This document presents a portion of the report of the National Council on the Arts including one researcher's thoughts as he wrote the report, along with possible implications and ramifications for art education. Researched and written to characterize the state of U.S. arts education in 1988, the report concludes that arts education cannot be characterized as ever having been a national curriculum. Local control of the schools predominates and the degree of curricular autonomy varies greatly among the states. Each of the 50 states has a unique tradition of support for art in schools. To one degree or another, each state allocates a part of its statutory and regulatory authority to local school districts. In practice, most of the decisions regarding visual arts curricula are made by the 50,700 special art teachers and the approximately 576,378 classroom teachers whose responsibility it is to teach art in U.S. schools. The report mapped the world of art education both quantitatively and qualitatively. Because presenting a characterization of arts education through statistics, requirements, and mandates would provide no real information regarding the practice of arts education, the report presented a parallel account, a narrative or story of life in the arts classroom. After surveying the arts classrooms at the elementary, middle, and high school levels, the report concluded that U.S. arts education is characterized by imbalance, inconsistency, and inaccessibility. The report presents a strategy for the reformation of arts education with attention directed toward crises and the conditions for reformation. (DK)