The road to reforming art in secondary schools appears to be rockier than the path at the elementary level. Nonetheless, secondary school art teachers have managed to reformulate their art programs in extraordinary ways to convey DBAE concepts. Evaluators also found that the challenges in developing secondary school DBAE programs are greater at the high school level than in middle or junior high schools.

One obstacle evaluators saw at the secondary level is the lack of models to follow, leaving art specialists to their own devices in conceiving and developing individual DBAE programs. Another is that secondary school art specialists have less-developed support systems than do their elementary school counterparts. The implementation of DBAE is seldom schoolwide in secondary schools. Except in a few instances, secondary school art teachers have worked alone to develop their individual curricula.

A whole series of factors affects the implementation of DBAE in high schools, including the way the curriculum is structured, the kinds of students who take art classes, the kinds of expectations the students bring with them, teacher assumptions and preparation, and attitudes about the role of art in a student's education.

Evaluators observed that art specialists have been able to introduce DBAE into their programs with relative ease in schools where the art curriculum is nonspecialized. Programs organized around highly specialized or media-specific courses appear more resistant to change often because these courses are directed toward the education of an artist.

High school art classes are often seen exclusively as places where students make art, not where they study and interpret art objects. Furthermore, a competitive climate prevails in which high school art teachers are judged in terms of the number of prizes and scholarships their students win in various national competitions.

Despite such barriers, there has been a growing awareness among high school art specialists who have attended DBAE institutes that knowledge of art history and issues that animate the contemporary world of art are essential ingredients in the education of their students—whether or not the students hope to become artists.

Middle and junior high school art specialists, on the other hand, have not had to deal with the issue of the preprofessional art student so they have had less of a struggle with the merits of DBAE. As a group, they are more eager to accept the idea of a comprehensive approach to art education.

Evaluators found, however, that the elements and principles of design still permeate instructors' thinking about art in middle schools. Art specialists still face the challenge of changing the way teachers think about works of art and about how they can provide the content for instruction.

Despite the difficulties, secondary school art specialists have moved toward full implementation of DBAE in a number of groundbreaking ways. Some have developed new units of instruction and shared them with others. Some have integrated the study of works of art within their art media and process art projects. Yet, evaluators stress that much work remains at the secondary level to build a comprehensive DBAE curriculum.

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