Ohio is investing in arts education assessment in a BIG way. Arts educators are often left on their own to develop assessments to identify and measure student growth. This can be daunting when they typically teach all of the students in the building in an elementary school setting.

In 2014, the Ohio Arts Assessment Collaborative (OAAC) was formed thanks to one of Ohio Department of Education’s Straight-A Fund grants. This fund was created to infuse new creative ideas by educators into the education system. Three school districts (Hamilton Local, Cincinnati Public, and West Muskingum) came together with the Ohio Alliance for Arts Education (OAAE) and Battelle for Kids to create an innovative suite of authentic assessments to measure student growth for grades K-12 dance, drama, music and visual arts while maintaining alignment with fine arts education standards. These assessments were developed and field-tested by K-12 arts educators, for K-12 arts educators across the state to incorporate in their classrooms.

I was chosen to be one of 36 arts assessment writers from across the state, and started on a journey that was at times intense, enlightening, stressful, fun, challenging and, in the end, highly rewarding. We came together for massive training sessions led by Battelle for Kids. We deepened our knowledge in high quality assessment design, Webb’s Depth of Knowledge, validity and reliability, alignment to standards, and assessment blueprints. In the end, 46 arts assessments were developed by grade band as established in Ohio's fine arts learning standards for grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12. The breakdown of the assessments includes 13 for visual arts, 14 for music, 10 for drama/theatre, and nine for dance.

During the spring of 2015, the assessments were field tested by more than 70 K-12 arts educators across the state, and these educators offered feedback for the final revisions of the assessments.

The end result was a suite of new arts assessments, provided free to all Ohio teachers, that:

• Align with arts education standards in Ohio
• Have been field-tested for validity, reliability, and ease of implementation 

• Are available with professional learning resources such as scoring rubrics, administration guides, and examples of student work, developed to build the assessment literacy of arts educators 

• Help capture the growth of students in subjects like dance, theatre/drama, music, and visual arts 


As of this summer, I joined 17 people chosen to become Arts Assessment trainers. OAAE and Battelle for Kids provided multiple “Train the Trainer” sessions on arts assessment literacy. Our charge is to go back to our area of the state to begin the work of training arts educators to become local arts assessment leaders. A new journey is beginning … follow the yellow brick road to Ohio for high quality arts assessments!