the Assessment of Student Learning in the Arts: State of the Field and Recommendations (.pdf, 2.1Mb).
NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman and the U.S. Department of Education Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement James H. Shelton III will open the roundtable. Following the welcome, a series of panels and presentations will examine the latest trends, current practices, and future directions for arts learning standards and assessment methods. An invited audience seated with the panelists will have the opportunity to ask questions. For those watching online who would like to submit questions, you can do so via Twitter with the hashtag #NEAartsed. Panelists will respond to key questions from online viewers on the NEA’s Facebook page following the webcast. Visit the NEA’s Facebook page beginning February 8, 2012 for “Meet the Moderators” posts in which the four moderators will respond to the question of why standards and assessment are important for a high-quality arts education.
Improving the Assessment of Student Learning in the Arts: State of the Field and Recommendations will be the topic of the 11:15AM roundtable session. Commissioned by the NEA from the evaluation firm WestEd, this national research report describes the current state of arts learning assessment tools and techniques. It provides a description of the current state of arts assessment from the perspective of two groups of stakeholders: district and school staff as one group, and policy-makers, arts organizations, and researchers as a second group. That report includes a literature review and an examination of stakeholders’ experiences with assessment, common practices, and needs of the field as identified by stakeholders.