In grades 9-12, students extend their study of the visual arts. They continue to use a wide range of subject matter, symbols, meaningful images, and visual expressions. They grow more sophisticated in their employment of the visual arts to reflect their feelings and emotions and continue to expand their abilities to evaluate the merits of their efforts. Through the curriculum framework, students study in a way that promotes their maturing thinking, working, communicating, reasoning, and investigating skills. The courses also provide for the students' growing familiarity with the ideas, concepts, issues, dilemmas, and knowledge important in the visual arts. As students gain this knowledge and these skills, they gain in their ability to apply knowledge and skills to the visual arts to their widening personal worlds.

In grades 9-12, students also develop increasing abilities to pose insightful questions about contexts, processes, and criteria for evaluation. They use these questions to examine works in light of various analytical methods and to express sophisticated ideas about visual relationships using precise terminology. They can evaluate artistic character and aesthetic qualities in works of art, nature, and human-made environments. They can reflect on the nature of human involvement in art as a viewer, creator, and participant. Students also understand the relationships among art forms and between their own work and that of others. They are able to relate understanding about the historical and cultural contexts of art to situations in contemporary life. They have a broad and in-depth understanding of the meaning and import of the visual work in which they live.

From the National Standards for Arts Education: What Every Young American Should Know and Be Able to Do in the Arts