DC CAPE and the Washington, D.C. Art Classroom

Quick answer: DC CAPE replaced PARCC, so the window your school plans around has a newer name than half the documents in the shared drive. It reaches grades 3 through 8 and specific high school courses, across DCPS and the charter sector alike, with both reporting to OSSE. Teach art in sessions that finish, and keep your own record of what each student actually did.

How does DC CAPE season reach the art room?

OSSE runs statewide assessment for DC Public Schools and for the public charter sector, and close to half the city's public school students sit in charter schools. An art teacher who moves between a charter network and a DCPS building therefore meets the same assessment and two quite different sets of internal deadlines around it. The state-level reporting, though, is the same in both.

Its name matters more than it should. DC CAPE replaced PARCC, which the city used from 2015 to 2023, so inherited planning templates, unit maps and shared folders may still be labeled with the old test. Check the year on anything handed to you before you build a calendar on it, especially if it came from a colleague who left before the change.

What should be on the tables during the window?

Short, reflective work does two jobs in a testing week: it finishes inside the period, and it gives students somewhere to put the day. Keep the materials simple enough to run in a borrowed room, because art spaces with big tables get claimed for small-group sessions. Anything needing the kiln or the sink belongs in a different week entirely.

First Year of School Craft – Printable SEL Reflection for K–4 works for kindergarten through fourth grade on the day a class comes back flattened from a session. One printed sheet, a personal prompt, a finished piece to carry home. Run it as the opening fifteen minutes of a longer block and follow with drawing, or let it be the whole lesson on a day the schedule has been cut in half.

What do high school students make when attendance is split?

Older students need work they can build from material collected on different days. A typology, meaning the same kind of thing photographed repeatedly under the same rules, is close to ideal: every image stands alone, and the set simply grows whenever a student is in class. Washington hands them subjects on every block, from rowhouse doorways to bus shelters and metro entrances.

Bernd and Hilla Becher – Typologies of Photography sets grades 9 through 12 up for exactly this, with the rules made explicit: same framing, same light, same distance, difference carried by the subject alone. A student who misses two sessions comes back with fewer frames rather than a broken project, and the grid on the wall does the comparing for you at the end.

How do I turn a fragmented window into grades?

Mark against the DC Standards strand you named when you set the task, and mark it the same day. A short rubric on the back of the brief, covering whether the constraint was met, the craft controlled and something said about the result, is enough. Photograph every finished piece before it leaves, because that file is the portfolio when a family asks what art has been doing.

If you are building a full year rather than one window, Complete Art Curriculum Bundle | 14 Hands-On Art Studios | Middle School Art | Grades 5–9 gives grades 5 through 9 fourteen studios you can order around the assessment calendar. Teachers wanting material by grade band can start from the unit lists on Washington, D.C. Teaching Resources & Worksheets (Grades K–12). Anyone comparing how other jurisdictions time their own windows will find those gathered on State Standards Navigator: Teaching Resources by State.

Frequently asked questions

Is art assessed on DC CAPE?

No. The assessment covers tested subjects at grades 3 through 8 and in specific high school courses, so nothing in it reports on studio work. Keep your own dated rubrics and photographs instead. That record also travels with you, which matters in a city where teachers move between charter schools and DCPS buildings.

Are these resources aligned to the DC Standards?

They are written as general art units and you map each one yourself, usually a line per project in your planner. These are independent teaching materials. They are not affiliated with, approved by or endorsed by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education or any other education agency.

Half my class is out on different days. Can I start a new unit?

Yes, if the first lesson is repeatable. Teach an opening session you can run three times across a week for whoever is present, then begin the sequence proper once the window closes. Nobody arrives at lesson four having missed the only explanation of the task, which is the usual reason a unit falls apart.

Related reading

• Mapping Art Units to the DC Standards in Washington, D.C.
• Teaching Art in a Multi-Grade Classroom in Washington, D.C.
• Washington, D.C. Teaching Resources & Worksheets (Grades K–12)