SEADAE Members Named to Serve With National Arts Standards Writing Teams

Four SEADAE members have been nominated by the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards to serve with the writing teams that will produce the next generation of arts standards.   SEADAE member Dale Schmid of the New Jersey Department of Education will serve on the Dance writing team.  SEADAE member Dr. Richard Baker of the Louisiana State Department of Education will serve on the Music writing team.  SEADAE member Jack Mitchell of the California Department of Education will serve on the Theatre writing team and SEADAE member Joyce Huser of Kansas will serve on the Visual Arts writing team.

The National Coalition of Core Arts Standards announced the selection of writing teams and chairs for the next generation of arts standards project on Friday December 16^th.   NCCAS is a coalition of eight national organizations committed to developing new voluntary arts education standards that will build on the foundations created by the 1994 National Arts Standards and, more recently, the 2005 Standards for Learning and Teaching Dance in the Arts, to help guide curriculum designers, teacher training programs, funders, and federal and state policy makers in their arts education decision-making.

NCCAS announced that they received more than 360 applications from throughout the country to serve on one of the four writing teams of dance, music, theatre and visual arts. The coalition’s professional arts education organizations chose the team writers based on breadth of experience and skills in teaching, standards and curriculum writing, assessment and leadership, and practical knowledge in their area of expertise.

Lynn Tuttle, President of the State Education Agency Directors of Arts Education (SEADAE), called the selection of writers for the project “a major leap forward in our efforts to move ahead and actually begin working in earnest.” Tuttle and other SEADAE colleagues have been a guiding force in the effort to re-envision arts standards that will embrace 21st-century technology to help classroom educators better implement and assess standards-based arts instruction. “We know that this will be a complex and challenging project,” said Tuttle. “But we also know how important it is for arts teachers to articulate the skills and knowledge that ought to be available to every student in this country. If we want students to learn, we need to give our educators a framework that will help them create and teach their curricula. I think we have the team that can get this done.”

NCCAS Leadership and the chairs will meet in Reston, Virginia January 23-24 to finalize work on a learning framework that will guide the writers, and to discuss the project’s timeline and plans to include media arts as a discrete fifth arts discipline in the next generation standards. The meeting will include a streaming public Q&A period on January 24. Links to the interactive blog and available video streams will be posted the day of the event on the NCCAS website at http://nccas.wikispaces.com/Framing+Meeting+-+Reston%2C+VA+-+Jan+2012.