For those of you who want to stay up to date on publicly available information about the development of updated national arts standards, check out the following link and save it to your “Favorites”: http://nccas.wikispaces.com/  The site regularly posts opportunities to participate virtually, such as through a Q and A session with the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards on January 24.

You should be pleased to know that Connecticut was well represented among the over 500 very qualified educators who applied to serve on national standards writing teams in the four arts disciplines. Those not selected for the four writing teams should know that they may, over the coming months, be invited to participate as reviewers and in other ways.

On an advocacy note, you should know that our own U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal serves on HELP, the Senate committee that oversees Education. That committee is currently considering the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, formerly known as NCLB. This legislation that will have a major impact on your work as arts educators. For example, this is the bill that determines whether the arts are considered “core” subjects, and are therefore require expert teachers and are eligible for various types of funding.

You will want to let Senator Blumenthal know if you have an opinion regarding important questions such as:

·         whether the arts should be core

·         whether teachers in non-tested subjects should be evaluated based on student achievement in their own content area, rather than on standardized ELA and math scores

Finally, I want to acknowledge the leadership of Connecticut Common Arts Assessment project leaders Richard Wells and Gail Edmonds, as well as our many dedicated task leaders who have developed completed tasks and/or are either piloting existing common arts tasks or developing new music tasks.

·         Our Common Arts Assessments have been presented to several sell-out audiences in other states, particularly Massachusetts, and there is nationwide excitement about their potential to improve instruction and student learning in the arts.

·         Any Connecticut art or music teacher in grades 2-8 who has not begun to implement these assessments in his/her classroom is missing a great opportunity.

·         You can find out more information on Scotts web page.

Arts Web Page: Standards, Guide, Common Assessments, Advocacy, Survey, etc.