This article is adapted from the Handbook of Research and Policy in Art Education. Elliot Eisner and Michael Day (eds.) [c] 2004 by Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates, Mahwah, NJ, and the National Art Education Association. To study art education is to discover and engage a field rich with achievement and promise. On one hand, this comes as no surprise because art education encompasses and embraces great artistic and intellectual traditions of work in and about visual form, each of which with its own habits of mind, approaches to achievement, and history. On the other hand, the accomplishments of art educators in the United States represent something special. Many contextual factors work against serious instruction in things visual. Gains in art education have been purchased through the extraordinary dedication of individual teachers working alone and in groups. In one sense, art education in the United States is defined by the unremitting struggle to sustain a reasonable purpose: developing basic visual knowledge and skills in individual students. The field of art education is deeply concerned with art content, but it is equally concerned with technique and methodology. The field includes attention to studio technique, scholarly technique, research technique, educational technique, evaluation technique, and so forth. Like other school disciplines, the field of art education has done a lot of deep thinking about teacher preparation. Standards, constant professional discussions about methodology, curriculum and methodological philosophies, and from time to time an overabundance or shortage of teachers, are all standard subjects. The field of art education is naturally concerned about standards and resources. Standards based on great achievements in the fine arts, design, crafts, architecture, film, etc., exist and continue. It seems at the point in its development, the field of art education would benefit most from an overt intelligence operation based in a few universities, connected to applicable policy issues, and devoted to supporting the field's powerful and critical interests in increasing and advancing student learning. (Contains 4 notes.)