Despite the increased presence of popular music education in K-12 music classrooms and interest in the inclusion of popular musics in post-secondary music teacher preparation programs, most collegiate music schools emphasize Western art music (WAM) and replicate existing traditions. As the music industry outside the academy innovates at a dizzying…

Over the past several decades, educational policymakers around the world have made changes based on three competencies they believe students will need to be successful in an increasingly globalized society: Knowledge, skills, and mindset. While many advocacy efforts in music education have focused on the first two global competency domains…

The coursework requirements for an undergraduate music education degree in the U.S. have remained relatively unchanged since the early twentieth-century. In light of the changing milieu of the twenty-first century music learner, some scholars and researchers have suggested redesigning particular components of the music education degree. A few…

While policy formation frameworks are commonly used to understand public policy developments, scholars rarely have used them to reflect on arts education policies. Such analysis is important because it can assist both in identifying the genesis of past policies, including who the important actors are, how issues are framed and problematized, and…

As the title suggests, the author provides a description of an international effort to develop an understanding of the present depth and priority of arts policies. As arts policy is not limited to education but formulated at all levels of community, including unions, individuals, philanthropic organizations, and government agencies, policy often…

This article provides an overview of dance education in schools in Singapore with regard to physical education, co-curricular activity, initiatives by the National Arts Council's Arts Education unit, and pre-tertiary and tertiary dance programs. In an effort to gain a better understanding of how well the official discourse and the reality of…

Teacher evaluation policy is a poignant and high-stakes issue. Driven by research, stakeholders are forging ahead with the premise that quality teachers are a critical, if not the most important, resource. As a result, many states are reforming procedures in response to educational reforms. The change to evaluate teachers in a systematic way has…

The purpose of this study was to understand how contributors to national media, education publications, and arts education publications interpret aspects of teacher evaluation enacted in response to Race to the Top. Using Stone's (1989) policy framework, researchers coded articles for intended and inadvertent causes. Analysis indicated that…

Over the past twenty years, constructivism, as a theory of learning, has taken on an increasingly important role in music education. Efforts to shift music education toward a more constructivist practice have significant implications for policymaking at all levels of music education. In this article, I seek to recalibrate our thinking about what…

Music education in K-12 school programs may continue to lose ground to other subjects unless music education and performance studies are viewed as interdependent. The author argues that the reinvigoration of both music education and performance requires that the studio experience integrate a research-based pedagogy, multi-stylistic range of…

School-based management, or local school control, is an organizational school reform effort aimed at decentralizing school decision-making that has become prevalent in districts throughout the United States. Using the groundbreaking Chicago system of local school control as an exemplar, this article outlines the implications of such reform efforts…

Recently, state and federal legislators have emphasized teacher quality in their efforts to improve public education. Many reformers believe that merit pay may prove invaluable in attracting highly qualified educators to the workforce and retaining them, as well as in improving students' test scores. While merit pay's ability to recruit and retain…

Because of education reform policy and misconceptions about artistry and artistic assessment, visual art education remains in the margins of high school education. One response to the lack of supportive arts education policy is the Advanced Placement (AP) Studio Art Program, a visual arts assessment at the high school level that engages large…

In this article, the author examines the current arts education policies in the United States through the lens of Matthew Arnold's work and prose during his time as one of Her Majesty's School Inspectors in England and Wales in the nineteenth century. Arnold argued for government funding of public school systems, setting standards of quality for…

In the past decade of educational reform, there has been one astounding accomplishment: The federal and state governments and the private sector have recommended and adopted policies to advance the visual and performing arts as essential to a comprehensive education. The goals created by the president and the governors of all 50 states for…