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The Quiet Evolution: Changing the Face of Arts Education
Executive Summary

A quiet evolution is taking place in arts education in thousands of elementary and secondary classrooms throughout the nation. The success of this far-reaching experiment holds real promise for advancing other school reform initiatives.

Known as discipline-based art education (DBAE), this comprehensive approach to improving arts education has become the cornerstone of efforts by the Getty Education Institute for the Arts (formerly known as the Getty Center for Education in the Arts), a program of the J. Paul Getty Trust, to transform the way students create and understand art.

The Getty Education Institute believes that art is an essential part of every child's education, speaking to students in a language that communicates ideas, reveals symbols, forges connections, and helps prepare them for life. DBAE builds on the premise that art can be taught most effectively by integrating content from four basic disciplines—art making, art history, art criticism, and aesthetics (the philosophy of art)—into a holistic learning experience.

This broad platform for the study of art promotes creativity and demands critical inquiry. It offers opportunities for relating art to other school subjects as well as to the wide range of personal interests and abilities of young learners. In laying the groundwork for this change in arts education more than a decade ago, the Getty Education Institute envisioned a sweeping transformation in theory and practice that asked educators to alter traditional ideas, learn to regard art in unfamiliar ways, and introduce new art programs in their classrooms.

The Getty Education Institute guided development of a model and then funded six regional consortia to create change communities and spearhead DBAE development and implementation in school districts. In less than ten years, these regional consortia have far exceeded expectations, becoming national resources for arts education reform.

The consortia have nurtured a new generation of DBAE educators who carried its principles forward as they reshaped its practices. As of 1996, they had served thousands of teachers and administrators from some 217 school districts in thirteen states who, in turn, serve more than 1.5 million students. They had attracted international attention and secured close to $15 million to match grants from the Getty Education Institute.

As an integral part of the initiative, the Getty Education Institute provided for an independent professional evaluation of the DBAE experiment. The results of the first seven years of that evaluation (1988-95) are the subject of this report-the first such analysis of the regional consortia for public review.

The results point to many successes. While challenges persist—particularly in changing deeply rooted education practices, developing sequential curricula, and assessing student progress—the regional institute experiment on the whole provides keys to educational improvement for all students.


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