We recently completed the last review of the National Core Arts Standards and are in our final revisions of those documents. We are hoping for an official and final release date of these standards on June 4, 2014. We will continue to build practitioner developed
model cornerstone assessments over the course of the next year(s) which will assist teachers in the creation of curriculum embedded instruction and assessment practices. I see great implications for this work to assist you in developing authentic assessments as well as a tool to utilize within emerging teacher evaluation processes at the local school district level.
Some of the most valuable attributes of the new standards include:
-Understanding by Design Framework: A backwards planning framework that allows for flexibility and unification all arts areas to consistently focus on "big ideas" that prepare students for the 21st century. UbD is a commonly used curriculum/assessment process that focuses on a flexible framework that anchors the work in big ideas, and then backwards planning toward the instructional and assessment level incremental steps.
-21st Century Skills: Connections which prioritize the arts and their inherent innovation and learning skills seen in their "4Cs'" of critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity.
-Common Core Connections: Common Core does value and prioritize deep analysis of subject matter, often times specifically including and naming the visual and media arts. I believe there are especially strong opportunities to expand the definitions of "literacies" in this work as there are specific values placed on visual and media literacies. Literacy will no longer be relegated to simply textual literacy.
-Arts areas to include: dance, media arts (first time ever), music, visual arts, & theater
-Cornerstone Assessments: National models of arts education assessment tools
-Current Educational Paradigm: Focus on Philosophical Foundations, Lifelong Goals, Enduring Understandings, Essential Questions, and Model Cornerstone Assessments.
-Grade Level Standards: PK-12th grade instead of grade bands for increased specificity for state and local adoption. High School will have three levels of proficient, accomplished, and advanced.
-Anchor Standards: for various components - centered in the artistic processes of creating, presenting, responding and connecting (new across all art forms).
For all of the nationally released Core Arts Standards documents, please see this link.
For additional detail, please see my Prezi below and view the supportive material within it.
