ARTS FIRST formally came into existence when the Hawai`i State Legislature enacted ACT 80/99 in 1999. The enabling legislation named the arts as a core subject in Hawai`i prior to the No Child Left Behind national mandate. It also called for Hawaii's major stakeholders in arts education to revise the State's Fine Arts standards and develop a strategic plan. In 2001, ACT 306/01 was passed into law formally naming the ARTS FIRST Partners and mandating the implementation of the strategic plan.
The goals of ARTS FIRST Hawai`i Strategic Plan for Arts Education are twofold:
1) To guarantee a comprehensive arts education based on the Hawai`i Content and Performance Standards for every elementary student in the State; and
2) To enable every high school student to achieve the standards in one or more of the arts disciplines by grade 12. The plan builds upon four objectives - Advocacy, Research, Teaching, Standards.
To achieve these goals, the ARTS FIRST Partners created an ESSENTIAL ARTS Toolkit for for K-5, generalist classroom teachers. The Toolkit provides a standards-based framework that integrates the arts into curriculum linked with other core subjects, mathematics, science, language arts, social studies.