As a result of Race to the Top, states across the country vied for school improvement grants in order to advance educational reforms including effective professional development and teacher collaboration within their school districts. Requirements of the grant included the development of teacher evaluation systems and a professional development…

This article is a response to Shuler's 2001 article predicting the future of music education. The respondent assesses Shuler's predictions, finding that many have come true but critiquing Shuler's overall positive assessment. The respondent then goes on to make one prediction about the future of music education: that algorithms will…

Changes in education policy--particularly at the federal and state levels--during the current era of ideologically and profit-driven "education reform" threaten balanced education in general and music/arts education in particular. Emerging answers to a number of pivotal questions will determine the future of the arts, arts education, and…

In considering how policy work might forward arts education, it is helpful to reflect on the present state of music and arts education while looking ahead at future challenges and possibilities. This response to Shuler's (2001) set of predictions related to music education and policy in the twenty-first century addresses such work in the…

Arts education and special education within public schools have faced similar challenges in the wake of school reform. Services and programming have been reduced, leaving a larger gap in resources and accessibility. Because of loopholes in policy, new reform initiatives such as vouchers and charter schools will continue to marginalize students…

This article reports on an interview with Marcia McCaffrey, the state arts consultant for the New Hampshire Department of Education and current president of the State Education Agency Directors of Arts Education (SEADAE). The discussion revolved around how the new arts standards may interact with evolving structures of arts teacher evaluation…

This article explores the views of children's poet Michael Rosen in relation to poetry in education. It is based on an interview in which Rosen not only discusses the significance of encouraging young people to engage with poetry at school but also analyzes a number of threats to poetry's place in the English curriculum. This article…

The recruitment and retention of the highest-quality artist educators in colleges and universities is a key element in supporting strong K-12 arts education programs. Artist educators must be expert in at least two disciplines: their art forms and education. However, the peer review processes commonly employed to recommend higher education faculty…

Assessment is essential to all forms of work in the arts. Successful arts assessment concepts, patterns, and methods have evolved over many centuries. They are inherent in all arts teaching and central to art-making at all levels of proficiency and sophistication. And they work: achievements in the arts are among the highest in civilization. At…

Prior research suggests that the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is having an adverse effect on school music programs, particularly in schools that have not made "adequate yearly progress." In many instances, music programs are being reduced or eliminated, music teachers are being required to assist with the teaching of other subjects,…

The rhetoric of the creative economy agenda has influenced the revised Ontario curriculum in the arts for grades 9-12. Yet, increasing rhetorical and substantive support for a creative economy agenda in Ontario at large is not sufficiently reflected in the revised Ontario arts curriculum. The expanded agenda is not matched by expanded substantive…

An immediate critical task of the arts education field is to resolve the polarities of low-quality integrative and overly marginalized discipline-specific approaches to teaching in schools. In pursuing this challenge, the author defines three teaching approaches--arts as craftsmanship, arts as play, and arts as inquiry--and calls for re-weighted…

President Obama recently described America's current economic, societal, educational, and technological circumstances as "our generation's 'Sputnik' moment." If history repeats itself in the twenty-first century, music educators may face a situation similar to that which developed in the 1960s concerning the impact of education reform on music…

The chairs of four arts education professional organizations--Jane Bonbright of the National Dance Education Organization, Michael Butera of the National Association for Music Education, Lynne Kingsley of the American Alliance for Theatre and Education, and Deborah Reeve of the National Art Education Association--were individually interviewed for…

School-based management, or local school control, is an organizational school reform effort aimed at decentralizing school decision-making that has become prevalent in districts throughout the United States. Using the groundbreaking Chicago system of local school control as an exemplar, this article outlines the implications of such reform efforts…