An Integrated Approach to Using National and State Standards in a School-University Curriculum Project.

With the passage of Goals 2000: Educate America Act in 1994, the federal government formally advocated state and local school district use of national curriculum standards as a voluntary measure to reform American schools (Bodell, 1994). Using curriculum standards as a means of reform has also been recommended to fundamentally change teacher education, certification, and professional development (Ravitch, 1992) and also to change how higher education does business--including how we prepare teachers, admit students, and organize our services to schools (Haycock, 1996). Improving teacher and learner performance through standards requires that professionals at all levels (K through 16) collaborate to develop and implement standards in local school districts and institutions of higher education (Hamblen, 1995; Perlman, 1994; Salisbury-Wills, 1995). The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (1996) recommends that colleges and schools work with states to organize teacher education and professional development around standards for students and teachers to improve the initial and ongoing preparation of teachers. The Keystone Integrated Framework Project was created in Pennsylvania in response to the call for standards-based curriculum and collaboration. Funded by a Goals 2000 grant, the Keystone Project has served two purposes: to promote an integrated, multidisciplinary curriculum framework in the development of K-12 curriculum standards to meet both state and national goals and to have an effect on the reform of teacher preparation programs (Witmer, 1995a). Through a competitive grant process, 11 partnerships of local school districts and neighboring teacher education institutions were selected to participate. Each partnership agreed to collaborate on the development and implementation of an integrated curriculum project based on the relationships among national content area standards and Pennsylvania learning standards in arts, civics, English, geography, and history, with the overall aim of increasing student achievement. The project defined standards as generally the level, type, and possible format of a performance expected for a targeted group at a point in time or along a discrete or continuous skill (Witmer, 1995b, p. 2). The project directed that the arts be the keystone in the integration of the other content areas. In this article, we present a description and an assessment of Millersville University's Keystone partnership with a local school district. We focus on the impact of the project on ongoing efforts to reform the secondary teacher education programs and coursework; the learning outcomes of participating middle level student teachers in English, social studies, science, and mathematics; and the learning outcomes of art education students in their methods courses. Some current research and practice supports the use of a multidisciplinary, integrated approach to curriculum standards (Drake, 1991; Fogarty, 1991; Hange & Rolfe, 1995; Jacobs, 1989; Kovalik, 1994; Taylor, 1994). Defining curriculum integration as an authentic grouping of problems, issues, and concerns which transcends subject-area and disciplinary identifications, Beane (1995, p. 619) and others claim content area integration provides an enriched context for organizing the disciplines. Such instruction provides students a less fragmented educational experience and enables them to see how a topic relates to many areas of life and education. Research findings on the integration of the arts with other content areas vary. Supporters (Amdur, 1993; Roucher & Lovano-Kerr, 1995) contend that the use of the arts in curriculum integration increases student motivation and achievement without sacrificing the content standards of arts education. Other researchers (Irwin & Reynolds, 1995; Smith, 1995) advocate caution as art educators proceed with integration lest the disciplines of arts education become lost through other content area dominance. …