New York’s State Education Department never runs out of bad ideas. It announced the creation of an arts advisory panel to begin planning for assessments of the arts. Of course, these assessments would determine whether students are “college-and career-ready.” In the future, arts teachers will learn how to teach to the state test instead of teaching the discipline that unleashes creativity and imagination.
Calling Pearson..
“NYSED is convening a panel to examine creating assessments to measure student growth, performance and college and career readiness in the Arts programs.
“The Department recommends that the Board of Regents commission an operational study that would establish criteria to identify and evaluate arts assessments in each discipline that signify college and career readiness as well as those that are truly worthy of Regents recognition. Similar to the approach used in career and technical education pathways, the proposed process would begin with the establishment of an Arts Advisory Panel.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I thought this was a joke. Are these people kidding? “They” are trying to take any possible joy out of learning and strip away the freedom of “art”. It is not something done to be judged, but a basic right to human expression.
I am disgusted by these people and in particular, by Bill Gates thinking he is God himself…who asked him to do anything in education with his zero experience? I don’t remember him being appointed to anything in the education field, yet he and his money are ruining education. If he didn’t have a bizillion $ nobody would listen to a word he said, nobody. I have had enough of this bullying, by admin., Duncan, Rhee, Gates and silicon valley poop starters. These people don’t know squat about the reality of teaching. Gates thinks he can speak for teachers after popping into their classroom for a brief visit….that is a dog and pony show…get real Mr. You haven’t a clue, not one.
Cue Munch’s “The Scream” They have offcially lost their minds.
Art Education in NYC Public Schools… RIP! Horrors… speechless…heartbroken at the level of stupidity.
Can’t wait to see their rubric for an efficient song.
I just read the memo to the Regents with all of its talk of a “Blue Ribbon Commission” and an “Expert Advisory Board” blah, blah, blah,….
Have these people no sense of irony?
Or, should I say, to paraphrase Joseph Welch’s famous words from the Army-McCarthy hearings, ‘At long last, have they left no sense of decency?’
If this gobbledygook memo exemplifies the style of non-fiction writing that the common core gurus hope to implant in our kids’ minds, we are all in even worse trouble than I thought.
Note to NYS Commissioner of Education John B. King and all your enablers and sycophants: please read Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.” Immediately.
Talk about “defending the indefensible”.
NYSED has officially “jumped the shark”.
Jumping the shark is an idiom created by Jon Hein that was used to describe the moment in the evolution of a television show when it begins a decline in quality, signaled by a particular scene, episode, or aspect of a show in which the writers use some type of “gimmick” in an attempt to keep viewers’ interest. The phrase is based on a scene from a fifth-season episode of the sitcom Happy Days when the character Fonzie jumps over a shark while on water-skis.
The usage of “jump the shark” has subsequently broadened beyond television, indicating the moment when a brand, design, franchise, or state education department ‘s policy evolution has hit the tipping point of incredulity.
One school in our area used a computer program that measures played or vocal note frequency and shows how far off the student produced a note from the absolute pitch. The computer can then calculate a grade. Of course, the program plays the music as well to instruct the student.
Maybe I’m crazy, but I think the crazier the ideas get (like Florida evaluating teachers through students teachers don’t even teach), the better off we MIGHT be. I get most worried when the Reformers get some sanity (even tiny amounts like the Gates/Duncan call for short moratoriums).
long post
Here is the 4-part pitch (not very logical) to arts educators who are supposed to be enlisted for an Arts Advisory Panel to go test-hunting and test-vetting (aided by experts in assessment).
1. “Work in the arts engages students in a complex array of choices and critical decisions that require goal seeking, persistence, overcoming technical obstacles and creative obstacles, and the search for solutions. 2. “In order to remain a nation of originators and creators, we must value these skills.” 3. “High quality arts assessments provide the type of reliable evidence needed to show attainment of desired learning.” 4. “Measuring student learning in the arts will offer relevant and reliable evidence of what students truly understand and know how to do.”
The Regents seem to be thinking about prevocational education in the arts, but here is what they really want. They want arts educators to find and vet a bank of “Regents approved” exams to be used for: “determining student achievement;” to “measure student academic growth in the arts (dance, music, theatre and visual arts), pre-school through twelfth grade;” and ”to identify especially strong arts programs by reviewing students’ performance on the identified assessments.”
How on earth did a quest for prevocational tests in the arts morph into quest to “measure student academic growth in the arts (dance, music, theatre and visual arts), pre-school through twelfth grade? ”
Heaven help the kids and the future of the arts in NY. Regent-approved pretest and posttest exams to measure academic growth in the arts?
The Regents approved tests are supposed to “signify college and career readiness” in music, dance, theater, and the visual art in addition to being “credible” exams by meeting additional standards such as the following:
Results are recognized by employers in an arts industry sector;
Results are acceptable for admission or credit in NY postsecondary institutions;
Exam rigor is “comparable to that of Regents examinations;” with other specifications.
This is a loopy announcement that starts with a poorly articulated national need, moves to prevocational education and winds up with children ages 3-5 in need of rigorous Regents-approved exams starting in pre-school and for college entry and career prep.
The Regents need to spend some time looking at wonderful arts programs—preschool, Kindergarten, elementary and secondary—and exercise due diligence to increase the number of these. They need to look at the dismal NY stats on cuts to arts teachers and the lower enrollments in arts courses those cuts helped to cause.
The Regents need to get some expert opinion and look at research to make good guesses about the role of talent, training, and affinities (without talent and training) among those who pursue studies and experiences in the arts—how educators, employers, college admissions officers, counselors, parents think about that.
NY Regents are operating in a state with a large metro area known as a world-class venue for the arts. This includes not-profits, many struggling to reach new participants and potential connoisseurs of arts. School programs are among the strongest predictors of life-long engagement with the arts. And there are arts-related wonderments throughout your state. When was the last time you discussed field trips—scheduling and financing these
How can these venues for experiencing art be sustained if you engage in “secure” testing of kids at every grade with questions on Regents-approved exams? Will you be thrilled or dismayed if your rigorous, and SECURE Regents-approved exams produce students who want to vomit, pee in their pants, or just stay home on test days? No opportunity here for instructionally embedded assessment. EXAMS under lock and key.
I think your unnecessary and thoughtless pursuit of exams in the arts will produce students who hate some of the subjects they would otherwise love to learn more about and experience, and perhaps because there are no intimidating, pre-and post-exams with a Regents brand on the results.
Suggestions: Leave any testing to postsecondary institutions. They have plenty of information about their requirements. If there are known employers looking for older students ready to learn in anticipation of a career, have them administer any specialized tests, or hire some interns or apprentices, hold some job fairs, offer scholarships, or enlist eager students in summer and weekend projects.
Why do I care about NY? Precisely because your state, along with California, is a supposed to have world-class talent, experience, and wisdom in the arts, including education in the arts…and not just for the talented 3% likely to pursue a career. The most recent information shows artists comprise 2.3% of the NY work force. Many are self-employed, work part time, work for less than 50 weeks a year, and for low wages even with a second job. Many of these low wage arts workers have college degrees and the degrees are in an unrelated field.
If you are a parent or worker in the arts, please think twice about this plan for costly, unnecessary, and unwise testing in preschools, Kindergarten, elementary and secondary schools. The Regents need to hear from art teachers in the New York State Dance Education Association, NYS Media Arts Teachers Association, NYS School Music Association, NYS Theatre Education Association and NYS Art Teachers Association as well as NY members in accredited art schools https://www.arts-accredit.org/ and all faculty in The University of the State of New York, not just those in the arts.
Testing in four more subjects is the last thing kids need. Teachers in the arts who think such tests will produce more time in the curriculum are barking up the wrong tree. Your arts standards were supposed to do that job. Tests will not help. Think before you waste you time and money on this venture.
Ask the Regents to give priority to restoring cuts, and getting more and better art instruction in every pubic school from well-qualified teachers. Add supervisors in the arts in larger districts, guarantee equitable funding for all students in all of the arts.
For the most recent data on the ups and downs in arts enrollments in your state go to http://www.p12.nysed.gov/ciai/arts/data.html
For job information in the arts, including a breakout for NY go to http://arts.gov/publications?field_artistic_fields_tid=All&keys=employment&sort_by=field_year_value&sort_order=DESC
This continued madness needs to cease. Good grief. By the very definition, the arts need to be open-ended, far reaching, fulfilling, expressive, and creative. Those are subjectively embraced by individuals, not by collective decision-making.
This defies logic. It upends common sense. It is a slap in the face to individual destiny. I am very sick of this.
One thing is certain, these “ideas” will convince everyone that he/she is a failure in more than one area of life (which we already know). This will place the “data” in permanent record. Sad. Sad. Orwellian madness.
So does this mean that DiBlasio and Farina are simple frauds? I’d rather it not, but…
“Fine Art VAMs”
What we really need
Are tests and fine art VAMs
Allowing us to weed
The poets from the DAMs
I like Byron, but I can’t dance to him.
I have been told that my dancing is a public safety hazard, I still try to do a Scottish creel, the clan requires it.
http://www.nationalartsstandards.org/
Looking forward to the team that will determine assessments for lunch, recess, and extracurriculars. The latter two could be included on an assessment of knowledge of dinosaurs and the dodo . . .
LOL. Don’t forget plan time and time spent at home in the evenings and on weekends. Summer break should be assessed, too. And, time sleeping. Monitor the teachers’ diet, exercise, expenditures on frivolity.
I’d like a test to determine happiness, myself.
My school is attempting that very thing with the playground split into “play zones” and staff assigned to each area to guide the designated games. Kids must rotate in groups to different stations each day.
Structured play. I know. Trying to work academics in to recess, as well, in the structured groups.
WTF?! Really?! SMH….That’s all I’ve got….
I’m trying to imagine Picasso and Jackson Pollock taking standardized tests to show their knowledge of art. It simply does not compute.
I was thinking the same thing. Or Frida Kahlo who self-taught…
Our goose is cooked. We do not have the power. We are fighting a rear guard action–including many parents who in my district want more and more STEM classes at
expense of the humanities and the arts.
Who is controlling the discourse? Who has decided that “college and career ready” Has anything to do with art in the first place? Does art really exist as a mainstream career? What are the numbers? How many art careers exist in America compared to say, accounting, banking, or plumbing careers? What is the annual salary? 401-K, health insurance, sick leave?
If music expresses “what cannot be said in words but must be said,” how do you write the question for a multiple choice test?
Art is a question, not an answer. We should be careful as we introduce our young people to the arts, that they are in the care of those who understand the “what” and “why” of art to the extent these questions can be understood at all.
To those who desire to assess art. Look first for definitions. Define art, then define abuse. That will give you the definition for art assessment.
There are bad ideas, worst ideas and insane ideas. Then there is this idea!
This time, take early art offensive action. Yes this panel is offensive to all artists of every age so fill the email boxes, USPS boxes, fax receptacles and social media sites of anyone who participates in the formation of this panel. Maybe an insider artist will whistleblow the people, places and dates for any future meetings related to this panel. If so swamp these confabs with every manner of child art, concert video, dance recital clip or poetry recitation since they can all be sent electronically. Our goose is NOT cooked unless we simply sit back and let it reduce to ash.
There are plenty of successful STEM professionals who will YouTube testify to how the ARTS gave them their career. The architect behind the great book Inventing Kindergarten, is just one example. Time to get out our watercolors, sheet music, modeling clay, Contact Improv, or keyboards and FIRE BACK as artistically and relentlessly as we can.
They’ll be targeting phys ed, next. No joke.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s meaningless or not. Control and accountability will be established, maintained, and measured.
It’s the business model. Nose to the grindstone. No slackers. Work is work. If it’s fun, it’s not work.
As Diane mentioned in a blog post a few months back … everyone needs to watch the silent movie “Metropolis” and I will add, read a few old novels … 1984, The Jungle, Animal Farm, Brave New World, Hunger Games, Divergent, The Giver, Fahrenheit 451 … We are creating a real mess.
I know. Mention it to people and they can’t believe it would ever happen here. But unless we unite and stand together, it can happen anywhere. Especially when the media is controlled by those who are creating the changes.
Yes, this is about the bosses’ gnawing need for control. Unless an art teacher’s productivity can be translated to data, the bosses at their computers have a hard time making claims about the success or failure of the teachers and the schools.
Nailed it, pardner.
It’s this need to quantify and, using those statistics, qualify work that’s being done. It’s what makes the business world tick and they people who are running the show, now, just don’t seem to want to give a nod to different method in the field of education.
These aren’t workplace adults who are being taught. They’re children and teens; all with varying needs according to their physical, mental, and emotional developments.
OK, I hope our goose is not cooked but we are going up against as gitapik says
the Control people…they are not people who respond to other points of view in
a compassionate way or in an insightful way. And they are powerfu. This may take a step by step response and
a case by case…I have nothing against stem subjects but I think it wrong to
take away arts programs and replace them with more STEM.I hope Gates,Coleman, Rhee are
going to be defeated and they will be eventually but it will take time and if Republicans win
in Midterms things, bad as they are now, will be worse…this is not going to be
an easy battle or war and we are lucky for this blog and Diane’s writing which is
as important to today as was the progressive writers who so influenced Teddy
Roosevelt…the situation now is especially difficult due to the President through
Arne Duncan not defending what is best–including arts programs in public
education. But I hope that eventually decency will prevail but as of now we
don’t have the power.
Just a terrible idea that will be destructive to good, authentic arts education.
A quick rule of thumb for state level policy makers should be to look at what NYS is doing and then go in a different direction.
They are already implementing ASW’s (Assessment of Student Work) here in NC. I keep trying to tell people it’s darn near impossible since one person’s art is another person’s junk. It will be interesting to say the least. Just another fad in education that needs to pass.
My child is assessed in the arts down here in Dallas, Texas. The tests are supposedly valid and standardized. This is part of the VAM pay program that the Texas Education Agency approved. In 2nd grade, in music, they take a test at the end of each semester that tests whether they can song on pitch and in tempo. They sing a solo. There is a written test about music terminology. In 5th grade they had to listen to and identify music and take a written test. It is totally obscene what they have turned music class into. For art they have to create an art portfolio that is digitized and then sent and “graded” at some far away place. My first grader has to take a written art test. This is why we will likely homeschool next year. Because DISD is largely an urban, poor and minority district, no one cares about the children and no one has risen up to speak for them. I can’t stay in public education when it tests and measures everything and turns my child into a piece of data.
“For art’s sake — and ours”
Art for art’s sake used to be
A valid end for you and me
Art for chart’s sake now is king
To validate the artsy thing
AGGGGGH!
Thank you Deb,
It is worth to repeat what you advise readers. I whole heartedly agree with your suggestion that everyone needs:
to watch the silent movie “Metropolis,” and
to read a few old novels … 1984, The Jungle, Animal Farm, Brave New World, Hunger Games, Divergent, The Giver, Fahrenheit 451 …
Also, thanks to Laura H. Chapman for her reminder that:
“Many artists are self-employed, work part time, work for less than 50 weeks a year, and for low wages even with a second job.”
“Many of these low wage arts workers have college degrees and the degrees are in an unrelated field.”
In conclusion, all puppet masters have taken advantage from the effort and the strong will from many artists in order to make profit from these artists’ freedom of expression. However, after two centuries of industrialized and digitized age, these puppet masters’ children of children start biting the hands (artists and working class) and the brain (educators and writers) that feed them. So, it is the imminent time for natural disasters will soon happen to wipe out all puppet masters and their followers who cannot use money or power to escape such as drought, flood, hurricane, tsunami, volcanoes, ice storm, …wherever they live or go on vacation. Back2basic.
Check out the Iowa Alliance for Arts Education and you’ll see they are waaaay ahead in arts assessment and arts curriculum. The Midwest is a very special place for arts education with really gifted educators and enormous public support.
Julie. I looked at the website. I found nothing about arts assessment, much cheerleading about STEM and STEAM.
In addition to the books and movies mentioned, people should listen to the album “Animals” by Pink Floyd…the pigs and dogs are running wild in education these days…time for the sheep to rise up in a real way-union leadership needs to step up and figure out how to mobilize and fight back rather than just meekly accepting this BS!
Say this isn’t so. Imagine all those little broken hearts. There is such joy in creativity and now they want to assess it?!?
Wait! This is a trick! The cost of assessing will impact the school systems so much that all arts teachers (what few are left) will have to be let go because the systems can’t afford to pay them if their subjects are to be tested subjects. Think of the money saved; no teachers, no tests, no supplies to be purchased. Clearly a win – win situation.
The best defense is a good offense.
Arts assessment (including art, chorus, band, dance and theater as well as PE and foreign language) is already underway in NC. Called ASW, it will be a total disaster.
I and several colleagues participated in this past year’s pilot just so we would know what to expect and hope to have some input on the final process. Teachers are supposed to choose 5 standards, and using work from 3 different students for each standard show growth from point A to point B. While there are a handful of visual art standards that will work with this process (mostly skill or memorization based standards), most standards are not written in a way that allow the teacher to show growth from point A-B.
During the assessment part of the process, my colleagues and I saw many outstanding projects and examples of student learning. However, because of the strict assessment guidelines, almost all of the teachers we looked at did not meet growth, even when it was obvious that student learning had taken place.
There are other problems with this process too numerous to mention. Even though I retired this past year, I am still keeping in touch with my friends that have to participate. My suggestion to all the arts teachers in NC is this. When it comes time for the assessment to take place refuse to volunteer. The assessment process is long and tedious. If no one volunteers, the whole process will collapse. And NC does not have the money to pay assessors.
Pray for us. Our state has lost it’s mind.
As long as the assessment is on TEACHING instead of LEARNING, nothing will change. The real National Standards were THE 8 PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING… things that were present in ALL the classroom practices of the the most successful teachers among the 20,000 studied by Harvard in the Pew funded research on effort -based learning in the nineties. I know… I was a cohort.
Who among us is a “Renaissance Person”? Are we all proficient in every endeavor? Can we be allowed to experimetn with skills and interests without having to meet some criterion referenced set of standards? Can we just be allowed to “be”?
I, for one, am sick to death of allowing some group of self-annointed experts determine what is the absolutely necessary to justify the existence of the course, the worth of the teacher and the proficiency of the student. In any type of music, art, or performance art, there are subjective nuances as to skill, beauty, nuance.
I personally feel that learning, itself, has these same subtleties. The joy of learning is the pursuit of interest, the encouragement of discovery, the pleasure of personal goals.
If these so-called masterminds have their way, we’ll be judged on everything we do as children, teachers, parents, adults, and senior citizens. One can only avoid this by possessing enough money to avoid the treachery of false evaluations.
In any case, none of us is proficient at everything we try, and certainly not at the same time! One can be taught to mimic or spew back some facts in a similar manner to another, but a person has to learn how to apply thinking intelligently at his/her own pace.
I am not sure how to stop this giant roll over.
You speak for me. The arrogance of some of the ‘supervisors’ who ‘observed my teaching, when 40 years of practice and success proved that children learned to think and to work, when in my practice. Arrogance.
http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
The additional absurdity of this is that some kids love art while other loath it. Some put in the effort while others just phone it in. Until the population at large understand the need for and value of arts education In relation to the intangible ways it contributes to creativity and critical thinking, ways that in the end translate into a person being more effective on most any job, the trend of a wide spread in arts literacy will continue. Likewise some lids are naturals with music and some just like to listen to it. The idea of attempting to quantify this to the extent that any salient features of arts education can be quantified on a test is beyond ridiculous. BTW, a similar effort is under way in Chicago with its own unique unintended consequences already apparent well before full roll out.
THis latest idea added to the unbelievably already existing testing obstacles to REAL JOYFUL SUCCESSFUL learning is another shock I. do think we, as a people, not ALL of us, but too many of us who have too much power in decision making, have totally lost
connections with what education should be and can be about- with all our research
describing the best ways people learn (Developmentally Appropriate Practices, etc.) we legislate the OPPOSITE. The ARTS, always on the fringe of curriculum directives, always
at risk for getting cut , always called ‘frills’ – the ARTS, our vitally important language of
the spirit, of creativity, of imagination, will now be crammed into an irrelevant, meaningless , expensive testing scheme. No wonder Vincent cut off his ear- he heard
schools were going to test in the ARTS and he was sure Starry Starry night would
be unacceptable due to painting his stars out of the box. Everyone SPEAK UP!
Write, lobby, call- do not let this ridiculous plan happen without an outcry.
NYC is the largest in the nation, and was the first one where the process to end public schools began. If you haven’t watched this, you will see real corruption and how it took us out.
https://vimeo.com/4199476