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Arts Education

School Site Quality Indicators

Lynn Waldorf of the Griffin Center for Inspired Instruction introduced the school level quality indicators for L.A. County’s Arts for All arts education initiative at the “Quality Arts Education in Los Angeles” community conversation on January 14, 2010. Featured with Waldorf at the forum was Steve Seidel of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and principal investigator for “The Qualities of Quality: Understanding Excellence in Arts Education” report released in 2009. During the forum, Waldorf said that the lenses of the quality indicators, developed from extensive research, “naturally coincided with ‘Qualities of Quality’.”

Waldorf said that, in her research, she asked “What are the issues in L.A. County?” and cited preparation for the region’s creative industries, teaching to the content standards and affecting poverty and racism as the key concerns that emerged and informed her choice of indicators culled from 400 criteria.

Waldorf ended the forum with a call to action to the arts education service providers as expert instructors to start conversations about quality. “You are especially qualified to hold discussions about these points. You can be key in helping to form learning communities where these discussions are ongoing.”

The full released indicator report is available for download:

• LA County School Site Quality Indicators

The indicators were used in The Arts for All School Arts Survey: Measuring Quality, Access and Equity in Arts Education, which was was developed to measure access to and quality of arts instruction at the school site level as well as to develop a system for collecting and reporting the data. A summary of the findings is available here.

More information

For more information about the Quality Indicators, or to learn more about Arts for All’s development of indicators of quality, access, and equity in arts education, please contact Sofia Klatzker, Senior Manager, by email or at (213)202-5858.