Throughout the history of art education, objectivity of art assessment has been considered as a something unattainable or, sometimes, a hindrance to true learning in arts. This study is an attempt to understand the meanings of AP(Advanced Placement) Studio Art program as a means to objectively measure student achievement in studio practice. Over the three decades from its inception, AP Studio Art has been praised for its benefits as well as criticized for its downside. This study examines critiques and advocacies on the program by scrutinizing the program; what it is, how it works, how it got introduced, and why people in the art world welcome or not welcome. This study takes a form of a historical analysis which helps to understand its past and present status in different contexts borrowing the framework of understanding this historical event, the introduction of AP Studio Art, from Tyack & Cuban's ‘Tinkering Toward Utopia.’ In their book, the authors introduce a term, ‘businessinspired reform’ indicating a group of reform movements in the 1960s. The authors point out that the kind of reform efforts have been resisted by those from the educational practice. The authors argue that the resistance resulted from the characteristics of the reforms taking consideration only to some measurable features of student learning in contrast to the characteristics of the institutional belief of educators. With its rewards, grading system and summative evaluation, it seems inevitable that AP Studio Art has been criticized by many of those engaged in the field of art education who have held a long-standing belief in qualitative judgement on student learning. On the other hand, there are many of those who advocate AP Studio Art for its strong instructional goals and academic rigor, as well. By examining the debates over AP Studio Art as an art assessment, it will allow us to take close look to the possibilities and limits of the program in the context of Korean secondary schools.