13 / 28
National Core Arts Standards (NCAS)
The Context for Arts Education
Arts education has had a formal place in American schools since the early 1800s. The unique and essential
contributions of the arts to every child’s growth and development were as clear to Americans then as they are
to us today. The status of arts education in Federal law (and, more importantly, in American schools) has
evolved over time. Currently, the Arts are recognized as “core academic subjects” in Federal law,
ESSA 2016 ,as well as in state statutes and core educational documents.
The NCAS are designed to guide United States schools’ arts curriculum, instruction, and assessment. While arts
education has been subject to less data-gathering than subjects such as mathematics and English language arts
(ELA), we do know enough to present a relatively accurate picture of the status of arts education in today’s
schools.
The Department of Education’s Fast Response Survey System
( FRSS )report,
Arts Education In Public Elemen- tary and Secondary Schools 1999-2000 and 2009-10 ,affirmed that there is a real and robust infrastructure of
arts education in American schools. However, it also revealed extreme inequities in students’ access to arts
education, indicating that arts education is not universally available, is too often limited to music and art, and
it is inconsistent across grade levels.