Michigan's Arts Assessment Profile (Ana Luisa Cardona)

Summative arts assessment in Michigan is a local district responsibility.

The Michigan Department of Education has provided guidance on arts assessment through a variety of means including standards-based assessment examples provided via an electronic resource called MICLIMB. This was once available online but is now only available via CD Roms.

In the late 1990's, the Michigan Department of Education partnered with the Michigan Art Education Association and ArtServe Michigan for a series of two summer institutes for teachers that were devoted to development of classroom visual arts assessments.

MDE also pulled together a network of in and out of school arts providers in which arts assessment was a key area of interest. The issues for out of school arts providers was one of finding assessment tools that went beyond arts learning to measurements of the social and developmental impacts of the arts. Many of these providers are continuing to do this work on their own.

An example of this work is the recently published evaluation of the impact of Detroit's Mosaic Youth Theatre model which has received favorable attention due to the high success and college going rate of student members who would would be considered at risk of failure by most traditional predictors. Their evaluation report can be found at: http://www.mosaicdetroit.org/mosaic-model.htm

With the introduction in 2006 of the Michigan Merit Curriculum for high schools, there is a new requirement that local districts have in place student assessments that align with the credit guidelines for the 1-credit requirement in the Visual, Performing, and Applied Arts.

The Michigan Department of Education's Curriculum Unit is also supporting and participating in the Office of Educational Assessement's Balanced Assessment series of professional development which is based on the work of Rick Stiggins.

I hope this gets us started. It helped me to focus my attention on the steps we are taking in Michigan in the area of arts assessment.

Ana Luisa Cardona
Consultant for Arts Education
Michigan Department of Education
P.O. Box 30008
Lansing, MI 48909
cardonaA@michigan.gov
517-335-0466 (phone)
5170335-2473 (fax)