Does the Ap Art Concentration Have to Be in the Same Medium
Art Portfolio equally A.P. Test
Here is an unhappy idea: "Monet wouldn't have done well in A.P. studio art. I'm sure of that." The reason, connected Lauren Sleat, who teaches the form at Westminster Schools in Atlanta, is that there isn't much breadth to his work. That is, he did the same thing again and again.
Merely he would have done well in terms of concentration, what the College Board describes as "the thoughtful investigation of a specific visual idea … through a number of conceptually related works." Concentration and breadth are two of three categories in which students' art portfolios are scored. Ane might expect Monet to score high in the third, quality, but the fact is, information technology took years for his work to be widely appreciated.
Now, Picasso is unlike. "Picasso would have scored very high," Ms. Sleat said, because he could do traditional figurative work, modernist even so life and abstruse fine art in a multifariousness of media — the whole package. Or, in Higher Board speak, Picasso would have earned a five on his portfolio.
It'southward strange to movie famous artists struggling to get a good score in a high school art class. But different United States history or Latin or calculus, in that location are no right or incorrect answers in Advanced Placement studio fine art. Students are tested not past their mastery of the material but by their skill, a far more subjective surface area of evaluation. "Readers" must make judgments about competence and inventiveness as they work their mode through some 48,000 portfolios of student artwork. That'southward more than than double the number submitted a decade earlier.
Advanced Placement, run past the College Board, offers high school students higher-level piece of work, and the possibility of college credit for those who pass the exam in May. Studio art is i of the fastest growing of the A.P. disciplines, and has become a transcript staple in the applicant pool for Bachelor of Fine Arts programs at independent art colleges. "Maybe 25 to 30 percentage of our applicants accept done A.P. in loftier schoolhouse," said Linda Schwab, director of admissions at Watkins Higher of Art, Design and Film in Nashville.
But the growth does non necessarily betoken artistic aspirations. According to a 2007 survey by the College Board, only near thirteen percentage of the students major in fine art. And then why take A.P. studio? To try to impress a college admissions part, of class, or perhaps to make a residuum stop forth the academic autobahn or, maybe, art really is a labor of love.
WHAT IS STUDIO Art, ANYWAY?
The art program comes in three yearlong options: drawing (which also encompasses painting and printmaking), 2-D design (graphic and digital blueprint; photography) and 3-D design (sculpture and crafts).
Much is required. For cartoon and 2-D portfolios, for example, students must submit 24 works: 12 in a latitude section, showing a multifariousness of subjects, visual concepts and techniques, and 12 in the concentration section, presenting a unified body of piece of work (all portraits, say) and ideas. Five works are highlighted equally indications of quality, revealing understanding of concept, composition and execution and overall accomplishment.
Equally much as high school teachers volition seek to requite their students the rigor of a college class, time is a gene in A.P. courses that is difficult to get around. Studio art classes in higher mostly last two or iii hours, sometimes longer, while high schoolhouse fine art remains a l-minute affair, with the final 10 minutes devoted to cleanup.
"You don't get a lot washed in grade," said Deborah Callahan, chairwoman of the art department of Longmeadow Loftier School, in Massachusetts. "So twice a month, we keep the fine art room open from 2:fifteen to 8 p.m." Several other A.P. art teachers relayed the same thing. Form time is for chat — critiquing work, learning terms and concepts, watching presentations on contemporary art. The art, the portfolio, is made at abode or later school.
Classroom grades reflect an instructor's sense of a educatee's effort and improvement, which the teacher sees on a daily basis. In dissimilarity, the A.P. score — on a ane to six scale for sections, recalibrated to 1 to five for the portfolio — is based on the cease-of-twelvemonth submissions to the Higher Lath.
The Advanced Placement plan in general has been criticized for its focus on a single test — likewise, studio fine art'south portfolio. "A.P. studio reveals some of the problems with how much we test," said Jack Schneider, banana professor of education at the College of the Holy Cross and writer of "Excellence for All: How a New Breed of Reformers Is Transforming America's Public Schools."
"Slapping a score on a work of fine art, based on checking off this and this and this, is crazy," he said. "Coming together all the requirements is not what makes a work of art move us."
HOW A PORTFOLIO IS SCORED
The process of evaluating and scoring all those portfolios is monumental, requiring 120-plus readers — an even mix of high school and college fine art instructors who are divided into pocket-sized groups that must reach a consensus. They follow a rubric that has been worked out over the years outlining principles of design and visual elements. In effect, is the artwork interesting and what are the elements that make information technology so? If not, what's defective? The rubric is intended to result in an objective assessment of artwork.
A.P. teachers need to know how to teach to that rubric. They need to speak the language — for example, "composition" and "marking-making," the lines, patterns and textures used to create an artwork. Greg W. Shelnutt, chairman of the fine art department at Clemson University in Southward Carolina and an A.P. reader for 5 years, explains what he looks at in judging mark-making: "how line is utilized, the weight of the line, where it is thin, where information technology'due south thick, the movement of the line, the variety of marks."
The teachers besides demand to know the difference betwixt an artwork that earns a 4 or five or six.
The continuing studies division of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago offers weeklong training workshops for A.P. teachers. Maybe one-half of them take fine art degrees, according to Kaye Buchman, former associate manager of the division. "We've had the occasional shop or phys ed teacher who are told to teach A.P. studio," she acknowledged. "That'southward the nature of school budget cuts."
The Taft Educational Center in Watertown, Conn., likewise offers optional A.P. training. Instructors may take a class to the nearby Yale Art Gallery "to see what makes certain paintings practiced," said the centre's managing director, Al Reiff. They volition point out how one student'due south work compares to another'due south. Perhaps, he suggested, "the limerick is more complex — it draws your eye all over the image, while that student's image is more flat."
Barbara Petter Putnam, who has a bachelor'south in fine art teaching and a main'south in fine arts, teaches at St. Mark'southward School in Massachusetts, where she prepared for her A.P. studio art class past looking at portfolios on the College Board website. "That taught me a lot virtually what was considered bad and what was considered skillful," said Ms. Putnam. "I gained information through my own eyes." The approach has worked. "There is the occasional 4, but almost all of my students get a 5," she said.
While few of her 5s go on to B.F.A. programs, Trevor Packer, senior vice president in accuse of Advanced Placement, pointed to a College Board survey finding: Students who take A.P. studio art are more probable to take an art course or two in college.
Ms. Putnam mentioned another benefit. With students stuffing five and half-dozen A. P.southward into their schedule, offering an A.P. art class is the master fashion "to get kids to make room in their schedules for art."
"Otherwise," she said, "they probably wouldn't practice information technology."
Alina Libowitz, a start-yr student at the University of Delaware with plans to major in either international concern or speech linguistic communication pathology, took A. P.s in English, European history and environmental scientific discipline and constitute this: "Art was less stressful than my other classes." A.P. studio, she said, was "a lot of work, but it doesn't experience like work."
Her classmate in studio art at Longmeadow High School, Madeline Maurer, took iv A. P.s all told. She describes herself as competitive, and wanted the most challenging art grade available. "I like to keep going upward and up in levels." Besides, she said, it was fun.
WHAT COLLEGES SAY
Art academies are receptive to the thought of A.P.-trained applicants. David Sigman, admissions director at the Milwaukee Plant of Art and Design, said the courses "put students in line with what we are teaching here." Elizabeth O'Brien, vice president of enrollment at the San Francisco Art Institute, said graduates who have taken A.P. fine art "tend to do a footling amend than others in their accomplice."
Traditional colleges don't sniff at studio fine art, either. "Nosotros are very impressed with applicants who accept taken that course," said Mary French, associate manager of admissions at Boston College.
Nat Smitobol, an admissions consultant for IvyWise and former assistant director of admissions at New York University, explains why that might be. He calls studio fine art "a soft A.P.," calculation: "Just no one is penalized for taking it. Information technology shows that a educatee is seriously interested in art." (He names ecology science and human geography equally soft A. P.s that are more apt to exist viewed negatively. "Taking those sounds similar you're dodging A.P. chemical science or biological science.")
David Dickinson, an art teacher at Deerfield Academy, a preparatory school in Massachusetts, recommends that his students ship their portfolios with their college applications even when not majoring in art. "A portfolio is a hook — information technology grabs their attention — in the same way that lacrosse is a hook at many colleges, or crew is a claw with the Ivies," he said. "Seeing a portfolio thrills them."
A.P. studio may help bolster an admissions résumé, but it can lack a do good of many other A. P.s: Most colleges will not permit a student with a passing score (3, 4 or 5, depending on the establishment) to skip a first-year core grade, either considering they have nothing comparable or, for art majors, they want all of them to take the same courses.
"It's not just a skill ready we're didactics in foundation," said Mr. Shelnutt about Clemson'due south core courses. "They are getting inculcated into the civilisation of the program." Instead, students may utilise whatever credit they receive for studio art toward an constituent. Merely because near art majors want to take electives in their area of interest, information technology isn't likely the credit volition exist used.
"A.P. courses are more a vehicle for college acceptance than credit," confirmed Mr. Reiff, whose center trains instructors in all 35 A.P. disciplines. "They await good on your transcript."
And so he added: "The question I keep request is, does it brand sense to bring that kind of mentality to the fine arts? Why not just offer more than and improve art classes in high school?"
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/02/education/edlife/art-portfolio-as-ap-test.html
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