Arts Education: Highlights of the NAEP 1997 Arts Assessment Report Card

摘要

In 1997 the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly called The Nations Report Card, conducted a national assessment in arts education at the eighth-grade level. The arts assessment measured students literacy in the arts through their knowledge and skill in creating, performing, and responding to challenging, innovative test exercises. This brief report provides samples from and highlights of that assessment. The assessment established new ground for measuring student achievement. It proved that arts and other complex educational experiences could be measured in a large-scale assessment using authentic measures that allow students to demonstrate their knowledge and skill in performance settings. The arts assessment produced a wealth of information about what eighth-grade students know and can do in music, theatre, and the visual arts. The results are important to the nation because the arts manifest a special form of literacy that makes use of visual images, sounds, movements, gestures, and the whole range of human intellect and emotion to understand the human condition, develop innovative ideas, and inform our decisions in fundamental ways. If the arts are about creativity, innovation, new ideas, working together to produce excellence, and the ways in which individuals find a voice for expression, then our nation has cause to reflect deeply on these findings.