One of the greatest challenges in school reform is putting new ideas gained from professional development programs to work in the classroom. Despite their determination to implement educational initiatives, teachers encounter a variety of difficulties. The culture of the school, for example, reasserts itself, and colleagues in school discourage reform efforts, leaving teachers little time or energy to alter existing practices. The regional consortia encountered all of these problems.

The main principle underlying the DBAE initiative is that pervasive change cannot occur if individuals work alone. Far-reaching educational change will succeed only when individuals work collaboratively at all levels within a change community.

The professional development programs of the regional institutes, therefore, were available to teachers and schools only when their districts became members of one of the consortia. In successful districts, administrators agreed to implement DBAE in the schools. Principals and DBAE coordinators, in turn, agreed to work with school faculty members to devise strategies for implementing the program at their sites. Throughout DBAE schools, evaluators saw that leadership and planning are paramount to successful implementation. Where district administrators do not fully understand or assume their responsibilities, programs do not flourish to the same degree that they do in districts where administrators have a strong commitment to and provide ongoing leadership for DBAE implementation. The validity of this approach is reflected in the fact that DBAE continues to develop in virtually every school district in which there is solid administrative support.

Evaluators found that the arts suffer when individual schools are freed from regulations and even from the expectation that they will implement comprehensive art programs. School district leadership remains essential to maintaining equity among school subjects, ensuring standards of excellence, and assuring that change initiatives will be implemented and sustained districtwide.

DBAE appears to have made the most impact in small- and mid-sized school districts where strong central office support is greatest. The enormous problems plaguing large city school systems prevented central office administrations from fully endorsing and providing sufficient resources to implement and sustain the initiative.

Evaluators found that the most important commitment a superintendent can make when a school district joins a regional consortium is to oversee development of a comprehensive five-year DBAE implementation plan. Most implementation plans share the following components:

• Appointment of a program coordinator.
  
  
• A plan to notify all district school administrators about the new program.
  
  
• A districtwide plan to send teams of teachers to summer DBAE institutes.
  
  
• Development of district goals and a new art curriculum.
  
  
• A plan for special purchase of reproductions of artworks and other materials.
  
  
• A plan to inform the public.
  

Evaluators observed another critical factor: the appointment of a district DBAE coordinator with genuine authority to initiate, facilitate, and monitor the change process. The higher up the coordinator is in the district hierarchy, the more assurance that the rest of the factors will be put in place.

They further noted that strong programs result when clear districtwide expectations are established for all subject-matter areas including art and when individual schools are encouraged to meet district goals using the means that work best for their local school community.

Implementation is also affected by the presence of other reform initiatives. Evaluators reported that new programs are most effective when they are integrated with ongoing initiatives. DBAE flounders when it is tacked on as a separate item to an already full agenda for educational reform.

Principals and teachers discover that the planning processes begun in the summer institutes can provide the impetus for restructuring entire school programs. Where it is most successful, the DBAE reform initiative has been able to move the art program from the sidelines of the school curriculum to its center.

There are two major shortcomings still to be remedied to strengthen the quality of DBAE implementation. One is the lack of meaningful assessment of student learning. Evaluators link this difficulty to the fact that the educational system doesn't yet require authentic performance assessment and that the collection of authentic performance assessment data is extremely time-consuming and exacting. If art is to take its place as a core subject, however, evaluators stress that more effective assessment strategies are needed.

The second shortcoming is the lack of sequential, K-12 curricula that reflect the approaches to DBAE developed in the RIGs. Development of such curricula was not part of the RIGs' original charge because of time and resource constraints. Unfortunately, at the outset, few textbooks reflected a discipline-based approach, and teachers did not have the time or resources to develop new instructional units. Even though efforts have been made in individual schools and districts to develop exemplary DBAE units, there are few if any satisfactory examples of comprehensive K-12 DBAE curricula. If curriculum issues are ignored, the development of the full potential of DBAE in districts and schools will be unmet.

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