Final report education trough the arts

Transforming
Education
Through the Arts
Challenge
FINAL PROJECT REPORT

This publication is dedicated in memory of
Russell Chapman
Principal of TETAC Project School
Shady Brook Elementary, Bedford, Texas;
Member of the TETAC National Steering Committee; and
an effective advocate for arts education
at the local, state and national levels

The National Arts Education Consortium
Department of Art Education • The Ohio State University
128 North Oval Mall, Room 258 • Columbus, Ohio 43210
Telephone: 614.292.5649 • Fax: 614.688.4483
Transforming
Education
Through the Arts
Challenge
FINAL PROJECT REPORT

Ⅲ A Special Challenge Accepted ..............................................................................................................4
Ⅲ Experience in Arts Education............................................................................................5
Ⅲ The TETAC Project.................................................................................................................................7
Ⅲ What Did TETAC Set Out to Accomplish?.............................................................................7
Ⅲ Who Were the Major Stakeholders?..........................................................................................8
Ⅲ The Consortium Members.................................................................................................8
Ⅲ The Schools............................................................................................................................9
Ⅲ The Mentors ........................................................................................................................10
Ⅲ The Evaluators....................................................................................................................10
Ⅲ The Governance Structure...............................................................................................11
Ⅲ The National Advisory Committee................................................................................12
Ⅲ The Funders.........................................................................................................................12
Ⅲ What Was the Timeframe?........................................................................................................13
Ⅲ What Were the Historical Roots? ............................................................................................13
Ⅲ Pivotal Seminar...................................................................................................................14
Ⅲ Problems Arise ....................................................................................................................15
Ⅲ Concern Resurfaces ...........................................................................................................16
Ⅲ Getty’s Major Initiative.....................................................................................................17
Ⅲ New Law, New Chapter.....................................................................................................18
Ⅲ The TETAC Strategy for School Reform and the Arts................................................................20
Ⅲ Where Did TETAC Focus Its Efforts? ....................................................................................20
Table of Contents

3
Ⅲ How Did the TETAC Strategy Change Over Time?............................................................21
Ⅲ The TETAC Curriculum Component...........................................................................21
Ⅲ The TETAC Capacity-Building Component...............................................................29
Ⅲ The TETAC Evaluation Component.............................................................................35
Ⅲ What Impact Did the TETAC Strategy Have?......................................................................42
Ⅲ Data and Findings Behind the Conclusions ........................................................................44
Ⅲ How Was the Strategy Implemented and What Was the Impact? .........................44
Ⅲ Did the TETAC Approach to Curriculum Affect Learning in the Arts? ..............62
Ⅲ Did the TETAC Approach to Curriculum Affect Learning in Other Subjects?...64
Ⅲ Lessons Learned from the TETAC Project .....................................................................................68
Ⅲ Advancing the Arts in the Regular School Curriculum.....................................................69
Ⅲ Improving Instruction in the Arts .................................................................................69
Ⅲ Integrating the Arts into the School Curriculum......................................................70
Ⅲ Changing the School Culture to Support the Arts ...................................................71
Ⅲ Administering a National School-Reform Initiative in the Arts .....................................73
Ⅲ Appendixes
A National Arts Education Consortium Members and
the Project Schools They Served.............................................................................................76
B TETAC National and Regional Funders...............................................................................78
Ⅲ Report Credits .......................................................................................................................................79

n December 1993, the Honorable Walter
H. Annenberg, former U.S. ambassador
to Great Britain, announced the largest
single gift ever made to American public
education: a $500 million “Challenge to the
Nation” designed to energize and support
promising school-reform efforts.
The gift extended an opportu-
nity and a challenge to every-
one engaged in the serious
work of improving the per-
formance of the nation’s
schools from kindergarten
through 12th grade. It was a
challenge to teachers, adminis-
trators, students and parents
and to colleges and universi-
ties that were working for the
cause of school reform as well
as to federal, state and local governments,
whose dedicated support is essential to the
reform enterprise. The challenge sought a
financial, political and moral response.
On the financial front, Ambassador
Annenberg framed the gift as a challenge to
attract substantial additional funds from
public and private sources.
In the political arena, the challenge was
designed to promote widespread public
support for resolute and sustained invest-
ment in America’s children through a com-
mitment by officials to do all within their
power to help schools succeed, including
removal of the traditional obstacles to local
school autonomy.
Ambassador Annenberg also hoped to pro-
voke Americans to attend to the country’s
youngest and most fragile citizens. One of
the most compelling moral investments a
community can make, the ambassador
believed, was providing all children with an
intellectually challenging education. He
hoped his gift would develop a vigorous,
expanded commitment by community lead-
ers to the idea that public education matters.
While the bulk of the challenge was directed
toward general school-reform initiatives,
Ambassador Annenberg, one of the most
respected private art collectors in the world,
carved out a niche for several projects focus-
ing on infusing the arts into the core cur-
riculum of the nation’s schools.
Responding to the special focus on the arts,
the J. Paul Getty Trust and its Getty
Education Institute for the Arts, a longtime
A Special Challenge
Accepted
THE TETAC ARTS
TETAC focused on
the arts normally
neglected in core
curricula: the
visual arts, music,
theater and dance.
I
‘‘Art is humanity’s most essential,
most universal language. It is not a
frill but a necessary part of com-
munication.The quality of civiliza-
tion can be measured through its
music, dance, drama, architecture,
visual art and literature.We must
give our children knowledge and
understanding of civilization’s
most profound works.”
Ernest L.Boyer
Former U.S.secretary of education

ĸ
5
advocate for arts education at the national
level, joined forces with the Annenberg
Foundation to co-fund the Transforming
Education Through the Arts Challenge,
or TETAC. Together these foundations
wanted to explore through TETAC how
arts-education reform and general reform
efforts could join forces to improve
students’ learning, particularly in the arts,
and to make changes in the structure of
schools, the formation of partnerships
among stakeholders and the development
of new curricula and teaching methods.
The TETAC project
was initiated by the
National Arts
Education Consortium, or NAEC, which
comprised six regional organizations in six
states — California, Florida, Nebraska,
Ohio, Tennessee and Texas. Since 1987,
these organizations had worked collectively
developing, testing and refining profes-
sional development and curriculum imple-
mentation programs to advance a compre-
hensive approach to arts education in the
nation’s public schools. The collective
effort was designed to create and nurture
networks of teachers, schools, districts, arts
organizations and funders committed to
arts education.
The National Arts Education Consortium’s
main mission was to create school environ-
ments that ensured rigorous intellectual
development in the arts for all students.
Through the TETAC project, the
Consortium worked to integrate compre-
hensive approaches to arts education with
other elements of whole-school reform to
demonstrate the value of the arts as part of
the core curriculum and to quantify student
achievement in the arts.
Getty Education Institute
for the Arts
Formerly known as the Getty Center for
Education in the Arts, the Getty Education
Institute was founded in the early 1980s and
was closed in the late 1990s.The goal of the
Getty Education Institute was to improve the
quality and status of arts education in elemen-
tary and secondary grades of America’s public
schools.The Institute supported the establish-
ment of visual arts education programs, which
integrated content and skills from four disci-
plines that contribute to the creation, under-
standing and appreciation of art: art-making,
art history and culture, art criticism and aes-
thetics.This approach became known as
Discipline-Based Arts Education, or DBAE.
Experience in
Arts Education

ĳ
National Arts Education Consortium
Member Organizations
Ⅲ California Consortium for Arts Education at the
Sacramento County Office of Education, Sacramento, California
Ⅲ Florida Institute for Art Education at
Florida State University,Tallahassee, Florida
Ⅲ Prairie Visions: Nebraska Consortium for Arts Education at
the Nebraska Arts Council, Omaha, Nebraska
Ⅲ The Ohio Partnership for the Visual Arts at
The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
Ⅲ Southeast Center for Education in the Arts at The University of
Tennessee at Chattanooga, Chattanooga,Tennessee
Ⅲ North Texas Institute for Educators on the Visual Arts at
University of North Texas, Denton,Texas
Washington
Montana
Oregon
Idaho
Wyoming
Colorado
Utah
Nevada
California
Arizona
New Mexico
North Dakota
South Dakota
Nebraska
Kansas
Oklahoma
Texas
Minnesota
Iowa
Missouri
Arkansas
Mississippi
Wisconsin
Illinois
Michigan
Kentucky
Tennessee
Alabama
Florida
North Carolina
Virginia Maryland
Delaware
New Jersey
Pennsylvania
New York
Connecticut
Rhode
Island
Vermont
New Hampshire Maine
Member Organization
Project School
Massachusetts
Indiana
Louisiana
South
Carolina
West
Virginia
Ohio
Georgia

7
he developers of the Transforming
Education Through the Arts
Challenge never wavered in their
goal: to make meaningful study of the arts
integral to a child’s education. Through
flexibility and adaptability, the National
Arts Education Consortium met success and
developed reform strategies that enrich
education for children from the inner city to
the Plains. At the same time, the vision guid-
ing the group changed greatly during the
five years of the project.
When the project began, the Consortium
envisioned providing “exemplary arts units
of instruction” to the 35 schools participat-
ing from across the country. The
Consortium thought one- or two-week sum-
mer conferences and technical assistance
would provide the training teachers and
administrators would need to integrate the
arts into the core curriculum. And the six
regional organizations in the Consortium
thought the evaluators would primarily
measure the effects of the project.
The program that emerged five years later
looked much different.
The success the project encountered proves
that the arts can hold a key spot in the core
curriculum and help change teaching from
an isolated, individual endeavor to a collab-
orative effort that includes students. The
story of how TETAC evolved to achieve this
success holds valuable lessons for any
national school-reform initiative.
TheTETAC Project
T
n fall 1996, the Consortium began
implementing the Transforming
Education Through the Arts Challenge, a
five-year initiative to link comprehensive
approaches to arts education with national
and local school-reform efforts. TETAC
developed and field tested an approach
to instruction, Comprehensive Arts
Education, or CAE, that blended the
strength of three teaching practices by
expecting instruction in the arts, no matter
what art form, to be:
Ⅲ Comprehensive, including the study of
aesthetics, criticism, history and culture
and the knowledge and skills needed to
create or perform;
Ⅲ Integrated with other core subjects
around important themes or enduring
ideas; and
Ⅲ Delivered using “constructivist or
inquiry-based” practices that adjust to
the diverse learning styles of students,
especially those at risk of failure.
What Did TETAC Set Out to Accomplish?
I

The Consortium set five goals:
ᖇ Institutionalize support for CAE as a
part of the basic core curriculum;
ᖈ Demonstrate how CAE, when integrated
with other elements of reform, can trans-
form a school’s culture and the lives of
students and teachers;
ᖉ Support the active engagement and
involvement of parents, communities,
arts organizations, school-reform net-
works and resources, funders, the
broader public and education profes-
sionals in this reform effort;
ᖊ Create an effective combination of docu-
mentation, assessment and evaluation
strategies to ensure rich and reliable
ways of knowing what has been accom-
plished, what has not, and why; and
ᖋ Create a means to disseminate informa-
tion and successful practices learned
from this effort among educators, legis-
lators, local communities and others to
inform their interest in school reform
and the arts.
he TETAC project was implemented
by a broad national network of stake-
holders interested in improving education
and advancing the arts as a part of the basic
core of learning in K–12 education. The
network included professionals from ele-
mentary and secondary schools, universities,
state departments of education, state arts
councils, foundations, community groups,
corporations and arts institutions.
The primary stakeholders involved in the
daily implementation activities of the proj-
ect were the six members of the National
Arts Education Consortium, a cadre of men-
tors and a small but extraordinary group of
administrators and teachers from the 35
schools chosen for TETAC. The evaluators,
funders and an advisory group of nationally
known education experts also played invalu-
able roles.
Each of the six
organizations in the
Consortium (see
Appendix A, page 76) worked individually
with five to six schools and collaboratively
with the other members in administering the
project. The organizational structures of the
Who Were the Major Stakeholders?
T
The Consortium
Members

9
six members varied. Four were affiliated with
an institution of higher education, one was
based in a state arts council and the last was
in a county office of education.
The common bond came from their partici-
pation in the J. Paul Getty Trust’s Regional
Institute Grant, or RIG, program in the late
1980s and early 1990s. From their RIG
years, they developed an expertise and com-
mitment toward Discipline-Based Arts
Education, or DBAE, an approach that the
Getty promoted. Their commitment to the
approach set the stage for the TETAC proj-
ect and the formation of the Consortium.
In fall 1997, 36 schools
from urban, suburban
and rural areas in eight states — California,
Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Nebraska,
Ohio, Tennessee and Texas — joined the
TETAC project (see Appendix A, page 76).
All but one school, which dropped out after
one year because of local political issues,
stayed until the project ended in summer
2001. The schools were clustered in groups
of five or six in the regions served by the six
Consortium members.
Selected from a national pool of 101, the
schools represented the diverse demograph-
ics found throughout America’s public
TABLE 1 Number of TETAC schools, by school characteristics*
School Overall CA FL SE NE OH TX
characteristics
Instructional level
Elementary school 27 4 5 5 5 3 5
Middle school 3 0 0 1 0 1 1
Senior high school 4 2 0 0 1 1 0
Other 1 0 1 0 0 0 0
Percentage of white students
Less than 37 percent 10 1 0 2 1 2 4
38 to 64 percent 8 2 3 2 1 0 0
65 to 84 percent 9 2 3 0 1 1 2
85 percent or more 8 1 0 2 3 2 0
Percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch
Less than 14 percent 9 2 1 2 1 2 1
15 to 31 percent 9 2 2 2 2 0 1
32 to 61 percent 10 2 3 2 2 0 1
Percentage of students considered limited English speaking**
0 percent 9 0 2 2 2 3 0
1 to 5 percent 13 2 4 3 1 2 1
* Based on data from the last year of the study, 2000 to 2001.
** Information on this characteristic was missing from one school.
The Schools

schools (see Table 1, page 9). In addition to
the differences in geographic location, varia-
tions occurred in grade levels included in
the schools, racial makeup of the student
populations, percentage of students receiv-
ing free or reduced-price lunches and per-
centage of students who spoke English as a
second language.
To meet the Consortium’s goal of integrating
arts into the core curriculum, the project
purposely worked with a cross-section of
teachers. More than half taught in self-con-
tained classrooms, reflecting the large num-
ber of elementary schools in the project (see
Table 2 above). A fifth were subject-area spe-
cialists, and 7 percent were arts specialists.
A cadre of 35 mentors
who worked directly with
the schools proved crucial to the delivery of
professional development and technical
assistance services. The Consortium mem-
bers picked their own regional mentors
without general guidelines. The
backgrounds and qualifications varied from
region to region. All had earned a bachelor’s
degree, 87.1 percent had their master’s, and
35.5 percent had their doctorate. Of the
mentors with master’s degrees and doctor-
ates, the vast majority majored in arts edu-
cation, while the majority of bachelor’s
degrees were in the arts or fine arts.
In addition to working directly with the
schools, mentors often served on TETAC
task forces to address issues concerning the
curriculum and capacity-building compo-
nents of the project.
In the second year of
the project, the
Consortium chose Westat, a social science
research firm in the Washington, D.C. area,
to evaluate whether its goals and objectives
had been attained. The Consortium deliber-
ately picked an evaluation firm familiar with
school reform and assessment of student
learning rather than the arts. To compensate
for any lack of expertise in arts education,
an arts education consultant joined the
Westat national evaluation team.
The evaluation effort, conducted in project
years 2 to 5, addressed six areas:
ᖇ Student learning;
ᖈ School climate and culture;
ᖉ Project implementation;
ᖊ Use of collaboration;
ᖋ Professional development; and
ᖌ General school reform.
Primary teaching assignment
Percentage of
All Respondents
Self-contained classroom teacher 58.6
Subject-area teacher 19.9
Visual arts specialist 3.7
Music specialist 2.8
Dance specialist 0.3
Theater/drama specialist .04
Media specialist/librarian 1.7
Resource teacher 5.1
Guidance counselor 1.1
Other 6.3
Respondents totaled 935
NOTE: Percents may not add to 100 because of rounding.
TABLE 2
Primary teaching assignment of TETAC schools’
teaching staff involved in the project
The Mentors
The Evaluators

11
Decision making and
oversight for the proj-
ect at the national
level were carried out by the eight-member
National Steering Committee, or NSC,
composed of one director from each of the
six regional organizations and a teacher and
principal from the project schools. The
leadership of the NSC rotated, with two
directors sharing the chair position over a
staggered, two-year period. The NSC was
governed by consensus, with all members
having an equal vote.
The NSC created task forces for the curricu-
lum, professional development and evalua-
tion components of the project. Each task
force developed comprehensive plans of
action with accompanying annual work
plans and budgets. Initially, a member of the
NSC chaired each task force. The steering
committee disbanded the evaluation task
force once the Consortium hired an evalua-
tion firm.
As the project intensified, the NSC members
became overwhelmed by responsibilities
outside the original intent of their position.
In April 1997, the committee proposed hir-
ing a national project manager, and the Getty
Education Institute agreed to finance the
position. The committee filled the position
four months later and established a national
headquarters at The Ohio State University,
which was also a member of the Consortium.
The project manager provided administrative
support and other guidance to the project
stakeholders and the NSC members.
At the same time, steering committee mem-
bers relinquished the task force chairs to
other TETAC stakeholders. The changes
created a system of governance that better
reflected the collaborative nature of the
project. The changes also gave the NSC
members more time to devote to overseeing
the national project as well as fulfilling their
regional TETAC responsibilities.
The Governance
Structure
MENTORSMENTORS MENTORS MENTORS MENTORS MENTORS
FLORIDACALIFORNIA NEBRASKA OHIO TENNESSEE TEXAS
Steering Committee
Professional
Development
Task Force
Curriculum
Task Force
Evaluation
Task Force
National Office
6
Partner Schools
6
Partner Schools
6
Partner Schools
5
Partner Schools
6
Partner Schools
6
Partner Schools

The National Advisory
Committee was estab-
lished to advise the NSC
on important trends in
school reform and on ways to approach the
issues facing the TETAC effort, especially
those arising from the first evaluation
report, in summer 1998.
A large group of national
and regional funders
from both the private and public sectors
supported the project (see Appendix B, page
78). The catalyst was the $4.3 million grant
from the Walter H. Annenberg Foundation.
The J. Paul Getty Trust provided the re-
quired one-to-one match, allowing the proj-
ect to begin. For the local TETAC efforts,
the Consortium members assembled a cadre
of regional funders, bringing the total
TETAC support to almost $15 million.
ĕ
The Funders
Members of the National
Advisory Committee
Ⅲ Dr. John Goodlad, president of the Institute for
Educational Inquiry in Seattle,Washington;
Ⅲ Dr. Paula Evans, former director of professional
development for the Annenberg Institute for
School Reform in Providence, Rhode Island;
Ⅲ Dr. Ken Sirotnik, professor and chair of
Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in
the College of Education at the University of
Washington in Seattle,Washington; and
Ⅲ Dr. Andy Hargreaves, professor and director
of the International Center for Educational
Change in the Department of Theory and
Policy Studies in Education at The Ontario
Institute for Studies in Education of the
University of Toronto in Toronto, Canada.
The National
Advisory
Committee

13
he first two years of TETAC, from fall
1996 to summer 1998, encompassed
start-up activities that included bringing
the project schools on board, beginning in-
service programs for them, developing and
field testing the preliminary curricular
model and starting the evaluation program.
Based on the data and initial findings that
emerged at the end of the second year, the
Consortium redesigned several components
of the project during the third year. This left
the final two years of the project for field
testing and studying the revamped
approaches.
What Was the Timeframe?
T
he historical roots of the Transforming
Education Through the Arts Challenge
are firmly planted in more than four decades
of research and work in the “arts as a disci-
pline” movement in arts education.
The arts as a discipline movement origi-
nated in the early 1960s with the work of
Manuel Barkan, an artist and an educator
from the Department of Art Education at
The Ohio State University. Barkan took his
cue from Jerome Bruner, a scientist who
responded to the national outcry over
Sputnik and the need to improve our
nation’s schools by advocating curriculum
reform based on one major requirement:
Give students an understanding of the fun-
damental structure of a discipline.
Bruner defined “discipline” as any subject
having an organized body of knowledge,
specific methods of inquiry and skills and a
community of “scholars” who generally
agree on the fundamental ideas of the field.
After 1957, education reform followed
Bruner’s model.
Using this definition of a discipline, Barkan
wondered whether the arts would fit
Bruner’s model. He also wondered how
students would engage in a “disciplined
inquiry” in the arts. He then outlined a
proposal to make the arts as indispensable
as math and science in the education of
America’s children. In the proposal, Barkan
argued:
Ⅲ Arts education could be conducted as a
humanistic discipline;
Ⅲ The structure of the arts exists in three
domains — the productive, the historical
and the critical — each serving as a model
for a curriculum;
Ⅲ Teaching should employ both problem-
centered and discipline-centered strate-
gies; and
What Were the Historical Roots?
T

Ⅲ Objectives and activities for learning in
the arts should be developed through
themes focused on life problems to
allow for better integration with other
subject areas.
Barkan believed in treating each of the three
domains — the productive, the historical
and the critical — equally, a radical depar-
ture from the child-centered approach that
emphasized performance/making art and
the development of creative thinking.
In 1965, the Arts and
Humanities Program
at the United States Office of Education
sponsored the Seminar in Art Education for
Research and Curriculum Development at
Pennsylvania State University. The seminar
drew the country’s leading experts in arts
education, and much of the conversation
focused on the idea that the arts are disci-
plines with their own models of inquiry.
Barkan introduced his ideas that artists, art
historians and art critics should serve as
models of inquiry in the arts, much as scien-
tists serve as models of inquiry for science
education.
Two years later, the U.S. Office of Educa-
tion financed the Aesthetic Education
Program as part of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act of 1965. The
program, which involved major curriculum
development and implementation projects
in the arts, was centered at one of 20
regional laboratories created by the law to
reform the nation’s schools.
The Aesthetic Education Program, which
addressed dance, literature, music, theater
and the visual arts, was conducted in two
phases. In the first, research by Barkan and
colleagues at The Ohio State University led
ƚ
Pivotal Seminar
Penn State Conference
Some of the leading experts in arts education
presented papers at the Seminar in Art
Education for Research and Curriculum
Development, including June McFee, David
Ecker, Jerome Hausman, Elliot Eisner and
Kenneth Beittel.
Experts attending from other fields included:
Francis T.Villemain from philosophy; Joshua
Taylor from art history; Harold Rosenberg from
criticism; Allan Kaprow from art studio; Mel
Tumin from sociology; and Nate Champlain,
Dale Harris, Ashel Woodruff and Arthur Foshay
from education.
A more detailed history of the
trends in arts education in the 1960s
and 1970s can be found in A History
of Art Education: Intellectual and
Social Currents in Teaching the
Visual Arts by Arthur D. Efland
(1990, Teachers College Press,
Columbia University).

15
to the publication in 1970 of “Curriculum
Guidelines for Aesthetic Education,” which
outlined the conceptual content, procedures
and resources for curriculum development
in aesthetic education.
In the next phase, the Central Midwestern
Regional Educational Laboratory Inc. in St.
Louis, Missouri, created curriculum pack-
ages for elementary children.
The Aesthetic Educa-
tion Program ran into
major problems by the mid-1970s, just as
the curriculum materials were nearing com-
pletion. The new science and mathematics
materials produced under Bruner’s theory
did not work as hoped, hurting support for
similar initiatives in other subject areas.
Also, the expense of producing the materials
made publishers reluctant to undertake the
project. In addition, the materials looked
more like games than textbooks, making
them unappealing to teachers.
In the late 1970s, the “arts as a discipline”
movement stalled.
Elementary and Secondary
Education Act
By the mid-1960s, the country started to
look to education to solve another problem
facing America — discrimination. Federal
funding shifted away from programs with a
national security agenda toward programs
with a strong social agenda.
On April 9, 1965, Congress passed the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act,
which made improving the educational
opportunities of poor children a national
priority.
Problems Arise

In the early 1980s, the
quality of education again
came to the forefront of
citizens’ concern after the National
Commission on Excellence in Education
released A Nation at Risk, a report that said
the country’s “mediocre” education system
endangered the United States’ position as
the leading economic force in the world.
Under pressure, schools reverted to reform
strategies that focused on the basics.
By 1985, national concern had grown so
intense that the National Governors
Association devoted an entire year to exam-
ining education. President George Bush
used the association’s report in 1988 to help
formulate his educational agenda, America
2000. With the year 2000 the target, Bush’s
plan outlined the first national perform-
ance goals for America’s schools:
Ⅲ All children in America would start
school ready to learn;
Ⅲ The high school graduation rate would
increase to at least 90 percent;
Ⅲ American students would leave grades 4,
8 and 12 demonstrating competency in
English, mathematics, science, history
and geography, and every school would
prepare all students for responsible citi-
zenship, further learning and productive
employment;
Ⅲ American students would be first in the
world in science and mathematics
achievement;
Ⅲ Every adult would be literate and possess
the knowledge and skills necessary to
compete in a global economy and to exer-
cise the responsibilities of citizenship; and
Ⅲ Every school in America would be free of
drugs and violence and would offer a
disciplined environment conducive to
learning.
ĦA Nation at Risk
The National Commission on Excellence in Education
released A Nation at Risk in April 1983. The report branded
the U.S. education system“mediocre”and said it threatened
to undermine the country’s economic standing.
In part, the report said:
Ⅲ International comparisons of student achievement, com-
pleted a decade ago, reveal that on 19 academic tests
American students were never first or second and, in
comparison with other industrialized nations, were last
seven times.
Ⅲ Some 23 million American adults are functionally illiterate.
Ⅲ About 13 percent of all 17-year-olds in the United States
can be considered functionally illiterate.
Ⅲ Average achievement of high school students on most
standardized tests is now lower than 26 years ago when
Sputnik was launched.
Ⅲ The College Board’s Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SATs) demon-
strate a virtually unbroken decline from 1963 to 1980.
Ⅲ Between 1975 and 1980, remedial mathematics courses in
public four-year colleges increased by 72 percent.
Concern
Resurfaces

17
In the mid-1980s, the J.
Paul Getty Trust trig-
gered the second phase
of research in the “arts as a discipline” move-
ment by opening the Getty Center for
Education in the Arts. The Getty, which
advocated the arts as a legitimate discipline
in their own right, found Barkan’s theories
attractive, particularly
the idea that educa-
tion in the arts
should include three
domains — the pro-
ductive, the historical
and the critical — to
which the Getty
added a fourth, aes-
thetics.
The Getty also liked the idea of using the
inquiry and creative methods of artists, art
historians and art critics as models for con-
structing curricula. This curriculum struc-
ture, the center believed, would provide
more rigorous and intellectual instruction
in the arts, winning the support of legisla-
tors and school leaders for making the arts
part of the core curriculum.
The Getty’s curriculum approach became
known as Discipline-Based Arts Education,
or DBAE.
Until the mid-1990s, the Getty promoted
DBAE through the establishment of its
Regional Institute Grant, or RIG, program,
which financed regional institutes across the
country to spearhead DBAE’s advancement.
The Getty designed the RIG program to
nurture a new generation of educators in
the arts who would reshape their teaching
around DBAE. During the Getty’s decade-
long effort, thousands of teachers and
administrators from approximately 217
school districts were trained in DBAE,
affecting education for more than 1.5 mil-
lion students.
As DBAE evolved, proponents felt that this
approach:
Ⅲ Provided for a rigorous and thorough
understanding of any art form due to its
focus on the four domains of study;
Ⅲ Appealed not only to those students
traditionally identified as gifted, but to a
wide range of thinkers and learners;
Ⅲ Showed that artistic skills and under-
standings did not come automatically to
students through exposure to the arts
but had to be nurtured and guided
through the acquisition of artistic skills
and perceptions; and
Ⅲ Showed that students’ various stages of
development and learning styles must be
taken into consideration when designing
learning experiences in the arts.
For a full report on the
Getty’s regional initiative
for arts education, please
see The Quiet Evolution
by Brent Wilson (1997, the
J. Paul Getty Trust).
Getty’s Major
Initiative

Despite some initial controversy, the arts
education community eventually came to
believe that by making the argument for
arts education in terms of increasing com-
petency, understanding and appreciation,
the Getty’s efforts had slowly started to alter
the image of arts education as just a “frill”
in the minds of many policy makers, educa-
tors and parents.
In March 1994, President
Bill Clinton signed
Public Law 103-227,
Goals 2000: Educate America Act. This law
added two more goals to the original six:
Ⅲ Teachers will have access to programs for
the continued improvement of their
skills; and
Ⅲ Every school will promote involvement of
parents in their children’s education.
The law also expanded the core subjects for
student competency in Goal 3 to include
foreign languages, civics and government,
economics and arts.
The Getty Trust closed its center for arts
education and pulled back from direct
involvement in promoting DBAE by the late
1990s after the foundation changed leader-
ship and started to shift focus. The new law
and the subsequent release of national stan-
dards for arts education provided new
opportunities for advancing arts education,
triggering the third phase of work in the
arts as a discipline movement. Taking
advantage of the opportunities offered by
the third phase, the Transforming
Education Through the Arts Challenge
project emerged.
For an in-depth look at the issues
facing the Getty and its promotion
of DBAE, see Clark, Gilbert A., Day,
Michael D., & Greer, W. Dwaine. (1987).
Discipline-Based Arts Education:
Becoming Students of Art. Journal of
Aesthetic Education, 21(2), 130-193.
New Law,
New Chapter
ĽGoals 2000: Educate America Act
This act provided an enormous step forward for
arts education by including the arts as one of nine
core subjects for student competency and legitimiz-
ing the inclusion of arts educators in school-reform
efforts. The act also allowed supporters of arts
education to compete for public funds earmarked
for school reform.
The Goals 2000: Educate America Act challenged
leaders in each core subject area to develop rigor-
ous curricula and a set of high national standards
that communities could use to improve student
learning. In response, the Consortium of National
Arts Education Associations developed the
National Standards for Arts Education in 1994,
which provided a framework concerning what stu-
dents should know and be able to do in the arts.

he Consortium designed TETAC to
fuse the advancement of education in
the arts with general school reform.
Three of the project’s original five
goals surfaced as critical:
Ⅲ Building support for learning in the arts
as an equal part of the regular core cur-
riculum;
Ⅲ Integrating a comprehensive approach to
arts inquiry with other elements of
school reform; and
Ⅲ Documenting the impact of the TETAC
approach on student learning and school
culture.
To realize the first two goals, the project
focused resources on creating an approach
to arts instruction and building the capacity
of teachers and administrators.
The Consortium agreed to provide the
schools with capacity-building opportuni-
ties and curriculum resources in four areas:
ᖇ Professional development in CAE and
school-reform strategies for principals
and faculty;
ᖈ Technical assistance for the ongoing sup-
port, advice and information necessary to
complete and implement their individual
school-reform plans;
ᖉ Instructional resources appro-
priate for CAE; and
ᖊ Networking opportunities to
access the Internet and com-
municate electronically with
the Consortium and other
project schools.
Where Did TETAC Focus Its Efforts?
TheTETAC Strategy for
School Reform and the Arts
T
ĪTETAC Expectations
Each of the six regional members of the National Arts Education
Consortium worked with up to six schools.The Consortium
expected each of the 35 schools to:
Ⅲ Strengthen and deepen its commitment to fully implement a
Comprehensive Arts Education program;
Ⅲ Engage in school-reform strategies consonant with CAE reform;
Ⅲ Complete a vision statement, self assessment, five-year strate-
gic plan and annual action plans;
Ⅲ Participate in professional development and technical assis-
tance services, particularly those offered by the regional mem-
ber organization; and
Ⅲ Secure matching support from public and private sources to
assist with the implementation and sustainability of its
reform plans.

21
he TETAC project is an unfinished
story of complexity, flexibility and
adaptability as challenges surfaced and
strategies were rethought. Often, the chal-
lenges were unforeseeable or could not be
grasped easily.
The Consortium members originally envi-
sioned building on their shared experiences
with DBAE, during the Getty Trust’s
Regional Institute Grant program. The
members considered DBAE a mature pro-
gram that had been field-tested in scores of
schools, and they thought they would link
the practice to general school reform to
show how the arts could transform the
school curriculum.
The Consortium planned to build the
capacity of all teachers to integrate the prin-
ciples of DBAE throughout the entire cur-
riculum and to study the impact of this
approach on student learning, especially in
the arts, and the school culture.
However, as the project progressed, chal-
lenges surfaced, forcing the Consortium to
rethink the project’s strategies for linking
the arts with general school reform.
Consortium leaders then broadened the
project’s strategies while still focusing the
group’s work on three primary components.
In telling the story of the TETAC initiative,
this report spotlights the curriculum,
capacity-building and evaluation compo-
nents. Although outlined separately, all
three are interrelated, underscoring one
lesson from the initiative: The connections
among all aspects of school reform work to
define and change strategies during a pro-
ject’s implementation.
Where the Thinking Began
While developing the TETAC project, all six
members of the Consortium considered the
curriculum component fairly straightfor-
ward. In their proposal to the Annenberg
Challenge in May 1995, the members wrote:
Since 1987, six regional institutes in
California, Florida, Nebraska, Ohio,
Tennessee and Texas have been devel-
oping, testing and refining profes-
sional development and curriculum
implementation programs for com-
prehensive arts education [under the
Getty Regional Institute Grant (RIG)
program]. … Over the years, members
of the Consortium have developed a
trove of materials to aid in the advo-
cacy for and teaching of the arts, and
new resources are continuously
being generated.
T
The TETAC Curriculum
Component
How Did the TETAC Strategy
Change Over Time?

The Consortium originally planned to sup-
ply the TETAC schools with units of
instruction in the arts that the members
developed under the RIG program. The
Getty Trust, eager to continue promoting
DBAE, planned to hire curriculum experts
to develop additional materials.
The Consortium wanted to use a one-size-
fits-all model for two reasons. The members
thought the model would encourage teach-
ers to adopt the theoretical base of DBAE for
their overall practice in the classroom,
improving the learning environment and
building support for education in the arts
among all teachers. Second, mindful of the
rarity of quantitative data in arts education,
the Consortium and the Getty Trust wanted
to document student learning and thought
common units of instruction in the arts were
needed for an accurate evaluation.
What Issues and
Challenges Surfaced
During the first two years, challenges
brought the curriculum strategy into
question.
The one-size-fits-all approach failed to
accommodate the diversity of mandates and
curricular requirements found among the
35 schools, which represented 31 school
systems in eight states across the nation.
District mandates prevented many schools
from using the arts units the Consortium
supplied. With the schools that could use
them, the theoretical base did not necessar-
ily become a part of the teachers’ under-
standing or repertoire, bringing issues of
quality and sustainability to the surface.
At the same time, Consortium members
continued to research new ideas about
teaching and learning, such as inquiry-
based instructional approaches and teach-
ing for understanding, and they considered
ways to link the DBAE approach with
these practices.
How the Thinking
and Strategies Shifted
More than a new way of thinking, the
changes to the curriculum component rep-
resented an evolution in the Consortium’s
understanding of how best to link the arts
with school-reform efforts. The members
gradually broadened the theoretical base of
the curriculum work but never abandoned
the foundation of the approach.
ŜTETAC Book
Davis Publications in Worcester, Massachusetts,
will publish a textbook based on the TETAC cur-
riculum work. Dr. Marilyn Stewart of Kutztown
University and Dr. Sydney Walker of The Ohio State
University, on behalf of the Steering Committee
and Curriculum Task Force of the National Arts
Education Consortium, will co-write the pre-serv-
ice/in-service teacher education text as a part of
Davis’Art Education and Practice Series.The antici-
pated release will be late 2003.

23
All People Tell Stories
For fourth-graders in California, teachers focused a unit of study on the enduring idea“all people
tell stories to explain their world”and chose two paintings as a center point.The unit crossed
disciplines, combining language, visual and performing arts, science, history and social science.
The first phase took place in earth science class. Students studied the layers of the earth, earth-
quakes and rocks and minerals as well as cave formations. During the study of caves, students
learned about pictographs and petroglyphs made by earlier civilizations.
The students then examined two paintings, The Creation by contemporary artist Harry Fonseca
and Sunday Morning at the Mines by 19th-century California artist Charles Christian Nahl. Fonseca
tells stories using symbols much like the petroglyphs and pictographs associated with his
Native American heritage. Nahl’s painting depicts life in the California gold mines during the
Gold Rush.
Students compared the two paintings in oral and written form, paying particular attention to
the way each artist tells a story. Students wrote and performed a Reader’s Theater interpreta-
tion of the artworks, and they read literature that featured stories about children living in
California’s past.They also created their own artworks, incorporating symbols to tell stories
important to them.
Students deepened their understanding of the paintings by studying the social and historical
contexts.The lessons included three field trips — one to a series of caverns, another to a recon-
structed Native American village and one to the site where gold was first found.

ŢTeachers Address Mandates With Lessons
In developing units of study,TETAC teachers aligned concepts and skills with national,
state and local standards.The TETAC Curriculum Guidelines also emphasized the
importance of building on knowledge students obtained in previous lessons.
For example, a Florida middle-school unit focused on the idea of personal voice and
explored this idea through poetry and still lifes.This unit addressed the state-man-
dated language arts standards concerning the use of literary devices and techniques,
word choice, symbolism and figurative language. Standards for the visual arts included
using media to communicate ideas, using symbols and making connections between
visual arts, other disciplines and the real world.
The sequence of lessons carefully introduced the concepts of per-
sonal voice, symbolism and metaphor.The first lessons featured the
work of 19th-century still-life painter William M. Harnett. Students
focused on how the artist selected objects and used techniques to
convey an autobiographical message. In the next lesson, students
explored how ordinary objects can have more than one meaning.
Students then considered the work of contemporary artist Audrey
Flack, who uses objects to carry several meanings.The students
compared the way the two artists worked with symbolism.
Additional lessons introduced the figurative language, including
the use of simile, metaphor and personification, as found in the
poetry of Gary Soto, who wrote a series of“odes”to everyday
objects such as the tortilla, tennis shoes and a garden sprinkler. As
part of this exploration, students created journal entries about
significant objects in their own lives.
In final lessons, students selected and arranged personal objects for a still-life drawing
and used the steps in the writing process to create poetry about one or more of the
objects.The students reflected on the ways their drawings and poetry symbolically
communicated an autobiographical message.

25
To address the challenges, the TETAC
Curriculum Task Force developed a tool
called the Multidisciplinary Standards
Framework. The task force thought the
framework would guide the development and
adaptation of multidisciplinary curriculum
units that not only met the characteristics of
DBAE but also embraced standards for other
subject areas, such as history and math.
While the framework would have broadened
the curriculum, allowing for better integra-
tion of the arts, it would have failed to solve
problems created by the one-size-fits-all
approach. In addition, continuing to supply
teachers with units of instruction did not
address the long-term advancement of the
teachers’ theoretical understanding of
instructional design and classroom practice.
As the second year of the project ended, the
national team of evaluators finished its first
report, which set the baseline for the
national evaluation. Concerning curricu-
lum efforts, the report said:
There has been a controversy over
whether the schools should be given
standard units to implement as one
part of their program or whether they
should be expected to develop their
own, given that in the long run increas-
ing capacity at the individual school
and staff level is essential if the pro-
gram is to be sustained. The decision
ultimately is a program decision. … It is
important to point out, however, that
movement in this area is slow and that
the lack of units — standard or school-
developed — is a bottleneck in the
implementation process. We urge the
TETAC [project] to address this issue
head on during the [project’s third]
year and commit to a strategy for mov-
ing along the process.
The Curriculum Task Force, with the evalu-
ators’ help in reviewing the data, revisited
the issue and proposed moving from an
approach that imposed standardized units
of instruction on a school to a strategy that
encouraged teachers to think deeply about
their classroom practice and its improve-
ment. The change would mean the
Consortium needed to focus on building
the capacity of teachers in several areas:
curriculum design; development and adap-
tation; authentic assessment of student
learning; and assessment of the quality of
the learning and teaching environment.
In addition, the task force emphasized the
need for flexibility to allow the project’s
curriculum strategy to accommodate and
adapt to local mandates.
The group also recommended that the strat-
egy promote ways to better link comprehen-
sive approaches in arts education with the
regular core curriculum to assure that learn-
ing in the arts was meaningful and that
education in the arts moved toward equality
with other core subject areas.

From this analysis, the task force members
and evaluators outlined a new strategy,
which philosophically embraced:
Ⅲ A multiple-domain approach to arts
inquiry, as promoted by DBAE, including
knowledge and skills in creating or per-
forming, aesthetics, criticism and history
and culture;
Ⅲ An integrated instructional approach
both within the arts and among all sub-
ject areas to meaningfully integrate art
throughout the curriculum;
Ⅲ The use of a theme or enduring idea from
the arts or life around which inquiry in all
disciplines would be designed;
Ⅲ The use of inquiry-based instructional
techniques that would encourage stu-
dents to solve problems, take risks, seek
alternative solutions, relate learning to
real-life experiences and employ collabo-
rative, as well as individual, learning
strategies;
Ⅲ A collaborative planning and teaching
approach among teachers both within
grade and cross-grade;
Ⅲ The delivery of instruction in the arts by
classroom teachers as well as arts special-
ists; and
Ⅲ The design of learning environments
that accommodate the diverse needs of
students.
From this philosophical base, the task force
members and evaluators developed the
TETAC Curriculum Guidelines to help
teachers create or adapt curricula in the arts
that linked to other core subjects. They titled
this approach Comprehensive Arts
Education, or CAE.
ƅEnduring Ideas
“Enduring ideas”comprise concepts that have
drawn the attention of humans through the ages.
In TETAC, these ideas are taught repeatedly
throughout a unit of curriculum. Key concepts and
essential questions are derived from interpreting
artworks in the context of the enduring ideas.
Examples of enduring ideas include:
Ⅲ The inner quest for self-knowledge.
Ⅲ Relationships among humans.
Ⅲ Relationships between humans and nature.
Enduring Ideas in the Classroom
In submitting their written units of instruction,
TETAC teachers routinely reflected on their work.
They often spoke of the importance of articulating
and teaching enduring ideas and key concepts.
Through this focus, the teachers became far more
selective in choosing instructional strategies, as an
elementary teacher in Nebraska wrote:
“The art of alignment in a unit is something I am
now much more aware of. Do the key concepts
guide the lessons? Are the art questions appropri-
ate and do they fit with the artists and lesson
design? Is the enduring idea an umbrella for last-
ing ideas that have value beyond the classroom?
All of these questions and more help to define my
passion for developing quality units that engage
and excite students.”

27
The guidelines introduced the notion of
using an “enduring idea” as the foundation
of CAE. The task force characterized endur-
ing ideas as life issues that extend beyond
specific disciplines and that have lasting
human importance. The guidelines assisted
teachers in establishing an enduring idea,
then encouraged them to identify related
concepts drawing from all subject areas. The
guidelines also included provocative ques-
tions to promote the development of
instructional strategies and inquiry-based
learning experiences.
The process created the conceptual founda-
tions for teachers to frame and shape cur-
riculum content and align assessment tasks
and performances. The guidelines also
explained how these foundations could help
teachers meet local, state and national stan-
dards. The guidelines emphasized that by
using enduring ideas and other founda-
tional components, a teacher could avoid
activities insignificant for lifelong learning.
The Consortium introduced CAE to teachers
during national and regional professional
development events at the end of year 3.
Once you teach this way, you
never want to go back.
Classroom teacher
Buck Lake Elementary School,
Tallahassee,Florida

ėThe TETAC Curriculum Guidelines
The guidelines offer a series of questions, explanations and examples to help educators develop
new units of instruction or evaluate existing units.The guidelines are organized in five areas:
Unit Foundations: This area defines the foundations for integrating inquiry across disciplines
and aligning all components of a unit, including assessment, content and instruction. Key to the
foundations is the establishment of an enduring idea around which inquiry in the arts and other
disciplines can be meaningfully integrated.These ideas are not discipline specific but embrace
life issues that have lasting human importance and appear to be of continual concern to
humans at different times and in different cultures.These ideas are explored repeatedly through
the perspectives offered by the various disciplines.
Content: This area outlines the knowledge and skills to be introduced or developed in explor-
ing the enduring idea, including the alignment of local curriculum standards and mandates. In
the arts, knowledge and skills were drawn from four domains — art history, aesthetics, art pro-
duction and art criticism.
Instruction: This area guides teachers in planning the learning strategies to use in delivering
the unit of instruction. In particular, the area promotes, though not exclusively, the use of stu-
dent-centered, inquiry-based teaching approaches that assist students in arriving at an under-
standing of the enduring idea.
Assessment: This area guides teachers in structuring and aligning assessment activities with
the enduring idea and the unit content to assure that the learning activities are relevant and
engaging.
Design: This area outlines criteria for teach-
ers to use in reviewing the quality of a whole
unit of instruction being developed to assure
that the areas of the unit are aligned and that
coherence and clarity exist with the sequenc-
ing of lessons and relationships among con-
cepts being explored.

29
The Consortium members reasoned that the
project’s success and sustainability hinged
on the principal and faculty at each of the
35 schools and their ability to implement
and sustain Discipline-Based Arts
Education along with various reform strate-
gies. The Consortium wanted to build the
capacity of at least 80 percent of a school’s
administration and faculty to integrate
DBAE throughout the curriculum. By
achieving this critical mass, the Consortium
hoped to institutionalize support for the
arts in the regular core curriculum.
The Consortium proposed two categories of
capacity-building services: professional
development and technical assistance.
Professional development would include
training activities staged in a central loca-
tion in each region around the larger ideas
and goals of the project, such as training in
DBAE. Technical assistance would include
individualized services offered at a school
for either an individual or group.
For professional development, the members
proposed one- to two-week summer confer-
ences, the same model used during the RIG
program. The teams attending the programs
would include teachers, arts specialists if
they existed, principals, parents and other
community members.
The programs would equip the teams with
the tools needed to advance the arts in their
school curricula through intensive DBAE
training. The programs would be offered at
three levels — beginning, intermediate and
advanced — during the project.
Most of the Consortium members offered
little technical assistance during the RIG
program. With the TETAC initiative, the
Consortium wanted to offer ongoing sup-
port, advice and information to the schools
throughout the academic year to build broad
and deep support for the project. However,
the Consortium did not have a specific
model to propose for technical assistance.
What Issues and Challenges Surfaced
In November 1996, the Consortium’s
Professional Development Task Force issued
a plan for the capacity-building component
of the project highlighting a challenge that
surfaced after the proposal stage: the rela-
tionship between the national funders —
The Walter H. Annenberg Foundation and
the J. Paul Getty Trust. The Annenberg
Foundation wanted the project to focus on
linking the arts with whole-school reform;
the Getty Trust was primarily interested in
arts-education reform.
In an effort to meet both agendas, the
Consortium created a two-tier system, clas-
sifying half of the schools as “Annenberg”
and half as “Getty.” But the task force found
accommodating the two-tier system diffi-
cult in designing professional development
and technical assistance services with a lim-
ited budget.
Because of the Consortium’s experience
with the RIG program, the initial capacity-
building services offered to all schools
heavily favored the Getty agenda. The sum-
mer institutes focused on the DBAE
The TETAC Capacity-
Building Component

approach rather than the larger realm of
general school reform. Eventually, represen-
tatives from the Annenberg Challenge
questioned the predilection for the old
Getty agenda, urging the Consortium to
give equal focus to the school-reform goals
of the original proposal.
Focusing on Technical Assistance
For technical assistance, the Consortium set
up a system of coaches or mentors across
the nation to work individually with the
schools and to act as liaisons between the
schools and the regional organizations. The
Consortium allowed each organization to
develop criteria for selecting the mentors
and to define the mentors’ roles. This
approach produced considerable differences
in the qualifications and responsibilities of
the mentors and the intensity of the men-
toring services offered by each regional
organization.
While identifying the mentoring services as
the most important aspect of capacity build-
ing, the national evaluators cautioned the
Consortium:
[O]ur initial examination of [the men-
toring] component suggests that for
both the mentors and the partner
schools, roles are not clearly defined,
opportunities for interaction differ, and
there is no clear set of expectations for
the assistance and guidance that these
specialists should provide. We also
question whether the mentors them-
selves are comfortable providing assis-
tance in all the areas they are asked to
address and whether some of the activi-
ties initiated to expand their knowledge
and skills need to be further developed.
The issue would affect the mentoring com-
ponent throughout the life of the project.
Re-examining Service Delivery
The Consortium encountered unanticipated
service-delivery challenges. One challenge
involved the Consortium’s goal of training
more than 80 percent of the teachers and
administrators, a goal built on the mistaken
assumption that turnover would be low. Not
only did the schools turn over up to 40 per-
cent of their teaching staffs during the five-
year project, but a similar percentage
changed principals, some more than once.
The need to bring new stakeholders up to
speed never ended.
The cost of offering services varied greatly
by region depending on the geographic
separation of the schools. Only one region
chose schools all in one metropolitan area.
Four organizations picked schools across
their states, some hundreds of miles apart.
One region chose schools in three states.
In addition, teachers found attending week-
long professional development events diffi-
cult because a constantly changing land-
scape of curriculum mandates required

31
them to take other summer training pro-
grams and year-round workshops, leaving
little time for additional capacity-building
activities.
As the schools progressed through the proj-
ect, the need for the individualization of
services, whether professional development
or technical assistance, increased dramati-
cally. Consequently, the Consortium faced
the challenge of finding ways to accommo-
date differences created by local curricular
requirements and reform mandates.
The final challenge for the capacity-building
component involved the emerging need for
professional development events for the
administrators, teachers and mentors at the
national level. The Consortium saw a need
to reinforce a common understanding of
the project’s goals and theoretical base and
to ensure that everyone had an equal ability
to carry out the work. However, no funds
existed for national events.
How the Thinking
Almost from the beginning, the Consortium
found the two-tier school system developed
to accommodate the funders’ differing goals
problematic. Not only were the expectations
different for the two tracks, but the services
and resources were unequal, creating confu-
sion and exasperation among the schools. In
addition, the Annenberg Challenge
expressed dissatisfaction with the Getty
schools’ focus solely on arts education and
not whole-school reform, the focus for the
Annenberg schools.
As the Consortium delved deeper into the
objectives for each tier, the members became
convinced that reform in arts education and
general school reform were intrinsically
linked, and common ground between the
Getty and Annenberg approaches existed.
The Consortium leadership then dropped
the designations and developed a common
set of expectations that better balanced the

funders’ agendas. The Consortium used the
common expectations in designing the
capacity-building services, allowing the
members to develop and offer similar serv-
ices that focused on the evolving TETAC
curricular approach and general school-
reform strategies.
Mentoring the Mentors
At about the same time, the Consortium
addressed the mentor issues raised in the
first evaluation report. Because all six
organizations already had a system in place,
they tried to find ways to standardize the
services and equalize the mentors’ diverse
levels of abilities.
The Consortium’s first task was to develop a
common set of responsibilities for the men-
tors that included:
Ⅲ Advancing a common understanding of
the project’s goals among the TETAC
schools’ staffs and communities;
Ⅲ Facilitating the required collaborative
planning processes at each TETAC
school necessary for the development
and implementation of reform plans,
addressing needs that included:
Ⅲ professional development,
Ⅲ technical assistance,
Ⅲ use of technology,
Ⅲ use of community resources,
Ⅲ project evaluation,
Ⅲ assessment of student achievement
and
Ⅲ advancement of collaborative
planning;
ĒNational TETAC Meetings
Four national meetings of the mentors were
staged around the following topics:
March 16-17, 1998, in Los Angeles
“Defining a Common Understanding of the
Mission and Goals for the TETAC Project”
October 30, 1998, to November 2, 1998, in
Jekyll Island, Georgia
“Reflective Strategies for Improving Classroom
Practice and Utilization of Inquiry-Based
Instructional Techniques”
April 9-13, 1999, in Kansas City, Missouri
“Communication Strategies for Facilitating School-Reform
Efforts and Using Enduring Ideas for Integrated Inquiry”
February 26-27, 2000, in San Francisco
“Finalizing and Designing an Implementation Plan for the
TETAC Curriculum Guidelines”

33
Ⅲ Reporting to Consortium members
about the progress of the schools and the
design of professional development and
technical assistance services; and
Ⅲ Advising and assisting the TETAC
national evaluation team.
This joint statement of responsibilities clari-
fied the mentors’ role for both the schools
and mentors.
Next, the Consortium pursued the idea of
staging national meetings for the mentors
to advance a common understanding of the
goals and purposes of the project while
building the mentors’ capacity to assist the
schools. The main challenge involved funds,
which the Consortium eventually obtained.
Four mentor meetings took place during
years 2 through 4. Each focused on a differ-
ent aspect of the mentors’ work, allowing
them to jointly explore these areas, build
strategies for assisting the schools and list
the project’s goals by priority to better syn-
chronize their services across the nation.
These meetings emphasized a common
understanding of the theoretical basis of the
project but never discouraged the regional
variations needed to accommodate local
differences.
Facing Realities
The Consortium then confronted the issues
related to delivery of capacity-building serv-
ices. Research shows that turnover plagues
the vast majority of school-reform initiatives
across the nation, leading the Consortium
to redesign this component keeping the
problem in mind.
The members also accepted as a given that
school systems would continue to set indi-
vidual educational policies and curriculum
mandates. This meant the Consortium
needed to design a flexible and adaptable
approach to professional development just
as it did with the curriculum.
Shifting the Thinking
These realizations caused the Consortium
to make a major philosophical shift during
the third year of the project. The
Consortium decided to provide continuous,
long-term capacity-building services at all
levels of expertise to accommodate turnover
throughout the project. This approach
allowed schools to draw from a menu of
services, depending on individual circum-
stances. For example, a school experiencing
a large turnover in its teaching staff might
need introductory professional development
events to train the new teachers.
Alternatively, the school might design a
mentoring program that used teachers
already experienced with the programs and
priorities of the school to train new staff
members individually.
“The TETAC project put us in areas
where we were not comfortable. Now
that we’re through it, I can’t imagine
teaching and not doing it. To grow
you have to be put through it.”
Nebraska teacher

The shift also required the Consortium to
broaden the professional development serv-
ices beyond the summer programs. During
the third project year, the regional organiza-
tions began developing a wider variety of
offerings.
Expanding Capacity-Building
Opportunities
Several Consortium members, housed at
universities, offered graduate-level courses
to help teachers and administrators develop
a deep understanding of the curriculum
approach as the project evolved.
Some courses were staged at individual
schools, allowing teachers to support each
other and the professor to draw on highly
relevant examples. Other courses were
offered in locations convenient to several
schools, allowing teachers to network and to
more broadly understand the course content
in relation to a variety of school settings.
Courses also were offered over the Internet,
giving teachers flexibility and Consortium
members a way to reach out to schools
regardless of the geographic distance.
In all cases, the courses engaged teachers for
10 to 16 weeks with a mentor, allowing
them to achieve a depth of learning uncom-
mon to short-term experiences.
The Consortium members also provided
one-day workshops at individual schools
focused on an issue confronting the teach-
ers and administration. Often these took
place as part of a larger planning retreat for
the school, which meant that most of the
faculty and administrators attended.
Another delivery system entailed the men-
tors spending an entire week working at a
school, offering a variety of services that
included demonstration teaching, team
teaching, workshops, community presenta-
tions, strategic planning sessions and
impromptu meetings with the faculty and
administration.
Leadership academies also proved an effec-
tive means of building capacity. Convening
meetings of the key teachers and adminis-
trators at a school enabled them to step
back from daily implementation and see the
big picture of the project. Sometimes leader-
ship teams from several schools were
brought together, which cross-pollinated
thinking. In one region, mentors combined
annual retreats for principals with site
visits, a particularly effective approach for
new principals.
The Consortium discovered as the project
progressed that the discomfort of general
classroom teachers and school administra-
tors with the arts stood as a major barrier.
Several regions staged workshops, often at a
museum, to build the capacity of these indi-
viduals to appreciate and produce art them-
selves. After the workshops, the mentors,
along with the schools’ arts specialists,
helped the teachers integrate the arts into
the core curriculum.

35
Two of the original five goals for the TETAC
project focused on documenting and evaluat-
ing the impact of the project on student
learning and the school culture and sharing
the findings and lessons nationally. In the
proposal, the Consortium members said the
documentation would include a rich array of
assessment tools and approaches focused on
systemic change and student achievement.
The Consortium originally expected schools
to complete a vision statement, self-assess-
ment and a five-year and one-year planning
process and submit periodic progress reports.
The schools were to receive financial support
to document student achievement in all sub-
jects and progress related to the implementa-
tion of arts-education reform and school-
reform strategies.
What Issues and Challenges Surfaced
As the project began, two evaluation experts
joined a representative of the Consortium to
flesh out a plan for the TETAC evaluation
component. As had been the challenge for
the Professional Development Task Force,
they grappled with how to design an evalua-
tion plan that could accommodate the dif-
fering agendas of the two national funders,
The Annenberg Foundation and the Getty
Trust. In the end, the task force strongly
recommended making the evaluations and
assessments the same whenever possible for
both tracks.
The task force then presented goals and an
organizational plan for the project’s evalua-
tion effort and a timeline for implementa-
tion. The first and most important task was
to select a national evaluator capable of han-
dling the complexity of the project and
acceptable to the two funders. The original
timeline unrealistically set a deadline of one
month, December 1996. Once selected, the
evaluation team was to assist the Consortium
in developing a detailed five-year evaluation
plan ready for implementation by June 1997,
just as the schools would join the project.
Searching for a National Team
The selection process became much more
difficult and lengthy than envisioned. After
an initial round uncovered no one able to
handle the complex needs of the national
evaluation, the task force revised the require-
ments. In fall 1997, the task force invited two
The TETAC Evaluation
Component

larger organizations to submit proposals,
and, in late fall, the Consortium and funders
began final negotiations with Westat.
At this point, the Consortium realized the
estimated cost of implementing a national
evaluation effort would require all the funds
earmarked from both funders for assessment
and evaluation. Originally, The Annenberg
Foundation wanted its portion to go toward
local capacity building in evaluation and
assessment. Funds from the Getty Trust
were to be used to develop and administer an
instrument for measuring the impact of
DBAE on student learning in the arts.
Changing the Focus
As the reality of the cost became clearer, the
plan focused less on building the capacity of
teachers and administrators in evaluation
and more on an evaluation of the project’s
impact. While this suited the Getty’s inter-
ests, it created problems for The Annenberg
Foundation, though it eventually agreed to
support the final plan.
The delay in hiring a team also prevented
evaluators from collecting baseline data.
The Consortium finalized the contract with
Westat in March 1998, almost a year later
than projected and almost a year after the
schools joined the project. By that time, the
regional organizations had begun providing
technical assistance and professional devel-
opment services.
In addition, changes to the curriculum and
capacity-building components of the project
in year 3 forced the national evaluators to
revise their long-range plan and measure the
results of the shift in thinking and services.

37
How the Thinking
In April 1998, the TETAC national evalua-
tion effort began. Westat, a social science
research firm in the Washington, D.C.,
area, had expertise in designing and man-
aging large-scale school-reform studies but
lacked experience in arts education. To
address the Consortium’s concerns, Westat
hired a national expert in arts education as
a consultant.
The data-collection effort implemented in
years 2 to 5 originally was designed to sup-
port an analysis focused on the end results.
It was to address the following areas and
questions reflecting the Consortium’s goals:
Student learning: What impact has
TETAC exerted on student learning in the
arts and in non-arts areas?
School climate and culture: How has
TETAC affected the school as a place of learn-
ing? To what extent is arts education recog-
nized as a critical part of the instructional
program? Is there an integration of instruc-
tion across subject areas? Is there an environ-
ment of inquiry and active engagement?
Implementation of CAE: What progress
have the 35 schools made in implementing
the Comprehensive Arts Education
approach? What factors have facilitated
and/or hindered the success of this approach
in the schools?
Collaborations: What kinds of collabora-
tions have been established? How have these
affected the view of arts education? The
instructional climate? The instructional
program?
Professional development: What types
of professional development services are
being delivered to prepare teachers and
others in the CAE approach? Who is receiv-
ing the support? What areas/skills are cov-
ered? What has been the impact on class-
room instruction?
General school reform: What other
school-reform initiatives are underway in
the TETAC schools? What has been the
interaction between CAE and the other
school-reform initiatives? What impact has
existing school-reform initiatives had on
the implementation of arts-education
reform efforts (and vice versa)? To what
extent has CAE served as an agent for
broader school reform?
To answer these questions, the evaluators
used both broad-based and targeted data
collection. They examined information from
surveys they developed; routine data such as
test scores, attendance and dropout rates
provided by the schools; curriculum unit
analyses; and arts assessments in selected
schools. The evaluators also examined quali-
tative information obtained through site
visits and reviews of open-ended comments
added by respondents on the surveys. One
senior high and 10 elementary schools were
chosen for case studies and examined in
more depth (see Table 3, page 38).

A critical issue faced was whether to use a
control group for a comparison with the
TETAC schools. The evaluators decided
against using a control group because the
project had been underway for a year, funds
were insufficient and few schools would be
willing to participate in an activity they
would consider burdensome. Instead, the
national evaluators adapted a design used
in other school-reform evaluations examin-
ing the relationship between implementa-
tion level, particularly change in implemen-
tation level, and changes in student
outcomes. The evaluators wanted to deter-
mine if greater progress in implementing
TETAC strategies led to greater change in
student learning in the arts. In this model,
neither starting nor ending point per se is
critical but rather the degree of change.
The evaluation plan had set as one of its
primary goals the gathering of hard data
concerning the impact of TETAC on stu-
dent learning in the arts and non-arts areas.
Data of this type, especially in the arts, were
rarely available in building the case for the
importance of the arts in education. While
the evaluators could use standardized
achievement tests to generate the data on
student learning in non-arts areas, compa-
rable tests were not readily available to
measure arts learning, with one exception —
the National Assessment of Educational
Progress in the Arts. The evaluators decided
to develop an assessment instrument build-
ing on the NAEP experience and what had
been learned about it. This instrument was
used in the 11 TETAC case-study schools.
Changing Relationships and Roles
The first evaluation report, sent to the pro-
ject’s National Steering Committee and the
funders, provided a detailed discussion of
the overall status of the project implemen-
tation, data on each component’s design
Data collection activity
SCHEDULE ACCORDING TO PROJECT YEAR
Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5
Documents materials X X X X
Curriculum units X X X
Teacher survey X X
Mentor survey X
Student survey X X
Site visits (all schools) X X
Case studies (11 schools) X X
Ⅲ Arts assessments X X X
Ⅲ Individual student achievement
data from non-arts assessments X X X
TABLE 3 Schedule of Date Collection Activities for Project Years 2,3,4,5

39
The TETAC Arts Assessment
Because no existing assessment fit the project’s needs,the
evaluators developed the TETAC Art Assessment.Below
are samples from the version for elementary schools.
Today we are going to learn about still lifes. Still lifes
are pictures that artists make of objects such as flow-
ers or bowls of fruit.
Ⅲ Look at still life A.What does the picture show? Use
details from the artwork to support your answer.
Ⅲ Look at still life A again.
Ⅲ What object appears farthest away in the picture?
Ⅲ How does the artist make this object look farther
away than the other objects in the picture?
Ⅲ Look at still life A. Place a check (√ ) in front of the word or words
that describe how the artist made the object look lifelike.
Check all that apply.
Ⅲ Look at still life B. Fill in the circle that best describes the style of
the artwork.
____ use of light and dark
____ perspective
____ shadows
____ many straight lines
ࠗ Impressionism
ࠗ Modern
ࠗ Abstract
ࠗ Realism
A
B
Painting A:Gustave Courbet,
Still Life:Fruit,1871-1872
Painting B:Umberto Boccioni,
Still Life with Glass and Siphon,c.1914

and descriptions of the status of each
school. Instead of finding a mature curricu-
lar approach as the Consortium expected,
the evaluation teams discovered that many
schools were just beginning to develop their
understanding of DBAE.
Even though the results were unexpected
and highly disappointing, the committee
and funders considered the findings credi-
ble, particularly because representatives of
the regional organizations accompanied
evaluators on all site visits. From then on,
the evaluators became indispensable mem-
bers of the team in ways the Consortium
had not envisioned.
The project leadership brought together the
evaluators and the project’s national advi-
sory group for a two-day meeting in
September 1998. The meeting yielded two
important insights:
Ⅲ The process of reform was far more com-
plex than the TETAC project leadership
ever envisioned. In addition, while high
expectations were important, a ground-
ing in the realities of the change process
also was important.
Ⅲ While the leaders had a joint understand-
ing of what they were trying to do and
how they were trying to do it on the most
general level, they had widely varying
perceptions of what implementation
meant and what a fully formed program
would look like.
The leaders looked carefully at the imple-
mentation rating scale the evaluators devel-
oped and discovered they had never shared
ĮThe National Assessment of Educational Progress
The National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, is the only
nationally representative and continuing assessment of what students
know and can do in various subject areas. Since 1969, assessments have
been conducted periodically in reading, mathematics, sci-
ence, writing, U.S. history, civics, geography and the arts.
NAEP, which the federal government oversees, tests stu-
dents in public and private schools in grades 4, 8 and 12.
The government issues reports for the nation as a whole
and for regions. It also divides the results by achievement,
instructional experiences and school environment for dif-
ferent groups, such as fourth-graders or Hispanics.
In 1997, the last time the government offered the arts assessment, approx-
imately 6,480 students in Grade 8 took the test, which measured students’
knowledge and skills in music, theater and the visual arts.

41
their goals at that level of specificity. They
also realized they had moved away from
some original goals, and where this move-
ment had taken them was less clear. In addi-
tion, the leaders realized they had conflict-
ing priorities.
Unintentionally, the evaluation and its first
report had become a catalyst for intensive
reflection about the project. Instead of
becoming defensive or antagonistic, the
leaders used the results to stimulate their
own thinking and examination of the
process. Through this introspection, they
began evolving from a group of six individ-
ual organizations into a team unified in its
drive to develop a meaningful reform pro-
gram for arts education.
Expanding the Evaluators’Role
The relationship between the project leader-
ship and the evaluation team continued to
evolve. As the leaders reflected on what they
meant by project implementation, the eval-
uators became part of the conversation,
both prompting discussion and probing
what was meant when discussions were
unclear or participants talked past each
other. In addition, as the leadership strug-
gled to put together a renewed mission
statement and clarify the project’s goals and
expectations, the evaluators read the new
documents, raising questions and pushing
for clarification.
The benefits from this interaction went
both ways. While the project leadership

benefited from the evaluators’ process of
inquiry, as well as their knowledge of whole
school reform, the evaluators benefited
from the Consortium members’ delibera-
tions on arts-education reform and the
somewhat diverse slants taken on the
TETAC goals.
The evaluators became secondary players in
the efforts to provide new supports to the
schools, commenting on the structure of the
supports and attending critical events, such
as the national professional development
conferences for mentors, and helping to
examine their efficacy. Formative evalua-
tions — research conducted during the proj-
ect to help analyze strategies — began play-
ing a pivotal role.
The leaders drew heavily on some tools and
processes initially developed for the summa-
tive evaluation, the research measuring the
final results. For example, the leaders used
the project implementation-rating scale to
guide the site visits and to formulate bench-
marks for measuring progress. Their feed-
back helped the evaluators refine their own
approach and validate the scale’s utility.
What Impact Did the TETAC
Strategy Have?
nalysis of the data collected during
the last four years of the project led
the evaluators to conclude the project
showed success for the TETAC strategy as it
evolved. The findings indicate the approach
holds many benefits for schools able to over-
come challenges inherent in any program
designed for nationwide implementation.
Evaluators measured success on many levels.
While not for the
timid, the TETAC
strategy for school
reform and the arts clearly provides a means
of enriching student learning and for chang-
ing the culture of a school. Overall, school
reform and TETAC are not only compatible,
in many ways they share the same proper-
ties, practices and goals. Most importantly,
the evaluation shows that the TETAC strat-
egy can be effective in all types of environ-
ments, including the inner city.
CAE provides a model for
integrated arts instruction
that can be adapted to a
wide range of teaching and learning envi-
ronments. It can be effectively integrated
with overall school reform, especially at the
elementary and middle school levels. The
approach is not easy to implement, being
guided by general goals and objectives
A
Enriching
Student Leaning
Providing
Flexibility

43
rather than detailed and closely prescribed
practices. However, this gives the approach
the flexibility needed to accommodate the
variety of mandates schools face.
Schools that embraced
the strategy of TETAC,
adopting and adapting
practices consistent with their local man-
dates and requirements, experienced many
benefits. The improvements included
increased collaboration among teachers;
more opportunity for thematic, integrated
instruction; new ways of teaching and col-
laborating with students in the learning
process; higher expectations for students;
and new attitudes about the arts and their
value to the curriculum.
CAE is effective in promoting deeper learn-
ing in the arts. Further, while the evalua-
tion fails to provide evidence of positive
effects on learning in other subjects, the
findings strongly suggest that adding the
arts and broadening students’ learning
opportunities does not hurt performance
in other areas.
Experiencing
Many Benefits
ŕMirroring Other Results
Results were similar to other multiyear
evaluations of reform programs integrating
the arts into the basic school curriculum.
The A+ Program in North Carolina, like
TETAC, found that the arts could enrich
learning environments, promote integrated
learning and increase collaboration among
school staff.These multi-method, multiyear
studies are beginning to build a picture
missing from shorter-term, frequently nar-
rower examinations of the effects of the
arts on student learning.

rom the six initial areas of concern,
three major questions emerged as the
focus of the evaluation:
ᖇ How was the TETAC strategy imple-
mented, and what has been the impact
on the 35 schools and their staffs?
ᖈ Has the TETAC approach to instruction,
that is CAE, affected student learning in
the arts?
ᖉ Has CAE affected student learning in
other subject areas?
Schools
found the
TETAC strat-
egy very chal-
lenging to implement but a powerful tool
for change. The challenge primarily arose
from the strategy’s reliance on guidelines
rather than highly prescribed sets of steps
and characteristics, but this approach also
made the strategy flexible, an essential qual-
ity for a national reform program unable to
take all local mandates and requirements
into consideration.
The evaluation built on data gathered
through site visits, a survey of teachers and
ratings of school-developed curriculum
units in the arts.
Site Visits
Evaluators collected data on project imple-
mentation during site visits to all 35 schools
in years 2 and 4 and during longer site visits
in years 3 and 5 to 11 schools chosen for case
studies. The teams, comprising an evaluator
and a representative of the regional organiza-
tion, used the implementation scale devel-
oped for the project (see Table 5, page 47).
The implementation scale’s features could
be divided roughly into four categories:
ᖇ Infrastructure (a leadership team, a
strategic plan, a policy for the arts and
principal leadership);
ᖈ Instructional practices (planning time,
curriculum units, pedagogy and assess-
ment);
ᖉ Supports for instructional practices
(personal, material and physical); and
ᖊ Connections to the community (fund-
ing, parental support and networking).
Figure 1 on page 45 illustrates the change in
implementation from the second to the
fourth year of the project for all schools. The
horizontal axis measures the extent of the
TETAC implementation, with lower scores
indicating lower implementation levels; the
vertical axis provides information on the
proportion of schools. Taken together, a
How Was the Strategy
Implemented and What
Was the Impact?
Data and Findings Behind
the Conclusions
F

45
curve is created that shows the proportion
of schools at each point on the overall
implementation scale. The curve on the left
shows the distribution of implementation
rating scores at the time of the first evalua-
tion visit; the curve on the right shows the
data for the same schools two years later. A
comparison of the curves shows a substan-
tial shift toward higher implementation
scores. While only a few schools were fully
implemented by year 4, most schools made
substantial progress.
NOTE: To develop these ratings, data from the implementation rating scale were
analyzed using Item Response Theory (IRT).Using IRT, difficulty levels were calculated
for each element on the scale.Schools were then given overall implementation scale
scores using these ratings.
FIGURE 1
Program Implementation Scale: Program implementation
score distributions at Time One and Time Two

When the evaluation started during the
second year, evaluators determined that
most schools had just begun to learn to use
the project’s original curricular approach,
Discipline-Based Arts Education. The find-
ing surprised the Consortium because many
of the schools had participated in DBAE
professional development events sponsored
during the Getty RIG program. Additionally,
many of the schools were selected for the
TETAC project because they said they had an
advanced understanding of DBAE.
After the strategy evolved into CAE, schools
experienced more success in implementing
the project. By year 4, 1999-2000, the evalua-
tors determined CAE was beginning to take
hold, though schools varied considerably in
adoption of the approach, from a low of 45
to a high of 73 on a scale of 100.
Average scores clustered around 41 scale
points out of 100 in spring 1998. By the
second round of site visits, in spring 2000,
score averages clustered around 59 points,
an increase of almost 18 points (see Table
4 above).
Progress was found for each of the regions,
but to different degrees. At one extreme
were the schools in the Tennessee region,
which showed an average growth more than
twice the progress of the sample overall. At
the other extreme was Florida, where
progress was slight, just 3.6 points out of
100. The evaluators believe the outcomes
reflected the way the schools and regional
leadership approached the project.
Data from the second set of site visits and
the IRT analyses also allowed the evaluators
to take a look at the relative ease or diffi-
culty of implementing each of the imple-
mentation scale’s elements (see Table 5,
page 47). Difficulty is defined in terms of
the extent to which the element was found
in the schools. As can be seen when the ele-
ments implemented with greater or lesser
frequency are examined carefully, there were
probably a number of factors, including
initial criteria for school selection, politics
and motivation, as well as what was com-
monly understood as difficulty, that could
reasonably influence whether or not a cer-
tain feature was found.
Regions 1997–1998 1999–2000 Mean Score
Mean Score Mean Score Difference
California 49.8 65.9 16.0
Florida 41.7 45.3 3.6
Nebraska 35.2 57.9 22.7
Ohio 33.2 52.6 19.4
Tennessee 40.8 73.0 32.3
Texas 45.2 57.1 11.9
Overall average 41.2 58.8 17.6
NOTE: Numbers may not add to totals because of rounding.
TABLE 4
Project Implementation Scale: Mean scale scores and differences,
overall and by region, for 1997 – 1998 and 1999 – 2000

47
The high ratings for a functioning leader-
ship team, a principal committed to the
project and sufficient supplies and materials
held no surprises.
The leadership team: Establishment of a
team of administrators and teachers has
become routine in today’s school-reform
efforts, and most schools would experience
no difficulty in setting up a similar team
for the TETAC project. In highly-rated
schools, the team met regularly, discussing
issues such as planning, curriculum, pro-
fessional development, resources and par-
ent communication.
The role of the principal: Support from
the principal was considered in school selec-
tion. When a principal left, school boards
generally considered a candidate’s willing-
ness to support TETAC when selecting a
new principal.
Supplies and materials: As part of the
TETAC strategy, schools were given money
and assistance in buying reproductions, text-
books, trade books and other materials
needed to support the arts curriculum and
the school’s overall reform plans. The region-
al organizations worked hard to make sure
the schools had the supplies they needed.
Program element IRT Item Difficulty**
Teachers evaluated 82.5
Networking with other schools and communities 74.2
Arts program evaluated internally by arts staff 73.4
Written sequential curriculum aligned with CAE 66.3
Connection between CAE and other reform efforts 63.7
Student assessment in the arts 63.5
Curriculum planning for collaboration across content areas 62.2
Instructional practices use mixture of inquiry-based and traditional 60.3
Strategic plan 50.9
Technology used for arts instruction 50.4
Partnerships 48.8
Policy for arts instruction 44.7
Parental outreach and communication 41.8
Written units aligned with CAE 41.5
Funds for the arts 41.5
School/classroom arts displays 36.6
Vision of arts role 32.6
Materials (supplies, textbooks, prints, etc.) 29.3
Role of the principal 27.7
Leadership team 26.1
* Items are ordered from most difficult to least difficult program element.
** Partial credit IRT item threshold level, when calibrated using an N(50, 15) population metric.
NOTE 1: Calculated using IRT analyses.
NOTE 2: Two elements on the original scale were discarded after initial analyses because they showed little systematic
variation over time and violated the requirement of the IRT analytic method of being part of a unidimensional scale.
TABLE 5 Project Implementation Scale: Scale elements ordered by difficulty level*

The hardest elements to implement —
teacher evaluation, networking with other
schools and communities and internal eval-
uation of the program — represented activi-
ties relatively unfamiliar to the schools.
Teacher evaluation: Very few schools even
attempted to evaluate teachers in the arts.
To be rated highly, a school had to include
this facet in its formal approach to teacher
evaluation or have an ongoing program of
arts evaluation. Schools noted evaluation
was a very sensitive area and that placing
additional criteria on teachers in only one
school of many in a district raised serious
political issues.
Networking with other schools: For a
high rating, schools needed relationships
with a solid cadre of other schools.
Geographic dispersion stood as one barrier.
In addition, no resources existed to finance
meetings or visits between schools. The
yearly regional meetings and the one
national meeting were too limited to sustain
collaboration or foster the development of a
true “community of learners.”
Internal evaluation of the arts program:
To be rated highly, schools needed to per-
form a comprehensive evaluation of their
arts program and how it related to other
subject areas within the curriculum. Schools
rarely had the time or the experience to
undertake these evaluations.
Schools also found the elements that form
the backbone of the TETAC strategy — cur-
riculum planning and integrating the pro-
gram across general school reform — rela-
tively difficult. No one considered the
results surprising because the two elements
required considerable effort. But because of
their importance, the Consortium thought
educators interested in advancing CAE
would recognize the challenge and place a
priority on supporting them.
Because of the diversity of the schools, the
evaluators broke out the results demograph-
ically and found the data encouraging. Of
special interest was the relationship between
socioeconomic status and implementation.
As a proxy for socioeconomic status, the
evaluators used the percentage of students
participating in the free and reduced-price
lunch program. Schools with the most
youngsters receiving subsidized lunches
started at a lower level and ended at a lower
level than the others, but they registered the
same level of improvement. Schools serving
both wealthy and needy populations grew
considerably from their participation in the
TETAC project.

49
Figure 2 below demonstrates this relation-
ship. The horizontal axis shows the per-
centage of students receiving free or
reduced-price lunch. The vertical axis indi-
cates the change in implementation rate. As
the flat line on the graphic shows, there is
no relationship between changes in per-
centage of students receiving free or
reduced-price lunch and changes in extent
of implementation.
Through two extra visits, the evaluators
collected additional details about program
implementation at the 11 case-study schools.
In most cases, the schools continued to
make progress between the fourth and fifth
year, with almost half showing significant
gains. One school regressed, but other fac-
tors might have been at play. The school lost
key staff, new staffers were unfamiliar with
CAE and the school came under pressure to
focus on the basics after a drop in scores on
high-stakes state proficiency tests.
While implementation was more complete at
the end of the project than the beginning (see
Table 6, page 50), the year-to-year changes are
far from linear, and schools recorded quite
different patterns.
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
-10
-20
Time One — TimeTwo,1997–1998 — 1999–2000 r=-0.03
Percentage of Free/Reduced Lunch Students
ChangeinImplementationScaleScores
FIGURE 2
Scatter plot of change in program implementation scale scores and
proportion of free/reduced lunch students at Time One and Time Two

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