(Brent Wilson: A primer on arts assessment and a plethora of problems. Design for Arts in Education, January 1992, pp.

34-44)

A primer on arts assessment and a plethora of problems Brent Wilson

Depending upon which side of the arts assessment and evaluation issue educators currently find themselves, they could be either greatly troubled or greatly elated. From all the discussion and activity, those who are opposed to the idea of assessment might be concerned that arts education is about to be distorted beyond recognition by efforts to teach to tests. Just how elated or how discouraged should the pro- and con- assessment factions be? To be sure, there is growing pressure both from inside and outside the arts education community to assess and evaluate. Despite these pressures, the crucial questions remain: How close are we to developing the assessment and evaluation programs that would provide essential information about what students achieve from taking arts courses? How close are we to acquiring the information we need to truly improve arts education? How close are we to establishing comprehensive assessment programs in classrooms, schools, school districts, states, and the nation? Despite the current flurry of assessment, as a partisan evaluator, I take little comfort in the present situation. We in the arts education communities have not yet engaged in the kind of thinking necessary to develop comprehensive assessment and evaluation programs. At least five major issues need clarification. Let me list them. In arts education, the roles and functions of assessment and evaluation are still unclear; we lack an understanding of the variety of purposes evaluation might serve, and we have not yet given sufficient consideration to the types of evaluation that might be conducted. Even with all the talk about assessment and evaluation, there is still little actual demand for it within arts education. Expectations that arts assessment will occur have not been built into the system. Comprehensive assessment and evaluation programs will not be developed until they are required, until they are adequately funded, until arts educators are provided with the enormous amount of time needed to develop assessment programs, and until individuals acquire the expertise they need to establish comprehensive assessment programs. We have not developed adequate conceptions of the assessment activities that mightand that probably shouldtake place at different educational levels. We have not explored fully enough the differences in the kinds of assessment that might take place at the level of the individual student, the arts classroom, the school, the school district, the state, or the nation. Arts education assessment is conducted primarily by the individual teacher. Although teacher assessment is directed toward both creation and performance,

the criteria used to assess students is seldom made public. When teachers develop test, they tend to focus their efforts on the easily identified, trivial bits and pieces of knowledge and skill rather than on the holistic and integrated dimensions of interpretation, performance, and creation. Not only do we face the task of devising ways to assess the holistic aspects of experiences with the arts, we also face the equally difficult challenge of developing ways to classify, characterize, quantify, and report the results of assessment programs.

Each of these points merits a monograph. The most I can hope to do here is to outline some dimensions of these issues.

Roles, functions, and Purposes: A List of Possibilities I have yet to meet an arts teacher in the United States who does not think that the principal purpose of assessment and evaluation is to assist in the process of grading and reporting students progress. In the current dialogue about arts performance and portfolio assessment, I find that many teachers assume that the primary use of these procedures is to help them systematize and improve the grading process. This desirable function notwithstanding, obviously there is much more to assessment than evaluating students performances, processes, and products in order to arrive at a grade and report it to school administrators, students, and parents. Just what are the functions of assessment? For years, Peter Hermansa visual arts specialist at CITO, the Dutch National Center for Educational Measurementand I have discussed this question. Not long ago I asked Hermans to list the types and functions of assessment. In responding, he made the following important points: (1) the roles, functions, and purposes of assessment are not always clearly distinguishable from one anotherin some cases there is good deal of overlap, and in other cases roles and functions are distinct; and (2) different perspectives and requirements must be taken into accountthose of teachers, students, parents, administrators, policy makers, and so on. Table 1 presents assessment roles and functions drawn from Hermanss longer list, with a few additions, modifications, and explanations of my own. Table 1. The role, functions, and purposes of assessment Assessment role 1. Criticism 2. Grading 3. Qualification Function or purpose To inform a student or group of students about the quality of a performance or production To inform students, parents, etc., regarding achievement levels To decide which students may enter (or leave) a course or program (In the arts, selection is an

4. Placement 5. Prediction

6. Diagnostic 7. Didactic feedback 8. Communication 9. Accountability 10. Representation

11. Innovation 12. Implementation 13. Curriculum maintenance

important consideration for programs for the gifted) To identify the type or level of education most suitable for students in light of their capacities To point to future success or failuremost formal assessment instruments and the results of any informal assessment procedures have a degree of predictive validity To identify students with particular learning difficulties or attributes To provide direct and indirect feedback concerning every possible aspect of the teaching process To convey the results of the outcomes of educational program To provide information regarding the extent to which the goals posited for arts education have been achieved Assessment instruments, tasks, and scoring criteria can serve to operationalize, objectify, or exemplify what is meant by general or abstract arts educational goals To introduce new and novel elements into the arts curriculum To act as a powerful tool in the process of curriculum reform; what is to be assessed is more likely to be included To assure that components of arts curricula continue to be included

The first six assessment roles in Table 1 are directed primarily toward individual students (or, in some cases, to groups of students). Three typesqualification, placement, and predictionare sometimes called high stake because they can have an enormous effect on student future educational opportunities. The last seven types are directed toward program assessment, evaluation, improvement, and maintenance. When arts education practices are examined in light of the list of assessment roles, we find that only criticism and grading are used routinely. Assessment functions relating to communication, accountability, representation, innovation, implementation, and maintenance are seldom found. When we arts educators talk of assessment, it would be useful if we specified the assessment role, function, and purposes that we have in mind, When we hear our colleagues talk about assessment, we need to ask, What function, or what purpose, did you have in mind? Expectations, Requirements, and Establishment of Programs

If such an array of assessment roles, functions, and purposes exists, and if the information that might result from their use appears to be self-evident, then we might ask why there is so little assessment beyond the grading of student projects and teachers formative and summative criticism of the performances of individual students and groups of students. There are several answers to this question: First, arts teachers do what they are expected to do. They grade students because there is a contractual obligation to do so. They conduct formative criticism of students products and performances because teachers are generally not expected to assess their programs formally, they do not do so. There is no general requirement or expectation that evaluation should take place beyond that of the individual and groups of individuals in performing groups. Second, assessment, especially the formal assessment of an art program, generally requires standard sets of administration procedures and standard sets of scoring or analysis criteria directed toward an agreed-upon set of goals or objectives. The development of these standard procedures and criteria is dependent on group involvement and group consensus. Typically, arts teachers have come together to decide upon statements of goals and objectives, but they have not been expected to operationalize objectives into exemplary assessment tasks and procedures. Moreover, individual schools and school districts do not allocate either the funds or the time for assessment, nor do they make available consultants who would enable groups of arts teachers to engage in successful assessment development activities. Third, arts teachers have not been able to rely on standardized tests and procedures to assess in the arts. (A review of the standardized tests used in other school subjects tells us that, in this respect, we are fortunate not to have the standardized testing tradition to overcome) Fourth, valid assessment procedures that reflect the truly important outcomes of arts instruction are extremely difficult to develop. Moreover, the lack of demand for arts assessment has kept small the number of individuals with arts assessment expertise. It is not surprising that arts assessment is an underdeveloped enterprise. Let me characterize the situation as simply and as bluntly as I can. Without strong explicit expectations, without requirements, without financial assistance, and without assessment expertise, program evaluation based on data from student achievement will not be effected at the school, district, and state levels. Some forward movements have begun to stimulate the development of arts assessment and evaluation procedures. Let me name four: 1. South Carolina provides an excellent example, in that individual schools and school districts may apply for grants to develop arts curricular and assessment processes through two programsthe Arts in Basic Curriculum (ABC) project and a general statewide curriculum initiative, Target 2000, in which the arts are included.1 The evaluation of these two initiatives in South
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Carolina also includes the development of a comprehensive state-wide plan for assessment in the arts. 2. The Getty Center for Education in the Arts Regional Staff Development Institutes in Florida, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas are expected to develop student assessment processes to determine the success of experimental programs in participating school district.2 Three of the institutes have been given supplemental grants to assist in the further development of assessment strategies and processes. 3. The ARTS PROPEL project in Pittsburgha cooperative effort among three partners, the Pittsburgh public schools, the Educational Testing Service, and Harvard Project Zero3has taken the lead in developing strategies for the assessment of arts performance through process folios. The process folio, a variation on the portfolio, is a comprehensive collection of students creations and performances, not just a few finished pieces. 4. Individual states such as Connecticut (through the Connecticut Department of Education) have taken initial steps in the planning of process assessment procedures for the arts. The Connecticut process-oriented science assessment tasks are directed toward the solution of complex problems with a variety of acceptable solutions. In each of these four projects, it appears that an attempt has been or will be made to put aside trivia and fragments of arts learning in order to assess and evaluate the deeper, more whole, and the more important outcomes of art education. It is important to note that each of these projects has already developedor has the prospect of developingnew structures of expectation for arts assessment. As new assessment procedures are evolving, new expectations for their use are also being developed. The expectations, however, are limited primarily to the projects themselves. The implementation of these newly developing assessment procedures throughout arts education will require enormous resources and effort. As we develop arts assessment means, we must continue to develop a parallel set of expectations pertaining to the broad set of roles, functions, and purposes to which they might be put. A Taxonomy of Processes and Types Just as we need to consider the range of roles to be played by arts assessment, we also need to give careful attention to the selection of means and strategies for assessment. These choices will have a profound effect on the usefulness of the information gathered. In order to explain what I mean, it will be necessary to present a range of assessment types (see Table 2 for an overview of these options). In Table 2, the types of assessment are organized from the most general and holistic to the most specific. Philosophical and critical analyses and evaluations and ethnographic and naturalistic observational and reporting procedures are directed almost exclusively
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toward the evaluation of entire programs. The remainder of the types, from journals and portfolios to conventional tests, might be used either for program or for individual student assessment. In addition to a brief description of the assessment types, I have indicated the possible levels of application and made comments about the utility of each of the procedures. Table 2. Assessment types and processes Assessment type Philosophical and Critical analyses and evaluations Description Analyses of the assumptions and values tat underlie arts programs Possible level of application This is the first step in any evaluation process. It should be conducted in schools, school districts, states, and at the national level. These studies are particularly useful for program evaluation, especially for experimental programs that have been specially funded. These procedures seem to be appropriate for use at the special project, district, school, and classroom levels. Comments The values that underlie arts education programs are not stable. They emanate from the arts, education, and society. Procedures such as these are sometimes essentially descriptive and neutral. At other times they may be tied to philosophical and critical analyses. Systematically collected journals and responses from administrators, teachers, and students yield rich qualitative data about the programs. They are, however, extremely time consuming to analyze and difficult to generalize from. Consequently they tend to be used primarily for anecdotal purposes. The analysis of portfolios and

Ethnographic and The analyses of arts naturalistic educational settings observational and and events reporting procedures

Journals

Analysis of such things as journals and reaction cards and reaction cards that administrators, teachers, and students have been asked to prepare

Portfolios, processfolios, and

Analyses of students portfolios

Portfolios are especially

performances

and collections of recorded performances (Portfolios are broadly defined and might include the traditional collection of students visual works produced over a year or even several years time, collections of critical and historical writing about art, video tapes of performances, etc.)

Comprehensive holistic tasks

Belief and attitude batteries

Holistic tasks and exercises that assess students inquiry processes relating to an integration of creative and performance activities, critical analyses of works of art and performances, understanding of the history of the arts, and aesthetic issues (These tasks may be directed toward the students own artistic processes or toward the processes of others.) Batteries that assess students beliefs and attitudes relating to (1) the different

applicable to the assessment of individual and group progress in the arts and not as useful for program evaluation. Consequently, they are most appropriately analyzed at the classroom and school levels. Portfolio reviews also provide the basis for admittance of students to special arts programs, collegelevel programs, and granting advanced placement. Exercises such as these should be developed by district evaluation teams for use in all participating schools in the

records of performances is essential an act of criticism directed toward individual cases. If, however, standard criteria and analysis procedures were applied to portfolios of work across schools, the findings might also be applicable to program assessment.

If carefully prepared, integrated tasks can synthesize all of the major goals of an arts program into one exercise. The development of these synthesizing assessment procedures should be given highest priority.

Belief and attitude batteries could be used throughout a state, across

If properly prepared, belief and attitude batteries could yield an enormous

dimensions of their arts program, (2) the inquiry processes associated with the arts, the (3) beliefs and attitudes pertaining to works of art

Traditional tests

Traditional tests and instruments that assess students knowledge and understanding associated with works of art, i.e., classifications of style, period, and date; identification, attribution, terminology, interpretations of meaning, etc.

amount of information relating to the implementation of arts programs and the success of those programs in increasing students understanding and appreciation of works of art. Because they tend to Multiple-choice and be program specific, other paper-andthese tests and pencil tests are instruments should commonly used probably be used throughout primarily at the education. It would district, school, and be a mistake to limit classroom levels. our efforts to these procedures. But it would also be a mistake to ignore their potential for providing certain types of information about student achievement and about program success. districts, across schools within a district, and in individual schools.

How many of these types of assessment should be included in a school district arts assessment program? Unless arts educators in schools and school districts attend to most of the types, with the possible exception of the ethnographic and naturalistic observation and reporting procedures, their assessment programs will probably not provide the information they need to make informed curricular decisions. In other words, despite the recent attention directed toward the assessment of students journals, portfolios, and process folios, an evaluation program based only on processes is insufficient. Let me try to explain why. The assessment of portfolios and performances is directed toward the progress of the individual student. Consequently, it is possible to chart the progress of individual students, indeed to conclude that each individual student is making satisfactory progress, while ignoring the inadequacy of the overall program. In other words, if we were to use the cant see the forest for the trees analogy, each tree might be seen to be growing satisfactorily when measured from its own starting point, while the

forest in which the trees are growing and the kind of forest they form is simply not satisfactory. On the other hand, if arts teachers were to agree upon standard criteria and scoring procedures to be used across a number of students journals and portfolios, it would be possible to aggregate those scores to provide evidence relating both to individual student progress and to the achievement of program objectives. The usefulness of portfolio and performance assessment notwithstanding, an assessment of strengths and weakness of an entire art or arts program will be mush more complete when we develop a few comprehensive holistic tasks to be administered to groups of students enrolled in arts programs in schools and school districts. If the exercises were accompanied by standard analysis and scoring criteria, then it would be possible to aggregate the scores from individual students performances in order to determine the extent to which a full range of program goals have been reached. If the scores from a few comprehensive tasks were to be combined with process folios and with carefully prepared belief and attitude batteries, arts teachers would have a wealth of information to use as they work to make their program better. The development of holistic, thematically based assessment procedures will not be easy. In the next section, I will discuss their construction and implementation. An Evaluation Program in a School District I have already indicated the various levelsindividual student, school, district, state, and nationat which arts assessment might take place. I think, however, that the greatest arts assessment effort ought to be made at the school district level. The formidable challenges and difficult problems involved in the establishment of arts assessment programs can best be illustrated at this level. Inasmuch as no comprehensive district-based arts assessment programs are probably functioning anywhere in the country, there are few models to follow in any subject matter area. There are compelling reasons, however, for districts to assume major responsibility for the evaluation of their own implementation progress; programs; and student progress, achievement, and success. Considering the various desirable outcomes of evaluationcommunication, accountability, representation of curriculum, innovation, implementation, and curriculum maintenancearts educators in school districts have a great deal to gain through the establishment of comprehensive district-wide assessment programs. If a multifaceted, comprehensive, district-wide arts assessment program were to be developed (the kind of program that I envision would have student assessment at its center), what would actually be involved? A comprehensive district=based evaluation program would require that the district curriculum and instructional leader, district evaluation personnel, arts supervisors and coordinators (if they exist), school principals, and, most important of all, arts teachers work together to develop strategies, procedures, and assessment tasks. Working together is not easy. Moreover, arts teachers need to be at the very center of the development process. Let me try to explain how I see it.

Going beyond Goals Arts teachers are used to working on goals and objectives for their arts programs. I have observed that they find it relatively easy to agree on general statements of purpose. If, however, program outcomes are to be assessed, arts teachers must move well beyond the general statements. Teachers are not accustomed to agreeingin fact, they have seldom had to agreeupon standard assessment procedures and analysis processes that would confirm whether or not their goals and objectives had been achieved. Nevertheless, the difficult process of coming to an agreement regarding assessment types, procedures, instruments, and analyses criteria to be used among several schools, or even within all of the schools of the district, can have effect of crystallizing the relationship between instructional means and desirable outcomes. Teachers must learn to describe in explicit terms the major things they wish their students to know, do and feel at the end of a course, at the end of a school year, and at the end of elementary, middle, and high school. As simple as it sounds, the process is profoundly difficult. When given the task of writing learning outcomes, most teachers, including arts teachers, have a tendency to describe them either in very specific termssuch as use correct terminology to discuss the characteristics of a piece of music including melody, rhythm, meter, form, and styleor to describe them in very general termssuch as, enjoy listening to most types of music. Either of these straightforward and simple-sounding outcomes would probably be difficult to assess. I am not sure that by themselves, however, they are even worth assessing. They are only pieces of larger and more important outcomes involving the comprehensive criterion, performance, and understanding of the arts. Whenever possible, we should assess the largest and most important outcomes. What procedures might we use to determine whether the larger goals have been reached? When I work with teachers, I ask them to describe a standard situation or to think of a task through which they might observe and rate the performance of an individual student or a group of students. But I do more than that. I try to get them to think holistically. Here is the situation I pose: An Assessment Task for Arts Teachers You (all of the teachers of a particular arts course in a school district) have decided (or have been asked) to assess the progress that your students have made by the end of the school year. The purpose of the assessment is program evaluationto determine through the aggregation of the performance of groups of students if the general objectives of the course have been achieved. All of the teachers decide to devote the next to last week of the school year to conducting a summative assessment. As a group you determine that you will try to develop one comprehensive, multifaceted exercise that will represent the most important outcomes of the entire course. You also decide that you will develop an exercise of a weeks duration. The students will be given the task on Monday and will work on it throughout the

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week. During the time that the students work on the exercise, teachers will be permitted to help students to locate needed materials, supplies, and equipment, but students are to work on their own. What task will you devise to allow students to demonstrate their progress in (1) the creation/performance of one of the arts, (2) understanding the relationship between the work that they create/perform and the works of artist, and (3) their ability to conduct critical analysis of their work and the works of others? Please develop the task. The Development of Assessment Tasks It seems quite obvious that teachers would not want to spend their assessment time on having the students identify the three primary colors or identify and play sounds getting louder and getting softer. Here are two general principles that I encourage teachers to use as they develop comprehensive assessment tasks: The tasks should focus upon the major holistic aspects of artistic creation and performance, knowledge and understanding, and interpretation and judgment. Whenever possible, these multifaceted means of understanding and interpreting works of art should be combined into a single assessment task. We should never attend to trivial things merely because they can be easily observed and assessed. The principal arts assessment procedures should be essentially the same as the best arts instruction in the district. In many instances, the procedures that we use should look just like the best assignments that students are asked to carry out in class-like the best units of arts instruction. In some cases, the students need not even know that the tasks that they are given are a part of the assessment program. (This is the representation function of assessment outlined in Table 1.) Some Sample comprehensive Tasks Here is a first draft of an exercise from the visual arts that I use as an example of holistic assessment that is thematically organized. Working from woman I. Let us assume the eighth-grade students are in the next-to-thefinal week of a semester-long course, Survey of the Visual Arts. All eighth-grade students in the district are required to take the course. In the course, students receive twelve units of instruction based on the art of major world civilization being studied and the art from our contemporary U.S. society. Studio activities provide the organizing center for historical and critical inquiry and for dealing with philosophical-aesthetic issues. First, the teacher tells the students: This final assignment will be like an examination that will help me to determine just what you have learned during the semester. It will be like most of the other assignments that

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you have received in this course, but this time there will be one major difference. After the assignment is given, you are to work independently. In other words, on this assignment you will not be allowed to ask for my help regarding solutions to the problems and tasks that you have been given. I will help you to locate supplies and other things that you will need to complete the assignment. You have five class periods to complete the assignment. The Task: On the display board at the side of the room is a color reproduction of William de Koonings painting, Woman I, painted between 1950 and 1952. (During the semester we have looked at other de Kooning paintings, but not this one.) First: You are to do this: Write a paragraphno more than a pagein which you discuss the painting as an art critic might. Try to interpret the meaning of the work. In other words, in your paragraph also write something about the ideas that de Kooning show about women. Is it a kind and respectful view or is it something else? What is it about the way the artist made the painting that allowed him to express these ideas? (As you write, please remember to use metaphors and expressive language just as you have been encouraged to do throughout the semester.) Next: Think of all the different works of art that we have seen during the semester in which people have been shown. Go through the textbook or look through the stack of prints and postcards on the side table and find a work of art from another period I history that depicts a person or people very differently from the way the woman in De Koonings painting is shown. Now write another short paragraph in which you explain why you think de Kooning has painted his Woman I so very differently from the person or people in the other work of art you have selected. Try to think of as many reasons as you can. And now in a sentence or two tell whether you think that one of the works of artde Koonings painting or the other work you have selectedis the better work of art. And then give a reason why you think one is better than the other. (These first two parts of the assignment will take one class period.) Then: You are to make your own work of art. In your work you are to express an idea or a feeling about a person in our own timein 1991. Try to have all of your lines, shapes, and colors show your idea bout the person. Try to have all of the symbols and other objects that you put into the work of art express your idea. Try to have the style and the composition of your work of art show your idea about the person. Try to have what the person is doing indicate your idea about the person. Also, use your imaginationtry to give your work an original character, try to make it look different from the work of anyone else. To make your work of art, you may use any material that you wishclay, paint, scrap materials, collage materials, drawing materials. But remember you will have a little less than four class periods to complete your work of art. Finally: Once you have finished your work of art, write on a piece of paper a sentence or two about the idea or ideas that you were trying to show or express about the person in

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your work of art. Is that idea the same or different from the one that de Kooning expressed in his painting? If eighth-grade students have been engaged in these types of activities in each of their units of instruction, they should have little difficulty in performing the tasks called for in the exercise. And as you can see, the students have been asked to use inquiry methods relating to each of the disciplines, but in an articulated project centered on one work of art. A Comprehensive Assessment Task from theater/Drama. Here is an example of a multifaceted assessment task given to a group of high school acting students. (This exercise was developed by Lisa Eaton, a theater/drama teacher in the Great Valley School District near Philadelphia. I worked with the arts teachers in the district as they developed an arts assessment program.) Near the end of a high school acting class, students are given this monologue. (The monologue has been chosen for its unisex possibilities and open-ended format. It is presented without punctuation.) HI DO YOU KNOW ME NO OF COURSE NOT DO YOU LOOK CAREFULLY NO NOBODY KNOWS ME I MEAN SOMEBODY KNOWS ME OBVIOUSLY SOMEBODY KNOWS EVERYBODY BUT I WANT EVERYBODY EVERYWHERE TO KNOW ME AND THEY WILL YOU WILL IM GOING TO BE FAMOUS I HOPE ID BETTER I WILL IF IM NOT NO BIG DEAL ILL JUST FACE MY LIMITATIONS MATURELY AND COMPROMISE MY DREAMS SENSIBLY SURE I WILL DO THAT.4 The students are asked to make a written submission in which they: score the script with notes on voice, movement, etc.; pose a series of questions and answers regarding the character and his or her qualities; pose a series of questions and answers regarding the situation or circumstances; prepare a final biography in first-person narrative form (two-page minimum). Following their written submission, students are asked to present a performance warmupto make a presentation with brief introductory notes. The performance is recorded on video to allow for more careful analysis. Each portion of the written submission and the performance warm-up are scored according to a specific number or points. Analysis and Scoring Through these two illustrations, I hope that it is possible to see the character of comprehensive and holistic tasks. Once the tasks are created, pilot tested, and
4

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administered, however, the most rigorous, and in my opinion, the most difficult part of the assessment task still remains to be accomplished. I refer to the systematic analysis and scoring of students responses to the exercises. In the Working form Woman I exercise, four separate aspects of student performance are to be assessed: a written critical interpretation, a written historical analysis of the relationship between Woman I and another painting of a person from the history of art, the creation of an art work in which a person is represented, and a written description of the relationships between the students representation of a person and de Koonings representation of a person in Woman I. Each of these related exercises would require a separate set of analysis and scoring criteria. Two major scoring decisions need to be made. First, how are the four separate performance aspects to be weighted in relationship to one another? (Should the critical and studio exercises be given equal weighting? Is the historical exercise to be weighted more heavily than the task in which students compare their own work to that of de Kooning?) Second, what classifications should be used to analyze and score each of the individual exercise within the comprehensive task, and what weighting should be given to each of the classifications? Perhaps I can best illustrate this point by proposing a tentative set of scoring criteria and weighting to the portion of the task in which the student is asked to express an idea or feeling about a person in your own time. Table 3 shows a tentative set of analysis/scoring classifications. I have found that teachers begin to understand what arts teaching is all about during development of the analysis/scoring criteria. The criteria reveal the aspects of student performance upon which teachers place high value. For example, in Table 3, the ideational component is given more weight than are any of the other classifications. This is contrary to the weighting that many visual arts teachers would give, inasmuch as design and expressive components have traditionally been seen to be more important than the ideational components of students works. Obviously, individual teachers and groups of teachers might arrive at very different sets of classifications and weighting. In a district-wide assessment program, however, the important thing is that the teachers come to a consensus. Through their discussions, it is possible for teachers to arrive not only at agreement but also at new levels of understanding of the outcomes of arts education. Table 3. Assessment types and processes Analysis/scoring classification 1. Ideational featuresthe expression of a distinct idea or feeling 2. Use of distinct symbols or actions to convey the idea or feeling 3. Sensory, formal, expressive, and stylistic features used to express the idea or feeling 4. Medium appropriate to idea and skillfully handled 5. Imagination, inventiveness, originality Weighting (percentage) 40 12 16 16 16 Points awarded (total=25) 10 3 4 4 4

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Arts Teachers and the Assessment Process When I have worked with arts teachers to develop comprehensive assessment strategies, I have had some of the most intellectually challenging experiences of my career. The assessment process has produced outcomes that are greater than simple insights into what students have achieved. It has provided new ways to think about arts teaching and its purposes. Through the process of devising assessment strategies, we have not only created representations of current curricular, we have also se the stage for curricular innovation and the implementation of new instructional procedures. Throughout the primer, I have implied that teachers must be involved in the assessment process. In doing so, I realize that I have placed another enormous responsibility on the shoulders of arts teachers. It takes an enormous amount of time for teachers to come together with assessment consultants, administrators, and supervisors in order to devise comprehensive arts assessment tasks, or even to determine standard ways to analyze and score student portfolios and processfolios. If schools, school districts, and states are to have assessment programs, then ways will have to be found to compensate arts teachers for the new responsibilities. I wonder if states, school districts, and individual schools are willing to allocate the funds required for the development of the assessment programs that we keep talking aboutthe assessment programs that we must have if arts education is to be moved to a new level of achievement.

Notes: 1. South Carolina Arts commission, Arts in the Basic Curriculum: The ABC Plan (Columbia, S.C.: South Carolina Arts Commission, 1988). 2. Vicki Rosenberg, Sounding the Territory, the J. Paul Getty Trust Bulletin 6, no. 1 (Winter 1991), 3. Howard Gardner, The Assessment of Student Learning in the Arts (Unpublished proceedings from the conference, Evaluation in the Visual Arts: A Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Bosschenhoodf, The Netherlands, December, 1990). 4. this text was written by Mark Medoff and used by Lisa Eaton of The Great Valley School District.

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