Educate America Act which established the National Education Standards and Improvement Council to certify voluntary standards submitted by the states. The movement toward national standards will not, in themselves, bring about the changes we seek. Such standards, voluntary at this moment, will find fertile ground in the numerous school reform foundations and networks. If, indeed, reform groups include arts study as an important component in their programs, some high quality model programs might be on the near horizon. They can not be aimless or disconnected series of exercises.
Education reform is currently a powerful force.
We can take advantage of it to strengthen our programs. But we can do so only if we are willing to state clearly and precisely what it is that we want our students to know and be able to do. It might be years before we can assess the impact of current reform networks upon secondary programs. With offices at Brown University within the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, the coalition serves as a high school-university partnership. During an anticipated period of thinning out within agencies and state governments, the Standards will become increasingly important.