Feature Article

Tips for Success
Focusing on the Classroom: Music Content Standards

The National Standards for Arts Education constitutes one of the biggest educational reform efforts ever undertaken in American education. The standards focus on where the action is—at the local level, the grassroots level. The National Standards aren’t prescriptive because community control of local schools is a guiding principle in American education. But community control also means community responsibility. The arts standards do set important targets for a student’s academic knowledge and achievement in music, dance, theatre and visual arts, as measured at the end of grades 4, 8 and 12. They give us and our communities the benchmarks we need to fulfill our responsibility to our kids.

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Reprinted and distributed with permission from the Music Achievement Council.