1997 Arts Assessment Strategies ReportMore about the line between creating context for students and teaching assessment content

Measurement experts from Educational Testing Service worked with the Arts Assessment Development Committee to supply context that would

• enable students with little exposure to the arts to attempt the exercises; and
• compensate for the absence of guidance and discussion before students responded to and created works of art.

But did the assessment tasks teach students content that NAEP wanted to assess? It was challenging to avoid teaching too much. However, the information supplied to students to create context or increase comfort did not "give away answers" to students. For example, students asked to answer questions about an interior space by the artist Jacob Lawrence were given a definition of "interior space," but not about details and meanings of Lawrence's work that would have prejudiced the students’ responses.

As another example, supplying students with a definition for the word "metamorphosis" in a dance task built around that theme helped students grasp the theme of the task. However, this information could not change students' abilities to create and perform dance phrases based on the idea of metamorphosis. Similarly, telling students what a theatrical improvisation is before asking them to create one may have made many students more comfortable, but it would not enable students without theatre training to create and perform very well.

Finally, the results of the NAEP 1997 arts assessment summarized in the 1997 arts report card suggest that the great majority of students found the NAEP arts assessment quite challenging. While defining terms or offering students examples of art forms may have enabled some students to perform marginally better, the context created for students did not compensate for an absence of arts knowledge or skill.

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