Kim Wheetley, executive director of UTC’s Southeast Center for Education in the Arts, has been invited to serve on the College Board’s new National Task Force on the Arts in Education.
According to Lester Monts, chair of the College Board’s Board of Trustees, the U.S. education system should promote the arts from preschool through college and make every effort to integrate the arts with other disciplines. As a result, the Academic Assembly Council established the College Board National Task Force for the Arts in Education.
“The purpose of the Task Force is to advise the Board in developing and articulating a vision for arts education in the United States, with the hope that the Board will use its considerable resources and influence to promote and inspire artistic creativity and innovation and to achieve and sustain an integrative vision for arts in education,” said Monts. “As it has with many other initiatives, the College Board has the opportunity to once again take a leadership role in curriculum and teacher development in the arts. We’d like to see the College Board launch a national discussion about the role of the arts in education and the meaning of citizenship.”
The first meeting of the Task Force will be in New York City on October 10-11, 2008.
At its founding in 1900, the College Board was organized to help high school students make a successful transition to higher education. At that time, the handful of colleges that formed the membership association known as the College Entrance Examination Board sought to simplify the application process for students and for those colleges’ admission offices.
With the College Board’s development of common entrance examinations—later known as the SAT® Program or Scholastic Assessment Tests—students could apply to a number of institutions without having to sit for entrance examinations at each one.
The membership association developed additional assessments to provide assistance in placement and the awarding of college credit, such as the Advanced Placement Program and the College-Level Examination Program. Resources to help students conduct successful college searches were compiled, printed, and eventually made available electronically in software products and on the Internet.
