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NDEO鈥檚 Guest Blog Series features posts written by our members about their experiences in the fields of dance and dance education. We continue this series with a post by Luke Kahlich, Professor Emeritus, Temple University. Guest posts reflect the experiences, opinions, and viewpoints of the author and are printed here with their permission. NDEO does not endorse any business, product, or service mentioned in guest blog posts. If you are interested in learning more about the guest blogger program or submitting an article for consideration, please .

The following piece was written in 1996 as testimony to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for the Arts Education Consensus Project. This was part of the then burgeoning development of the arts education movement into the mainstream of American education. Dance was finally being recognized, but questions arose regarding assessment and standards. When I found this again in my files, I thought it might offer some long-term perspective to those who continue today to work for inclusion of dance as a mainstream area of study.

As former Executive Director of the National Dance Association and a faculty member of dance and theatre at Kansas State University, I am committed not only to the value of the arts in education, but to the clear and productive assessment of their contribution to the personal, social, and professional development of the learner. Having attended a small rural school through the eighth grade, a private college preparatory secondary school and both private and public institutions of higher education, I feel that I have a broad perspective of the U.S. educational system.

While I understand the complexity of charting new territory in assessment, I am concerned that the value of the content in the arts is not sacrificed for expediency or structure. I believe that we have entered a new age where the only certainty is change and that the future success of students will depend on flexibility in thought, knowledge of access procedures, and tolerance and respect of multiple perspectives. To address this new world, our past educational procedures will not suffice, including the process and the assessment venues.

The very inclusion of the arts (especially all four areas) would in itself be "revolutionary," which is the word used in the National Goals Panel's original literature. The arts contain many of the ideals of our culture such as creativity, individualism, and risk taking that are praised on one hand, and feared on the other. Any quality arts education must include these as basic processes, and thus they must also be part of any assessment, if we are really to know what the student learns in and through the arts.

Assessment tools, procedures and goals must respect these non-颅 traditional educational values. If there is an attempt to remake the arts in the image of other disciplines and/or past ideas of assessment, I believe that we will either doom the arts to failure as educational modalities and/or lose the support of the artists/educators who are so desperately needed to attain quality of both teaching and assessment in the classroom.

As we continue this process of creating assessments for the arts, there must be a constant check of the political/cultural realities and the ideals embedded in the content of the arts.

To attempt this delicate balance, in my 1996 testimony I suggested the following 11听points be considered:

1. The ultimate value of assessment lies with the student him/herself. After all the teaching, preaching, activities, performances, and formal procedures, the values carried forward by the learner is the only true assessment that will make a difference in the life of the individual and thus ultimately for society and culture. This valuing of the student's reflection (I don't dare use the words feelings!) will itself revolutionize the assessment process, but is a major part that has always been downplayed at best and more usually dismissed in both the learning and assessment processes. Yet any classroom teacher can tell you that a student will not really LEARN without caring about him/herself and understanding his/her connection to the information. This is particularly important in arts assessment where our culture looks on the process AND the product as extracurricular often describing and dismissing them with terms such as "nice."
2. The arts have been honored by people throughout history and in every culture. Because our dependency on the perspectives of the Western age of "Enlightenment," the U.S. has traditionally both honored and distrusted the arts. We have reveled in the joy, freedom and exhilaration they bring to both participants and spectators while fearing what these same things "might lead to." In other words, we both crave and cringe at their power. As we create assessment for the arts, we must include a broad spectrum of persons and viewpoints if the arts are to be valued in the educational system. To even appear to propagate a narrow use of the arts can only harm the possibility of their inclusion in our schools. This is not to say that we should soften or retreat from our stance on the role of the arts in basic education. We must, however, respect that each community creates and exists in its own culture and that our job is to demonstrate that the arts can and do contribute in many ways to the positive development of a productive educated person in that culture. Assessment must thus provide opportunities for contextual perspective if we are to gain support of arts education or a solid view of its role and value on a national scale. The arts, just like any other discipline, will be valued and used differently according to the goals and values of the community. To assess the arts outside of their environment can only provide a skewered view of their accomplishments, or lack thereof.
3. As we create and test arts education assessment tools and procedures, we must keep in mind that this represents a new path both for educational assessment and for the arts themselves. Assessment procedures have always been embedded in the process of the arts, and there have been temporary formal assessments in music and visual art. However, to attempt to formalize assessment tools internally, among the arts, and in relationship to other disciplines and within the context of a rapidly changing educational system (without expecting adjustments) would be self-颅 defeating. Flexibility and openness to change must be part of any assessment design.
4. The processes of the art forms themselves provide the most promising material for assessment design. While it is important to include the perspective of the consumer of the arts, it is important to remember that the traditional "appreciation" and "exposure" models provide only passive contact with the arts and that knowledge of any subject is only revealed through active participation with the content AND processes. In the same spirit, arts assessment must provide opportunities outside the traditional fine arts areas to include emerging forms and technology. This should not, however, preclude personal contact with the essence of artistic principles based on the individual's commitment and involvement in the deepest levels of learning and understanding of art, dance, music and theatre. Viewing a videotape, listening to a recording, or viewing a photograph of a painting is far removed from the essence of the performance or object and in no way equals the personal challenge or interpersonal dynamics of even an informal but "authentic" setting. A hybrid form such as performance art is also best understood and used by knowing its component parts. The more complex multilayered or multidisciplinary works of arts should be taught and assessed with developmentally appropriate methodology just as principles of math or science. themselves and allow for the changing system.
5. Like any other discipline, the arts provide and operate under a perspective that is not often revealed to or explored by students in our current educational system. That is why it is critical that any assessment attempt to balance the unique areas of each art form with a broader application to life and culture. I do not believe that the arts and culture "intersect" but that they are interwoven and are sometimes the same thing.
6. We must acknowledge that even the very best efforts cannot absolutely ensure that an individual student actually understands a cultural element which itself depends on many variables. We can, however, assure each student the opportunity to view diverse cultural perspectives and encourage them to respect even that which they do not understand or with which they do not agree, presenting education as an ongoing process rather than frozen predictable plateaus, even in assessment.
7. As arts education has developed a path other than the traditional conservatory approach, so must arts education assessment look for the arts within the individual rather than the individual within the art. Without respecting and valuing the individual's assessment of self, the process, the content and the system, we will simply develop a variation of the current standardized testing. Gender, cultural background and individual talents and interests must be respected without softening the demand of excellence or defaulting to tracking.
8. Assessment has an opportunity to draw upon solid experience from past and present artists/educators who have survived and succeeded despite the educational system's lack of support. Individual teachers of the arts should be brought in the process on a broad scale to ensure that all that has been accomplished thus far is not ignored. Further support is needed for the development of arts educational research recently begun by the National Endowment for the Arts, the U.S. Department of Education, the Alliance for Curriculum Reform and others. In addition, much of what is being discussed (e.g. integration of performance/production, history, criticism and aesthetics) has been and is currently being done across the country at all levels of education.
9. Because so few in the past have received what is now being conceived of as necessary for "world class" arts education, we must include those already in the system in the planning and the implementation. Their experience is invaluable and their service must be respected and incorporated.
10. Assessment must include a range of developmental perspectives based on the natural diversity within each art form and among the arts. Setting the arts against a frozen set of standards only encourages complacency in the talented and frustration for those less talented or in slower developmental stages.
11. Time and financial resources represent perhaps the most daunting tasks. Artists and arts educators, however, are resilient. From my experience, other disciplines value and welcome the arts into the curriculum. In order not to frustrate and "burn out" current and new faculty, we must really reconceive all aspects of delivery within the educational system. Simply restructuring will not suffice. Time frames, pedagogy, personnel structures, architecture and other elements must be malleable and serve the needs of the curriculum rather than creating a curriculum that fits the building. There are no guarantees, and as long as we expect them, we are ignoring the most valuable lessons in arts education: not to try is never to know; experience is the only true test; every experience is unique and valuable.

Luke C. Kahlich holds a B.A. (Latin American Studies), M.A. (Theatre Arts), and Ed.D. in Dance. He has taught, performed, adjudicated and choreographed throughout the U.S., served on state, regional, and national boards, and as a consultant for numerous private and government arts and education organizations. Dr. Kahlich was the first full-time Executive Director of the National Dance Association, and developmental editor of IMPULSE: The International Journal of Dance Science, Medicine and Education and Journal of Dance Education. Past President of American College Dance Festival (ACDFA) and the Council of Dance Administrators (CODA), he served as faculty of Kansas State University from 1980-1997, Chairperson of Dance at Temple University until 2006, Graduate Coordinator for Dance and Director of the Temple Center for Research in Dance Education, and Co-Editor of a Dance series for Cambria Press. Following retirement, he has served as Adjunct Professor at Indian River College and Nova Southeastern University. From 2006 through 2020 his research focused on the efficacy of telematic pedagogy in the creative process with a colleague at John Moores University in Liverpool.

Photo Credit: Featured Photo, George Burkhead and Anne Arundel Community College--AACC Dance Company by Rosemary Malecki