History of the National Standards

Britt Beil
MUSIC 23241
February 17, 2011

History of the National Standards

               This article is used to describe the history and formation of the National Standards for the arts. The article starts out with the background as to how the idea of the national standards started. A system of assessments in core subjects with others to follow (arts) was called for in January 1992 and that is when they began working on the standards for the arts. The next section of the article is spent talking about the organization of the project and how they ended up with a draft to send to be approved. The standards reflect a vision for the future. The next section talks about the document format which is three sections by grade levels and each section has content telling what the student should be able to do and what they should know. The author then discusses how the drafts were sent around and built on by different music educators until it was perfect and ready to sent in to a U.S. Secretary of Education on March 11, 1994. The last paragraph is spent explaining how to implement the standards into a music educator's curriculum.

               Having a general understanding of how the National Standards were formed and how to work them into your curriculum is really great knowledge to have. I personally have no experience with the standards, because I was never really taught about them until now although I knew they existed. 

               I feel that having the history of almost any musical accomplishment will help improve your teaching techniques because you understand how to set up your curriculum to help students learn. I was surprised by the fact that it only took two years to get the standards established. Mainly this shocked me because the arts have gone through so many troubles and dilemmas that they are still having to deal with for years and two years just strikes me as a short amount of time compared to the main timeline.