This is the second in a series of success stories about how arts organizations, states, schools and other entities are using funding from the American Rescue Plan (ARP) and the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) to support arts education. Prince George's County Public Schools (PGCPS) is one of the nation's 20th largest…

The 2015 passing of Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to replace No Child Left Behind was celebrated within the arts community (Arts Education Partnership, 2017; National Art Education Association, 2017; Walker, 2016) for embracing a "well-rounded education" that explicitly includes the arts in its definition (ESSA, 2015, p. 298). In…

Howard Gardner is a superstar among many art educators. He has written dozens of books, translated into 32 languages, that explore the mind, ethics, education, and the arts. His revolutionary theory of multiple intelligences is still a major influential force today. Gardner grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the son of parents who left wartime…

The 1994 National Standards for Arts Education were succeeded by a new generation of standards published in 2014 by the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards (NCCAS). This iteration of voluntary standards provided a new foundation for designing curriculum for visual arts education. The design of the standards utilized the curriculum model…

Just for a change, would it not be nice to hear talk about keeping and/or expanding full-time art specialists' presence in schools and maintaining strong art education programs at the college and university level? That conversation could result from the positive arguments we are providing in this article. The purpose of this article is to clarify…

Looking for a K--12 art teaching position can be a daunting endeavor. What do school district administrators and art teachers feel is important when hiring visual arts teachers and how do they carry out the job search process? This is a question author Lisa LaJevic often hears from her preservice art teachers as they near the end of their college…

This article addresses the standards of technology in the visual arts, arguing the standards function as de facto policy, the guidelines that shape what teachers teach. In this study, we investigate how art education standards approach technology as a teaching tool and artmaking medium, analyzing the current National Visual Arts Standards, the…

National Coalition for Core Arts Standards (NCCAS) Writing Team member Marilyn G. Stewart discusses what to expect from the new "next generation" Visual Arts Standards, detailing the 4 Artistic Processes and 15 Enduring Understandings. This invited essay addresses the instructional aspects of the standards, and looks at how they can help…

What could video games bring to a K-12 visual arts curriculum? Overby and Jones were skeptical about incorporating gaming and virtual worlds into the classroom, but watching their own children engaging in the video game Minecraft changed their perception. As they started researching the game and how these kids were operating within the space, they…

Media arts has been familiar to many through television, film, and digital graphics, and often appears as an extension of the four traditional arts disciplines: music, arts, theatre, and dance. As media arts continues to acquire its own unique identity, particularly through technological means, it has been included as a stand-alone discipline in…

Classroom assessment is a hot topic in K-12 education because of compelling evidence that assessment in the form of feedback is a powerful teaching and learning tool (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). Although formal evaluation has been anathema to many art specialists and teachers (Colwell, 2004), informal assessment in the form of feedback is not.…

This article provides a transcript of an interview with Olivia Gude, member of the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards Writing Team. In the interview, Gude provides an overview of the process for writing the new visual arts standards.

Until last year, Ohio had in place a rule requiring a minimum level of staffing for music, visual arts, physical education, counselors, librarians, nurses, social workers and visiting teachers. School districts had to have at least five of these eight positions for every 1,000 students. In March 2015, the State Board of Education eliminated this…

What role can district visual art administrators play in articulating an educationally valuable conception of creativity and in establishing a culture that targets creativity as an educational goal? How can art administrators help teachers implement creativity goals? How can they communicate creativity's importance to principals, parents, and…

Advocacy is not new to art education. Over the years, Goldfarb (1979), Hodsoll (1985), and Erickson and Young (1996) have written about the importance of arts advocacy, but the concept of advocacy has evolved with the times. For example, in the 1970s, arts advocacy was described as a "movement" and brought together art educators,…