Questions About Arts Learning That National Assessment of Educational Progress Can Help Answer

• In Event: Discussing Educational Policy and Implications of Efficacy in the Arts as School Subject Areas: NAEP to Teacher-Made Assessment to Subject Area Growth

Abstract

The lead project officer for NAEP 2008 Arts University Consortium opens the symposium with a general treatment of the NAEP program of periodic Congress reviewed assessments in subject areas, for the specific purpose of establishing the current strength of music and visual art subject areas within schools.
The first question draws from the item mapping in the 2008 testing for music and visual arts where understanding of contemporary art emerges solely in the upper quartile of the NAEP Reflection scales for music and visual art. A second question explores examples of breaks in understanding uncovered using SPSS/AMOS structural analyses. Particularly, the path analysis of the portrait block of 1997 (unpublished graphic by Diket & Thorpe, 2001) was replicated with restricted data from NAEP Arts 2008.
The NAEP Arts 2008 kept larger programs in the arts in the assessment battery of core subjects (see Nations Report Card Art 2008; Music and Visual Art, 2009)). At the same time, a school questionnaire collected data about the availability of theatre and dance in schools—as course offerings, extracurricular activities at school, and performance viewing. Students questionnaires coded their in-school and out of school experiences with music; visual arts selected subjects reported similar information about visual art experiences.
Statistical analysis of core content areas, using government gathered data, provides scientific credence to policy decisions relating to findings. As such, NAEP data functions as a resource for in-process decision making to make visible content and media trends and attitudinal markers affecting the arts learning in schools and communities. Arts researchers also express their interpretations as part of the process with NAEP testing cycles (i.e., see Grey, 2009; Hatfield, 2007; Chapman, 2007). Laura Chapman work, beginning in the 1970s with NAEP Arts, continues in this decade with her analyses of national legislation and policies, and publication of ongoing observations about the state of arts education.
NAEP tests the general knowledge base of the subject, but its structured blocks start with formative questions that fund reasoning in the upper levels of blocks. The student enters a question series by recording critical observations which move from intuitive responses to symbolic understanding, then to notation. At its upper level, NAEP ties the initial reading to meaning/interpretation, and then further to communication/reflection about the critical process—when successfully completed, a block documents how students came to understand significant aspects of musical selections or image referents. NAEP points its questions toward general cultural recognition and historical awareness. Without question, NAEP Reflection scores represent complex thinking patterns about fundamental responses that are valued components of achievement associated with examining an image closely or listening attentively to music. What NAEP does not do is test directly the current philosophies in the arts, discipline knowledge, and content emphases that surely vary at the school level. NAEP does look to some of those issues by collecting information about the use of national standards or state/district frameworks. This allows secondary analysts sufficient n to explore possible variation explainable with this information.

Author

• Read M. Diket, William Carey University