In federal arts education policy, supporting special events means that the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) promotes visiting artists in the schools or partnerships between schools and professional presenting organizations. An ideal NEA, however, subordinates that to the larger task of promoting continuous local funding for sequential, discipline-based arts education programs. An ideal NEA--focused on art, as its charter demands, but strongly promoting arts education in the schools--would be useful to the nation. This is not because exposure to the arts leads to better reading or math skills. Such assertions have not been proved despite the probability that arts education may be of academic benefit to many students. The reason to advocate more emphasis on arts education is that the arts are major forms of human communication and provide a legacy of achievement to which all educated persons must have access. Arts education is basic because it develops imagination and creativity and produces understanding that is connected to everything from history to cultures. A federal agency devoted to popular culture, the avant-garde, and experience rather than study will not do much for the development of artistic work at the highest level or the development of individual citizens who understand such work. This article presents three suggestions for an ideal NEA. Together, these three suggestions give the NEA a reasonable role in education while clarifying where specific responsibilities for leadership, delivery, and funding for arts education really lie. They provide the basis for reducing the tensions created by NEA support for a second delivery system based on artists-in-schools programs, presenting organizations, and arts councils that both directly and indirectly compete for attention, resources, and credibility with the curriculum-based arts education community. (Contains 3 notes.)