Fine Arts Course Codes

School Year 2023-2024 Fine Arts Course Codes

The fine arts course codes have lacked the specificity necessary for schools to report courses offered in the areas of Media and Visual Arts, Dance, Music, and Theatre. This has resulted in a high number of “other” enrollments.

For school year 2023-2024, updates to the guidelines will allow for more accurate reporting. An additional factor to these significant changes is Nebraska’s upcoming participation in the Arts Education Data Project a national project that takes our publicly  reported data (arts education access, enrollment, and participation), standardizes it, and then provides data visualization tools that will help inform future decision making. Information about this new partnership will be shared with school districts and arts educators as it develops.

The spreadsheet below shows the 2023-2024 fine arts education courses, both changes to specific courses that already exist and new courses that have been added. We are asking districts to evaluate the current courses offered and categorize them according to the new course codes. We urge districts to move enrollments from “other” course codes to one of the new course codes that are available. You will also note that the subject of “Art” has been renamed to “Visual Art” to help distinguish it from “Fine Arts,” “Language Arts,” and “Communication Arts.”

You will also find the courses taught in Nebraska schools and the appropriate endorsements for those subjects or courses. In instances where no specific endorsement is required, the “level” of endorsement must still be appropriate for the assignment.

Nebraska approval regulations (Rule 14) and accreditation regulations (Rule 10) require that certain percentages of F.T.E. (Full Time Equivalency) elementary and middle grade teachers hold appropriate endorsements and that certain percentages of instructional units at the secondary grades be assigned to teachers holding appropriate endorsements. For teachers to be considered appropriately endorsed for their assignments, they must teach the grade levels and subjects indicated on their certificate. The grade level designations are shown on the attached spreadsheet.

As you work through the following pages, please let us know if you have any questions. Please contact Cody Talarico at  cody.talarico@nebraska.gov or Marissa Payzant at marissa.payzant@nebraska.gov. It’s important to know that this change is a work in progress. We welcome specific questions and feedback that will inform the course codes for future years.