• Overview
• Introduction
• The NAEP Arts Assessment
• The Student Samples
• Student Achievement
• Gender
• Race/Ethnicity
• Type of School
• References

Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 1997 Arts Assessment for eighth-grade students show that female students outperformed male students in every category of assessment for all three art forms assessed-music, theatre, and visual arts. In contrast to assessments in other subjects, nonpublic school students rarely outperformed public school students. Asian and white students had higher scores than black and Hispanic students in many but not all categories of the assessment.

In 1997, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) assessed art education in the United States for the first time in almost 20 years.¹ This NAEPfact discusses achievement of student subgroups for all three arts assessed-music, theatre, and visual arts. (A planned assessment of dance was not possible because the number of schools offering a significant program in dance was so small that NCES could not identify a sample large enough to produce statistically valid results.) Analysis of student subgroup achievement compares achievement by gender, race/ethnicity, and type of school attended (public or nonpublic).

The NAEP arts assessment measured students' ability to create and perform works of art as well as to respond to existing works. For each art form, students were assessed on at least two of the three arts processes: Creating, Performing, and Responding. In the arts assessment framework (National Assessment Governing Board 1994),

• Creating refers to expressing ideas and feelings in the form of an original work of art, for example, a piece of music, a dramatic improvisation, or a sculpture.
• Performing refers to performing an existing work, a process that calls upon the interpretive or re-creative skills of the student.
• Responding refers to observing, describing, analyzing, and evaluating works of art.

The NAEP 1997 Arts Assessment was conducted nationally at grade 8. For music and visual arts, representative samples of public and nonpublic school students were assessed. Students were assessed regardless of whether they had any training in music or the visual arts. In theatre, on the other hand, NCES used a targeted sample, confined to students who had accumulated 30 hours of theatre classes by the end of the 1996-97 school year and who were attending schools offering at least 44 classroom hours of a theatre course per semester and offering courses including more than the history or literature of theatre.

The decision to assess a targeted sample of students for theatre was made based on the results of the 1995 NAEP field tests at grades 4 and 8. Field-test data indicated that small percentages of students were exposed to comprehensive theatre programs in the nation's schools. A general or untargeted assessment would not assess enough students with significant instruction in theatre to provide statistically significant results. NCES decided to use a targeted assessment for theatre in order to obtain meaningful data on the full range of student performance in theatre. The music sample consisted of 2,275 students, while the visual arts sample had 2,999 students and the theatre sample, 1,386 students.

When making comparisons between the theatre results and the music and visual arts results, the reader should keep in mind the fact that the theatre sample was not a random national sample. To underscore the differences in samples, theatre results are presented after music and visual arts results.

Student performance on the arts assessment is presented in several ways. The overall summaries of results treat each of the three processes-Creating, Performing, and Responding-separately. Responding results within music, theatre, and visual arts are summarized on a scale ranging from 0 to 300.

Creating and Performing results are not summarized using a standard NAEP scale. Instead of a scale, Creating and Performing results are presented as average percentages of the maximum possible score on tasks. These average scores represent the overall mean percentage students earned of the possible number of points for the components of Creating and Performing tasks. For example, if the maximum possible score on the Creating tasks in the visual arts was 129, and the average student had a combined score of 43, then the average percentage would be 33 (i.e., 43 is 33 percent of 129).

The NAEP arts framework concluded that assessment of the Creating and Performingprocesses would be different for each of the three arts assessed, due to differences in the nature of these arts. Students who participated in music were assessed in both Creating and Performing. Those assessed in the visual arts were assessed in Creating only, because Performing is not usually part of the visual arts. Students assessed in theatre were assessed in a combined process, Creating/Performing, because performance in the theatre almost always involves creative activities as well.

Differences in achievement are reported here only if they are statistically significant. This means that the observed differences in the samples are likely to reflect real differences in the population and are highly unlikely to have resulted from chance factors associated with sampling variability. Reporting of these differences is not intended to imply any causal relationships nor to make any judgment on the educational relevance of the differences.

Readers are cautioned against making simplistic inferences about differences in performance among different groups of students. Average performance differences may be partly related to socioeconomic or sociological factors, such as parental education or parental involvement. More in-depth investigations would be required to produce a clearer picture of performance differences by subgroup.

Differences in achievement by gender were pronounced. Female students outperformed male students in every category, for all three arts assessed (table 1). Female students have also outperformed males in NAEP assessments in two other subjects, reading and writing, at the 4th, 8th, and 12th grades (Applebee et al. 1994; Campbell et al. 1996).

Table 1.—Eighth-grade students' arts achievement scores by gender

Not applicable.

*Scores lower than those achieved by female students.

¹"Creating/Performing" for theatre only.

NOTE: All tests of statistical significance were made at the .05 level with appropriate adjustments for multiple comparisons.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 1997 Arts Assessment.

Differences in achievement by race/ethnicity were also common (table 2). Whites outperformed Hispanics in every category for all three arts assessed and outperformed blacks in every category except music Creating. Asians outperformed Hispanics and blacks in music Respondingand visual arts Responding and outperformed them in visual arts Creatingas well. Because the samples for Pacific Islanders and American Indians were too small to provide statistically valid data, these subgroups are omitted from table 2.

Table 2.—Eighth-grade students' arts achievement scores by race/ethnicity

Not applicable.

*Scores lower than those achieved by white students.

†Scores lower than those achieved by Asian students.

—Sample size is insufficient to permit a reliable estimate.

¹"Creating/Performing" for theatre only.

NOTE: All tests of statistical significance were made at the .05 level with appropriate adjustments for multiple comparisons.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 1997 Arts Assessment.

Approximately 90 percent of the nation's grade 8 students attend public schools. The remainder attend Catholic and other private schools (that is, nonpublic schools). In past NAEP assessments across a variety of subjects, students attending nonpublic schools have consistently outperformed students attending public schools.

That pattern was not found in the 1997 arts assessment (table 3). Nonpublic school students had higher scores in only one category, visual arts Responding. For visual arts Creating, and for all music categories, scores for public and nonpublic students were similar. No comparison was possible for theatre, because the nonpublic school sample was too small.

Table 3.—Eighth-grade students' arts achievement scores by type of school attended

Not applicable.

*Scores lower than those achieved by nonpublic school students.

—Sample size is insufficient to permit a reliable estimate.

¹"Creating/Performing" for theatre only.

NOTE: All tests of statistical significance were made at the .05 level with appropriate adjustments for multiple comparisons.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 1997 Arts Assessment.

¹NCES assessed music in 1972 and 1978 and visual arts in 1975 and 1978.

²To provide an understanding of the assessment that was planned for dance, the dance assessment tasks are included in The NAEP 1997 Arts Report Card (Persky, Sandene, and Askew 1998).

Applebee, A.N., Langer, J.A., Mullis, I.V.S., Latham, A.S., and Gentile, C.A. (1994). NAEP 1992 Writing Report Card (NCES 94-467). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Campell, J.R., Donahue, P.L., Reese, C.M., and Phillips, G.W. (1996). NAEP 1994 Reading Report Card for the Nation and the States (NCES 96-045). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

National Assessment Governing Board. (1994). Arts Education Assessment Framework. Washington, DC: Author.

Persky, H.R., Sandene, B.A., and Askew, J.M. (1998). The NAEP 1997 Arts Report Card: Eighth-Grade Findings From the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NCES 1999-486). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.