music education in public schools gets a passing grade : the record : npr

the industry the musicians the fans ann powers

Music Education In Public Schools Gets A PassingGradeAPRIL 06, 2012 4:00 PM ET

LARA PELLEGRINELLI

iStockphoto.com

Numbers they always look so solid, so reassuring, so dare I say hopeful? Earlierthis week, the U.S. Department of Education issued a new report titled Arts EducationIn Public Elementary and Secondary Schools, 1999-2000 and 2009-10.

"In the 2009-10 school year, music education was almost universally available in thenation's public elementary schools, with 94% of schools offering instruction that wasdesignated specifically for music," the report states. "Music instruction was availablein almost all public secondary schools," with the actual number given at 91%.

Over the last decade, these numbers have remained surprisingly steadfast. That mightseem like a cause for celebration, a victory over the doggedly narrow focus on readingand math test scores driven by No Child Left Behind, but don't break out the vuvuzelasjust yet.

Music Education In Public Schools Gets A Passing Grade : T... http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/04/06/150133858/m...

1 de 4 04/05/15 16:08

"The disparity between what schools offer and what students actually receive can beenormous," explains Richard Kessler, Dean of Mannes College The New School ofMusic and former Executive Director of The Center for Arts Education. "What the dataisn't telling you is that you can have schools where there is one music teacher and1000 students. Some of those students are going to get music and some of thosestudents aren't."

There's some evidence in the DOE study to suggest the impossibly largestudent/teacher ratios Kessler describes, but you really have to hunt for it. Take Table70, one of 165 supplemental tables: it shows that only 81% of secondary schools withan enrollment under 500 offer music as compared to 98% of secondary schools with athousand students or more. Coincidence? I think not. Even if one simply uses theDOE's enrollment numbers to calculate the number of students in schools withoutmusic instruction at all, that's over 2.1 million children across the country likely aconservative estimate

Teachers, veterans of the actual classrooms, paint a less rosy picture, though thatinformation is again largely buried in the supplementary tables. Elementary schoolmusic specialists rated the support for their teaching "somewhat or very inadequate"in a variety of areas: funding (40%), facilities (27%), materials, equipment, tools andinstruments (23%), instructional time in the arts (28%) and the number of artsspecialists (36%).

At the secondary school level the numbers were not encouraging. The percentage ofteachers indicating that support was "not at all adequate or minimally adequate" waseven higher: instructional time with students (17%), instructional resources (36%),orchestra and band instruments (35%), classroom instruments (38%), classroomequipment (39%), time for individual or collaborative planning (50%) and technologyused in the study or creation of music (65%). Music may be almost universally offeredin schools, but the issues that still need to be solved are abundant.

What the report does spell out quite clearly is the disparity between the availability ofthe arts in low-poverty schools as compared to high-poverty schools. In 1999-2000, aremarkable 100% of high-poverty secondary schools offered music instruction. Thatnumber has fallen quite significantly to 81% today.

"We start to see an achievement gap not only where fewer low income schools have thearts, but where there are fewer kinds of music courses. [Their] music teachers have tocollaborate more with classroom teachers, they're traveling between more schools,


2 de 4 04/05/15 16:08

About

Subscribe

spreading themselves thin and perhaps have less time to perform themselves," saysSarah Bainter Cunningham, Executive Director of Research for VirginiaCommonwealth University's School of the Arts and the NEA's former Director of ArtsEducation. "You see a lot of the low-income schools using arts integration [withacademic subjects] and offering fewer courses in music. Some people might say thatarts integration is wonderful, but it's not so wonderful if it's their solution to theproblem that they have fewer fulltime teachers."

During the announcement of the report at Miner Elementary School in Washington,Education Secretary Arne Duncan pointed out why the persistence of this artsopportunity gap is especially troubling.

"First," he said, "children from disadvantaged backgrounds, students who are Englishlanguage learners and students with disabilities often do not get the enrichmentexperiences of affluent students anywhere except at school. And second, aconsiderable body of research suggests that disadvantaged students especially benefitfrom high-quality arts education including an important new study from theNational Endowment for the Arts on 'The Arts and Achievement in At-Risk Youth' thatrelies on robust, longitudinal data."

The NEA report, released last week, shows that high levels of arts engagement by thelowest socioeconomic quarter of students corresponds with greater numbers ofstudents who, for example, complete high school calculus, exercise the right to vote, dovolunteer work, finish a Bachelor's degree and choose a professional career path. Inshort, the arts help create young adults who have better academic outcomes, are morecivically engaged and exhibit higher career goals. Think about how the world couldchange if we could teach music to the 2.1 million students currently denied thatopportunity that would be worthy of a vuvuzela fanfare.

'Something Bigger And Louder': The Legacy Of Jim Marshall And His Amp

OLDER

How To Succeed In The Music Business (By Trying Really, Really Hard)

NEWER


3 de 4 04/05/15 16:08

SHARE

NPR Music App

2015 npr


4 de 4 04/05/15 16:08

music education in public schools gets a passing grade : the record : npr

Documents