As part of an ongoing study of the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the Center on Education Policy (CEP) conducted a deeper analysis of 2006-07 survey data first reported in July 2007 on the amount of instructional time devoted to specific subjects. This follow-up report takes a closer look at the shifts in instructional time for…

Exploring the complicated issues of assessment in the arts, the authors discuss assessment of arts education and arts programs from a qualitative perspective: experiential, naturalistic, and ethnographic interpretation. With special attention to the practices of teaching, learning, and administration of education in the arts, quality is sought…

A new study has found that state requirements that students pass exit tests to graduate from high school appear to do nothing to improve achievement on federal reading and mathematics tests. The study, the results of which have been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in the journal "Educational Policy," compared the reading and math scores…

In 2004, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) published "Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America." This detailed study showed that Americans in almost every demographic group were reading fiction, poetry, and drama--and books in general--at significantly lower rates than 10 or 20 years earlier. The declines were steepest…

In this article, the author offers a short summary of the findings of the National Endowment for the Arts report on the status of reading, "To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence", and an explanation of the guiding rationale for the study and some future areas of research that seem warranted in light of public responses to the…

After more than 20 years of lamentation, exhortation, and little improvement, writes the author, perhaps it is time to ask a fundamental question: Can critical thinking actually be taught? People who have sought to teach critical thinking have assumed that it is a skill, like riding a bicycle, and that, like other skills, once learned, it can be…

Educational quality is a central issue in higher education and music teacher education. In this article, the author discusses problems concerning the development of and research into quality in music teacher education in Western societies' contemporary socio-cultural dynamics. He begins with a presentation of the concept of educational quality,…

The author investigates the condition of a public school's arts education program under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act and obtains teachers' perspectives on their experiences under the federal policy. The author used qualitative and quantitative approaches to conduct a case study of an Ohio public school district. The data collected revealed…

Academic programs use objective and standardized assessment criteria. Music education programs have avoided such objective assessments via the assertion of subjectivity and aesthetics in music learning. In this article, the author introduces the revised Bloom's taxonomy as a tool to translate music education outcomes into objective educational…

This article presents a new alphabet of the arts that shows how the arts world has been transformed the past five years. Beginning with "A" for assessment and continuing through "Y" for year end, the ABC of the arts illustrates the ways in which the arts world is judged, managed, and evaluated, and shows that the skill of arts management is to…

Arts organizations that partner with schools to design, implement, and evaluate arts education programs are rethinking traditional practices of evaluation to more directly engage school partners, artists, and administrators. External arts partners are also being held accountable for learning outcomes that result from their programs. In this…

From an administrative perspective, this article investigates equity issues in dance education, and current challenges and opportunities for leadership in postsecondary dance programs involved in teacher education and certification. Although dance education is varied in content and environment, much is shared in terms of common goals for gender…

In this article, the author revisits a case study presented in "Arts Education Policy Review" 105(1) in September/October 2003. The author discusses Arts Collaborator's Incorporated's (ACI) efforts to educate the community about art and about arts opportunities in River City. Themes visited in the discussion are community development through the…

In this article, the author discusses current challenges to the idea of teamwork in fine arts teams, redefines the terms team and collaboration using a business management perspective, discusses the success of effective teams in the business world and the characteristics of those teams, and proposes the implementation of the business model of…

Music education has always required advocacy to solidify its place in the school curriculum. Music teachers are increasingly called on to justify their existence and importance in the schools, and yet, are often unprepared to advocate on their own behalf without the use of advocacy materials that are created on the basis of questionable research,…