The NAEP Arts Education Framework set new standards for assessment of students' dance achievement. The dance framework, and the field testing of dance assessment tasks developed in response to the framework, provide significant new information for schools, dance organizations, and dance studios charged with developing their own dance education programs and assessments.
In 1992, the Arts Education Consensus Project, sponsored by the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), began an 18-month effort to establish objectives for assessing arts instruction in the nation's elementary and secondary schools. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) had assessed music in 1972 and 1978 and the visual arts in 1975 and 1978. The National Endowment for the Arts, in collaboration with the Getty Center for Education in the Arts, funded the Arts Education Consensus Project, designed to develop the NAEP Arts Education Framework.
The Consensus Project1 identified objectives for arts education in general and individually for dance, music, theatre, and the visual arts in the fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades. It also developed Assessment Specifications for each of the four arts, setting forth requirements for the content of the assessments in more detail. NAEP field-tested the dance assessment for the fourth and eighth grades in 1995 and for the twelfth grade in 1997. In the spring of 1999, NAEP will publish a Field Test Process Report, on the development, administration, and scoring of arts tasks for the three grades in all four arts, including dance.
In 1997, NAEP conducted an assessment of student performance in music, theatre, and the visual arts, for the eighth grade only. NAEP did not attempt an assessment of eighth-grade students in dance, because the number of schools offering comprehensive dance education programs in the eighth grade is not large enough to permit NAEP to obtain a sample of students consistent with its standards.2 While some schools offer very rich programs, many have limited programs or none at all. In the fall of 1998, NAEP will publish the examples of dance assessment tasks, along with assessment data for eighth-grade student achievement in music, theatre, and the visual arts, in the NAEP 1997 Arts Education Report Card.
The dance framework and field-test information form a unique resource for dance students, educators, instructors, and policymakers at the state and local levels. College dance programs and private studios, where most formal dance instruction takes place in the United States, will also find the framework of long-term use. This Focus on NAEP will give a summary of the dance framework set forth in the Arts Education Assessment Framework and describe the development and field testing of the dance assessment tasks.
Through dance students can discover insights into themselves and into their social and cultural worlds. In addition, they can come to understand the importance of dance in their own culture and in cultures around the world, for today dance is remarkably international and draws inspiration from many cultures. The NAEP framework sets guidelines for assessment that will respect the diversity of today's dance world (see table 1).
The acquisition and application of skills determine the quality of the learning experience. Students apply a variety of cognitive, affective, and motor skills in dance. Perceptual skills are needed to collect and analyze the sensory stimuli of music, rhythm, and movement. Technical skills are needed to produce quality work. Expressive skills are needed to add a unique and personal nature to the work. Intellectual/reflective skills are needed to test different creative possibilities, solve artistic problems, refine work, and help students to consider dance in a thoughtful manner.
In dance, knowledge and skills are inextricably connected. Students combine both to express themselves through movement and to create dance works that exist within larger cultural contexts.
Performing means performing existing works, a process that calls upon the interpretive skills of the student. Dance uses the human body both as instrument and thinking medium. Students progressively develop dance knowledge, skills, techniques, and responses that allow them to use their bodies with conficonfidence, success, and insight. Physical skills required in performing dance include coordination, agility, flexibility, balance, strength, and control of movement. Through dance, students gain spatial awareness, bodily awareness, musicality, and an increased ability to observe and refine movement. Dance also fosters an awareness of historical, cultural, and stylistic elements involved in the creation and performance of movement. In dance performance, thought, action, and emotion work together to achieve a single effect.
Responding to dance involves a level of perceptual or observational skill; a description, analysis or interpretation on the part of the respondent; and sometimes a judgment or evaluation based on criteria that may either be self-constructed or commonly held by a group or culture. Responding to dance must include the vital dimension of experiencing, knowing, and thoughtfully interpreting dance. Whether responding to one's own dance or to the dance of others, students should develop new levels of understanding, insight, and perceptual acuity as a consequence of interacting with dance.
In all three field tests, the dance background of tested students varied widely. The designers of the assessment framework wanted to be as inclusive as possible. However, the experience with the fourth- and eighth-grade field tests suggested that only students with in-school dance education should participate. To fairly assess the students and obtain results that resembled the breadth of the dance standards, NAEP decided to sample only students who had had some instruction in dance for the twelfth-grade field test. Even so, students with a single dance course were assessed along with students with four years of intensive in-school training.
The NAEP performance tasks are designed to be as authentic as time and resources permit. However, the tasks must also offer the same opportunities and the same challenges, in the same circumstances, for all the students assessed. No comparison 
across students is possible without such standardization. In the dance field test, such standardization necessitated limiting "choice" among tasks. For example, within a group of tasks about a series of dances, students were asked to analyze the same dance for a given question, rather than being able to choose to analyze a particular dance from the series. In the performance tasks, all students were asked to engage in the same dance task for the same period of time.
The dance performance tasks, especially the creating tasks, differentiate between students at both the low and high ends of the achievement spectrum. At the low end, it is possible to measure the difference between students with no training and those with a little training. At the high end, the tasks provide sufficient richness and depth so that those with greater skills can demonstrate the extent of their accomplishments. This discussion of dance tasks will refer to the twelfth-grade field test exclusively, since it is the most recent. NAEP plans to make available to the public all tasks, for all three grades, both paper-and-pencil and performance, that are not covered by copyright.
Twelfth-grade students were given four different pen-and-pencil tasks, or blocks. (Any individual student took two such blocks.) Each block consisted of approximately five or six multiple-choice questions and five to seven open-ended ("constructed-response") questions.
NAEP allows both partial and full credit for answers to constructed-response tasks. For example, scoring guides for the field test might give the following criteria for evaluating answers to a short constructed-response question like the one given in table 3:
Unacceptable: Response provides no correct uses of the costumes.
Partial: Response provides either one specific use of the costumes or one or two general uses of the costumes.
Acceptable: Response provides two specific uses of the costumes.
Creating. The creating task for the twelfth-grade field test gave paired students ten minutes to create a brief dance on the theme of metamorphosis. Samples of metamorphosis given to the students included a caterpillar changing to a butterfly, ice melting to water, fire burning to ashes, and (from films) depictions of humans changing to animals.
Students were asked to begin their dance in one particular section of the performance area and end it in another, in order to demonstrate movement that travels to different spots. They were also given the following additional requirements:
Students who performed the creating task were evaluated on the following points:
The dance offered a variety of movements, some sharp and abrupt, and others extended and flowing. The dance offered rhythmic variety as well. The dance challenged students' balance and extension with a sustained leg lift. Students were told to dance with "focus and expression" for both tasks.
Students' performance of the dance was evaluated according to the following criteria:
In the collection of data:
Privacy. Precautions should be taken to ensure student privacy. In particular, videotapes of students should be secured to prevent their viewing by any unauthorized personnel.
Space: Dance assessments require a quiet space for watching and responding to videotapes. For the performance tasks, a gym or other spacious, well-lighted room free from obstructions is necessary.
Performance Task Setup. Students should be notified in advance so that they have time to prepare properly for tasks. In order to put students at ease, group size for movement activities should be no fewer than three students (although grade twelve dance-educated students were comfortable in pairs) and no more than six. Students should be arranged with adequate space to perform the tasks safely. The arrangement of students should be changed at least once to allow everyone to be observed and to assess student performance independently.
2. In its survey, NAEP identified only nine schools in the nationally representative sample with significant dance programs at the eighth-grade level. At least 50 were needed for a statistically valid survey.
National Standards for Arts Education. Copies available for $20 from the Music Educators National Conference, 1806 Robert Fulton Drive, Reston VA 20191, 800-336-3768.
Arts Education in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools, NCES 95-082, provides data obtained from questionnaires sent to the principals of nationally representative samples of public schools. It is not in print, but is available over the NAEP web site at http://nces.ed.gov/NAEP/.
The following Focus on NAEP publications are also available free from the National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, DC 20208-5653.
The NAEP Arts Education Framework, Field Test, and Assessment, NCES 98-527
NAEP and Music: Framework, Field Test, and Assessment, NCES 98-529
NAEP and Theatre: Framework, Field Test, and Assessment, NCES 98-528
NAEP and the Visual Arts: Framework, Field Test, and Assessment, NCES 98-526
The Focus on NAEP series briefly summarizes information about the ongoing development and implementation of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This series is a product of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Pascal D. Forgione, Jr., Commissioner, and Gary W. Phillips, Associate Commissioner for Education Assessment. This issue was written by Sheida White, of Education Assessment, and Alan Vanneman, of the Education Statistics Services Institute.
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