To address both process and product in theatre, the grade 3 through high school standards of Proficient, Advanced, and Accomplished often include the term вЂњdrama/theatreвЂќ to clarify the distinct but companion parts of theatre education. Drama processes encompass envisioned worlds and unscripted activities designed to engage students in a wide range of real and imagined issues theatre includes the broader and more traditional conventions of the craft that have been developed over the centuries-scripted plays, acting, public performance, and stagecraft. These standards address those drama processes as well as traditional theatre. While many secondary theatre programs focus on performance and design in staged productions as evidence of a studentвЂ™s understanding and achievement in the art, ongoing student engagement in theatre without an end product in mind has not always been defined and valued.

The 2014 Theatre Standards are written with both drama processes and theatre products in mind. Thus, the PreK through middle grade standards are largely aspirational-what should be in our schools and arts programs. The standards in the earlier grades suggest the same rigor and understanding but itвЂ™s understood that at each successively earlier grade, there are fewer and fewer theatre programs and trained educators to teach in them. The most widespread theatre education opportunities in the United States have traditionally been in high schools, and the standards included here can readily be employed as a springboard for curriculum design and assessment at that level. These grade-by-grade standards are an effort to articulate the most fundamental elements of theatre, in the hope that by doing so there will be recognition that every student can and should achieve a level of proficiency or beyond in this ancient and honorable craft. As with other subject areas, a commitment to quality education, equitable opportunities, and comprehensive expectations is embedded within the new arts standards. The standards also inform policy-makers about implementation of arts programs for the traditional and emerging models and structures of education.

The National Core Arts Standards are designed to guide the delivery of arts education in the classroom with new ways of thinking, learning, and creating. Within this simple and elegant structure, decision-makers from teachers, to superintendents, to parents will be able to move forward in the rich variety of approaches that have become part of the American educational landscape. While broad in concept, the standards are also focused in a framework that delivers the educational nuance of standards in only four artistic processes, bringing together what artists do and what we want for our students. The connective threads of this conceptual framework are designed to be understood by all stakeholders and, ultimately, to ensure success for both educators and students. To realize that end goal, these new, voluntary National Core Arts Standards are framed by artistic literacy, as outlined in philosophical foundations, lifelong goals, and artistic processes articulated as anchor and performance standards that students should attain and supported by instructional resources, including model cornerstone assessments that illustrate how literacy might be measured. Standards, therefore, should embody the key concepts, processes and traditions of study in each subject area, and articulate the aspirations of those invested in our schools-students, teachers, administrators, and the community at large. The central purposes of education standards are to identify the learning that we want for all of our students and to drive improvement in the system that delivers that learning. The arts inform our lives with meaning every time we experience the joy of a well-remembered song, experience the flash of inspiration that comes with immersing ourselves in an artistвЂ™s sculpture, enjoying a sublime dance, learning from an exciting animation, or being moved by a captivating play.

They continue to infuse our lives on nearly all levels-generating a significant part of the creative and intellectual capital that drives our economy. Providing ways of thinking as disciplined as science or math and as disparate as philosophy or literature, the arts are used by and have shaped every culture and individual on earth. The arts have always served as the distinctive vehicle for discovering who we are.

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