Looking for Research on the Value of Music in Educational Settings

[shovelingtom]

Hi all,

Up front: What I’m asking from you is to let me know if you have any articles you might suggest that I could read to make an argument for the benefits of maintaining a jr high band program. Extra credit if it’s peer reviewed.

Background: I’m a school board member in a pretty small town in Montana. The state of Wyoming accounts for roughly 40% of the students and annual budget, and those are the folks I represent on the board. Long story there.

The school superintendent at some point this week decided to cancel middle school band on “philosophical grounds” stating that they don’t need the number of arts classes that they have. It’s not a budget issue; the directors fill other important roles at the school, all of our instruments are paid for, and the annual maintenance and repair contact costs are paid by a donor. Our middle school band director is also a paraeducator and is likely to soon be the school nurse (licensed RN), our high school director also teaches all of the math classes for 8-12. They are married if that matters. It also apparently doesn’t have anything to do with the number of kids in the school or the band. The elementary / middle school director has convinced the superintendent to do half a year of music for middle school (in the spring).

Several kids I represent on the board are very upset about this. I’m worried that without a full year middle school band program that the high school band will languish and die within 4 years. If that happens we’re going to lose two excellent and very flexible teachers over this. My step kids are in 11th and 9th grades, if the school band program dies before they graduate we will move the 55 miles north to a larger school district and I’ll commute.

My plan is to approach the superintendent first and ask her to change her position on it. If that doesn’t work I’m planning on asking the board to weigh in. Going in to both discussions with some concrete data supported points is a lot more likely to gain traction than “I feel like you need to change your mind because I liked band.”

If you’ve got something that would help me out in making a coherent statement regarding the situation I would be in your debt.

If you don’t want to contact here, my school board address is tjames@gardiner.org. Thanks, much!

[tofu]

https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED541070

https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED530822

https://www.arts.gov/impact/research/pu ... dolescence

The school superintendent sounds like a misinformed budget cutter type trying to impress her superiors with how tight she can run a ship and keep costs down vs how much she can improve kids lives. Good Luck!

[graybach]

@shovelingtom

This isn’t pure research, per se, as it has some advocacy in it, too, but is tailored to your situation:

If your school is considering cutting the music program, National Association for Music Education (NAfME) actually has a
“Rapid-Response Plan” — it gives parents ready‑to‑use talking points, letter templates, and data sheets that show how music participation improves attendance, GPA, graduation rates, and overall student engagement.

NAFME’s main site:

https://nafme.org/

NAFME’S Rapid-Response Plan:

https://nafme.org/resource/music-educat ... onse-plan/

For hard numbers you can take straight to the superintendent, the Arts Education Partnership (AEP) has administrator‑friendly research summaries and state policy info showing clear links between arts participation and higher test scores, better academic outcomes, and stronger workforce‑ready skills. Between NAfME’s action tools and AEP’s data, you can put together a very solid, evidence‑based case.

Arts Education Partnership (AEP) main site:

https://www.artsedsearch.org/

Arts Education Partnership (AEP) data resources:

https://www.aep-arts.org/

[ghmerrill]

The school superintendent sounds like a misinformed budget cutter type trying to impress her superiors with how tight she can run a ship and keep costs down vs how much she can improve kids lives.

It doesn't sound like that at all to me. Rather, it sounds as though the superintendent has some kind of ideological (for lack of a better term) motive for doing this. In fact, the superintendent appears to be very clear about this since "philosophical" grounds were cited for the change.

[Sorry if the rest of this sounds like a mini-lecture in logic and rhetoric, but I think that's exactly what's going on here ...]

If that's true -- about the grounds being "philosophical" -- then any kind of "data" or "evidence" you could find would be unlikely to alter that view. Instead, you need to find out EXACTLY what those "philosophical" grounds are (oh, and get it in writing in some sort of memorandum or "policy statement"), and then attack the position based on that -- e.g., by showing how those grounds are incompatible with stated objectives or fundamental principles of the local or state school system, or of (generally) parents and perhaps educators more generally.

That's a different kind of counter-argument than just reciting "research". If you can take this approach and compel the superintendent to state precisely (rather than in vague terms), WHY such a move would be "good" and for whom it would be "good", and in what way it would be "good", that then puts the onus on the superintendent (rather than on parents or students) to justify the change -- instead of making it appear that the parents, students, and teachers are obligated to provide such a defense. They're not. The superintendent is obligated to provide a VERY clear and solid reason for making this dramatic change.

If you've been told in some vague way that this will be done for "philosophical reasons", then you (and the faculty and the students and the board) are owed a VERY careful account of exactly what those reasons are and how they justify the change. Keep in mind that it's not your obligation to defend anything if the superintendent just says some vague things about "philosophical" justifications. And if the superintendent is then willing to flesh out the details of exactly what those are (and how they fit in with goals and policy at the local/county/state level), you can then deal with responding to those specific and meaningful claims -- instead of trying to respond to an amorphously justified and apparently arbitrary decision to make a significant curriculum change.

[ghmerrill]

A short version of my previous posting is: "Don't play defense. Play Offense."

[Grumpikins]

I know I'm not helping in any way, but;

“I feel like you need to change your mind because..." my feelings...

seems to work as policy for every govmnt funded college program today.. so why should it not work for you?

Your situation really sucks. I'm so very sorry. I hope you find what you need to make a granite hard case for band. All the best wishes and prayers for you and those kids.

[Grumpikins]

This really fries me! I'm sorry. This superintendents qualifications should be in question here. It's one thing to look at making cuts because of budget shortfalls, but to make cuts 'just because' in education is seriously erroneous. It shows that this person doesn't have a good understanding of education and welfare of children. The last of my son's graduated last spring. After more than a decade of band concerts, football games, choir, etc... you know who the highest achievers are at the end of year awards, most of the music kids. They win 90% of the awards for grades, sports, everything. Very few of the awards go to kids who are not involved in arts programs. Maybe you could find these statistics somewhere..

OK. Still angry.

[AggieDan]

Musical participation and positive youth development in middle school : https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ps ... 56542/full

Article that makes the previous link a little easier to digest : https://today.usc.edu/music-education-research/

And another bit of dry reading on emotional development : Effects of the Educational Use of Music on 3- to 12-Year-Old Children’s Emotional Development: A Systematic Review : https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/P ... h-18-03668

[ghmerrill]

[deleted duplicate]

[tofu]

The school superintendent sounds like a misinformed budget cutter type trying to impress her superiors with how tight she can run a ship and keep costs down vs how much she can improve kids lives.

It doesn't sound like that at all to me. Rather, it sounds as though the superintendent has some kind of ideological (for lack of a better term) motive for doing this. In fact, the superintendent appears to be very clear about this since "philosophical" grounds were cited for the change.

Perhaps and perhaps not. I’ve seen this kind of BS “philosophical grounds” before. Typically in governmental entities like libraries & schools. It’s thrown out as a deflection shield that they think can’t be countered when questioned about such a significant out of the blue change of direction. I’ve probably served on a 100+ boards from local school to large Multi-National Corp. over the years and the goofiest ones are always these small governmental funded entities that have people in charge such as this Superintendent. They believe they have sole power to universally implement policy to reach their personal objectives.

I mean come on now - who has a philosophical issue with music in schools. That’s such a very small subset of people. It’s been widely accepted as positive in so many different ways for kids from social development to academic development. That’s not a new belief nor one held by a handful of people. These programs get cut typically because of budget issues. The hunt to cut costs is one for what can I cut that isn’t a mandated program and one that I will take the least heat for cutting. What’s odd here is there isn’t apparently a need to cut costs. But, no budget constraint doesn’t mean she isn’t planning some major future expenditure or much more likely trying to show she can effectively control costs and school spending. People in her position often leapfrog from one district to another better paying district multiple times during a career. No better way than to be able to show I can control spending and even lower spending. Something school boards and taxpayers like to hear and lap up.

Around here superintendents are getting primo packages. You’d think they were running major corporations. Here they are pulling 400k (k-8) to 750k (HS) and the packages include moving allowances and housing allowances etc. And the speed they come and go for the next best deal is stunning. It used to be common they’d be around for 15-30 years. Now it’s like 3 - 5 years before moving on. And while I’m sure out in Montana they aren’t paying those kind of dollars, I’m sure they know about them. It’s common here to have nation wide searches to replace people - with many of them coming from smaller districts all around the country - they typically at first land in far away smaller less affluent communities, keep building the resume and jumping from one place to the next more affluent one.

Sports are usually a sacred cow - especially since so many people in a community pump out their chests with a winning football team and pack the stadium for games. Unlike a top music program where community members don’t pack the auditorium for concerts (much less ever attend) - so music programs become the candidate to cut/eliminate because it’s a big enough dollar outlay to have a meaningful impact on the budget and show fiscal constraint with a minimum of people complaining.

If one really wanted to go on the “offensive" - we are talking Wyoming/Montana after all - sometimes people do go missing - eventually found to have “accidentally” fallen off a mountain. Perhaps atypical to have rolled off a high peak packed in an old tuba case filled with cement however.

[gocsick]

How receptive do you think the other school board members are to these "philosophical reasons"? Ultimately you and the other board members should be able to overrule and even ultimately replace the superintendent.

[shovelingtom]

Thank you all! I started reading these and drafting a letter today after work. Have to leave on a backcountry assignment tomorrow morning so I won’t be able to finish till the weekend, depending on when I can come back in. If anyone is interested I’ll post it here once it’s sent.

Best,
Tom

[ghmerrill]

Perhaps and perhaps not.

Right. But currently that is the precise context and approach. To guess at what's "really" behind it will send you off into the weeds. If you attack it directly by demanding clarity and genuine justification, those other motives will have to emerge explicitly and can then be dealt with.

I mean come on now - who has a philosophical issue with music in schools.

You and I don't, and I can't see that any reasonable person should. But (a) in part, this depends on what someone means by "philosophical" (which is really being used here as an amorphous obscuring rhetorical technique), (b) in the current socio/political climate, it's not too difficult to imagine various motives that might be appealed to, and (c) it is quite possible to imagine underlying arguments supporting the move that aren't entirely nutty. For example, yes, there's only so much budget allowed to the school system for instructional goals per year. Is supporting a band the best and most equitable use of such funds, or might they be better spent in a course introducing (more) students to computer and AI technology? That's a serious question and one that's genuinely debatable.

Right now, in this case, no one knows which of those possibilities is really in play.

Around here superintendents are getting primo packages. ...

Since you list your location as Intergalactic Space, it's difficult to tell where "around here" is. But there are definitely a lot of locations in the US (e.g., the rural southeast), where such complaints about public school superintendents are misplaced. In my county, the total compensation is $205,000 plus a possible 5% annual performance bonus worth a maximum of $10,250. Honestly, that's not a lot for that level executive job -- if it's done competently.

[Aside: Years ago, my wife and I represented ourselves in a suit against the county school district and superintendent for "failure to deliver services" -- and won a settlement in administrative court that required changes in the system's approach to some important aspects of curriculum and teaching. In part, this success was because the State education department ended up coming in on our side (well ... they actually had to ... the laws and regulations were explicit). So I do have some experience in what I'm talking about.]

It's unwise and counter-productive to ascribe motives to your opponents (particularly in situations like this) without a genuine factual basis -- and even then, attacking the motives themselves is usually an ineffective way to go.

Yeah, but that's just not helpful. You want to win the fight, and not just scream about the injustice of it.

[tofu]

Yeah, but that's just not helpful. You want to win the fight, and not just scream about the injustice of it.

Seriously - that’s a joke. Do you not have a sense of humor? Do you really think the approach would be to scream at her (and when did I mention scream) or actually throw her off a mountain???

I’m in suburban Chicago. In a county that has been among the top 5 wealthiest in the nation, but those numbers for pay are very common amongst the 6 collar counties of Chicago. Teacher salaries average near $200,000 and many with the extra they get paid for being coaches etc can approach $300K - especially if they have 30+ years in.

Having been on my local school board the OP would be well served by amping up the pressure on this woman. Mobilize the music parents and band boosters if they have them. I assume they have a teachers union. Mobilize the Union with the news that teaching positions would be lost. Nothing gets them going like the loss of positions. Get all the stakeholders involved such as athletics - if the band marching band performs at football games, the pep band at basketball games or track meets etc. Nothing like the athletic dept. having your programs back. At my old HS we performed at the cross country meets and would go downstate for the state championship - the team won state 25 out of the 50 years the coach was there - he was beloved in the community. He was a coach on the Olympic track team - he always mentioned the band when interviewed. In a case like this I know he would have gone to bat for the program and he had a tremendous amount of support in the community.

Intense public pressure is the last thing this woman wants. Have people start calling for her resignation. In other words a dingbat like this needs it made known her job could be on the line if she pursues this. If I were the OP I’d find the kid in the band whose dad is a lawyer and have him figure out if she can in fact unilaterally do this. Pressure on school board members is crucial. Around here many of them are former teachers who were backed by the teachers union. Personally I’m not a fan of most those types on the school board as they have a pretty predictable voting pattern, but in this case they will be on the OP’s side with teaching positions on the line.

Draw in community groups - does the band march in Memorial Day parade or do a veterans day ceremony - ask the local VFW/American Legion to weigh in. Does the band do local community events such as parades like Labor Day. Ask the city mayor / council to weigh in. The amount of support for the program & (pressure) one could bring to bear on this woman would be hard for her to do this after finding how popular this program is in the community. If she does it any way -then you go for her job. I’d already before it got to this start going hard through her background looking for anything to use. At that point it’s a dogfight and I’d make her life very uncomfortable. Come for my kids - I come for you.

At the end of the day - her motive is inconsequential - it’s paramount to stop her in her tracks and make it so unpleasant she doesn’t pursue it ever again. Nothing beats having the community itself come for you.

[ghmerrill]

Seriously - that’s a joke. Do you not have a sense of humor? Do you really think the approach would be to scream at her (and when did I mention scream) or actually throw her off a mountain???

So far, everything you've said has been full of aggression and wanting to punish bureaucrats. I can't tell when it's a joke and when it isn't. But the continuing angry rhetoric doesn't sound at all like a joke.

I’m in suburban Chicago. In a county that has been among the top 5 wealthiest in the nation, but those numbers for pay are very common amongst the 6 collar counties of Chicago. Teacher salaries average near $200,000 and many with the extra they get paid for being coaches etc can approach $300K - especially if they have 30+ years in.

You don't need to tell me about Chicago. My wife grew up there, our three children were born there. I taught at Loyola University for 10 years, lived in Evanston, and then, for several more, lived in Wheaton, and worked in Naperville. I'm quite familiar with both the urban and suburban parts of that landscape, and having my children in schools there.

Having been on my local school board the OP would be well served by amping up the pressure on this woman. ... Mobilize the Union ... Intense public pressure ... Have people start calling for her resignation. ... dingbat ... find the kid in the band whose dad is a lawyer ... Draw in community groups ... Come for my kids - I come for you.

Really? Or is that sort of rhetoric just another "joke"? The point is to solve the problem. The point isn't to punish someone you happen to be angry with. The goal is to keep a band program.

... it’s paramount to stop her in her tracks and make it so unpleasant she doesn’t pursue it ever again. Nothing beats having the community itself come for you.

Ummm .... I'm thinking that this is definitely not likely to be the best and most likely approach for the community, and definitely not the language to use in describing it. I guess we disagree on that.

[bloke]

Why not just go to common sense route, and point out that it's important for children to experience the pursuit of something in which there is no such thing as 100%, as it can always be better than it is?

Even in sports, there's a theoretical 100%, whereby every strike of a baseball could theoretically result in a home run, every catch of a football could result in a touchdown, every roll of a bowling ball could result in a strike, and every toss of a basketball could result in a goal... but with music every effort could be improved and made more sublime, and pursuing perfection with an imperfect instrument teaches something that no other type of class can teach.

[ghmerrill]

Why not just go to common sense route, and point out that it's important for children to experience the pursuit of something in which there is no such thing as 100%, as it can always be better than it is?

Definitely a good part of the overall argument. But a lot of this depends on how much autonomy the superintendent has relative to the board, and also relative to state requirements and guidelines. And, because education remains state-based in the US (and then within the state, often county-based), there's a substantial lack of uniformity.

I grew up in New York State (and in fact went through all of my schooling there ). It is WAY different from both Illinois (and hence Chicago) and Montana, which are quite different from one another (and WAY different from NC and most states in the Southeast). In Montana, for example, it appears that local school boards have direct determination of specific "electives" and "course paths" -- at least in high school. Things are much more tightly controlled at the state level in NY (directly via the Board of Regents) than in either Illinois or Montana where in both cases, more "local control" is given to school districts.

An effective approach to changing or retaining a curriculum would be quite different in those states, and in localities within them. My wife taught at both the middle school level (though outside of Cook County) and the university/graduate school level (U of I/Chicago medical school) in Illinois , and my daughter taught math (or at least tried to) for 8 years in three different districts in NC before giving it up as hopeless and turning into a risk analyst at a large insurance company. There's a huge difference in organization, decision-making power, and mechanisms for resolving issues across different states -- and potentially across different counties, "districts", or municipalities. And that difference ranges from well-organized and efficient to virtually medieval. So if you feel you face a problem, there isn't a "one size fits all" approach.

[bloke]

When those who are hired to teach, manage teachers, or develop curricula assume the posture and make the claim that teaching is an extremely specialized skill, and that it requires special training (very little of which involves hands-on training/experience, and most of which involves lectures, written materials and regurgitation) to be able to do it, is a huge part of the problem, as (whereby many who aren't involved in this industry know, or who have stepped away from it know) is a false premise. Every single one of us has taught someone else to do something, and - if the first tack that we embraced in the process of teaching didn't work, every single one of us came up with second and possibly third approaches until the person we were teaching finally either grasped the concept or the skill, and we did so without ever attending any classes or reading any textbooks to show us how to do this.
Of course there are people who are poor teachers, but there are also people (some of who might even be professional teachers?) who are barely capable of hammering a nail through a piece of wood - as both teaching and hammering a nail are very basic and nearly innate human skills. Parents - including many living in near complete isolation - have carried out these tasks with their offspring since time immemorial.
Fighting false premises purported by self-proclaimed experts on education - along with the group-thinking peer review (agreeing to agree, often in exchange for agreeing to agree with something else) are likely some of the biggest obstacles involved in laymen addressing education experts - who they themselves base much of what they know on the assumptions of those who may have spent very little time themselves actually teaching - whereby they often become the anti-logical, rather than experts. Consider the seven figure salaries paid to those who preside over abysmally failing education systems, and then think back to the college dropout spouses of people who work in the trades (and perhaps who they themselves have worked out ways to both teach their children and somehow earn income away from the home or even at the home doing work other than teaching, while also teaching their own offspring) who successfully teach their children at home.

These things (along with the half century long societal collapse that we - who are old enough to have lived through it and observed it all with open eyes - have witnessed) are huge contributors to so-called "teacher burnout".

Referring to all of the above, I admit that my suggestion (retreating to shining a light on the obvious) would be an ineffective way to approach academic appointed and elected officials, unless one more than half of them were to miraculously abandon all of the groupthink and - suddenly - think for themselves.

I tend to believe that every one of us with education degrees (who went through a battery of general courses - some of which involved teaching this quite a few things which aren't so), then a battery of courses in our field of expertise, and finally a battery of five to ten so-called education courses (whereby - arguably - all of those might have been thrown out the window in exchange for more hands-on experience - aka much more "student teaching"), would rate the education courses as being the most separated from reality of all the courses to which we were exposed.

In summary, I admit here that I did not offer an effective suggestion. Relying on pointing out the obvious would be ineffective and - rather - submitting stacks of gobbledygoop on "the science of education" (sadly) is probably the way to go with such people - along with the (and who knows if it's actually true?) "band makes kids better at mathematics" types of claims (as if the study of music for its own sake does not validate the study of music).

Watch for any rebuttals. Every time I state the obvious, I'm accused of being "political". What the hell - above - is "political"? The huge American academic infrastructure is not "political"??

bloke "a secondary education certified person"

[ghmerrill]

[ ... Bloke said lots of stuff ...]

Pretty much all pretty accurate.

bloke "a secondary education certified person"

I have to admit that despite all the teaching we've done, neither my wife nor I have an education degree. My daughter does. So I am not qualified to teach in public schools in either North Carolina, Montana, or Illinois (or anywhere, I think, unless you count public colleges or universities, in which case I am qualified ). I did actually teach a course about 15 years ago at NC State University, and so I guess I can say that I've taught in a "public school", and possibly didn't damage students much.

Ironically, university professors who teach education courses, and education practice and theory, are generally not required to hold the kind of teaching "certification" that their students will need to obtain in order to pass licensure exams. What's up with that, eh?

I continue to believe that teaching is often a "calling" and indeed a very specialized skill -- that some teachers develop through a lot of experience and practice, from themselves having good teachers, and in watching good teachers teach -- and that some teachers just never get.

[bloke]

I admire those who have the patience for teaching and are willing to put up with all of the things that I outlined in my screed, above .

They have to put up with the societal decay, the nonsense built into curricula, the nefarious non-educational goals which are politically attached, the litigiousness of it in the 21st century, and everything else... Yet they remain.

I'm not suited for it. I'm willing to go through four or five different teaching tacts - in order to get a concept or a skill across to another person, but when they refuse to focus (and maybe that could be a medical problem?) or intentionally act out, I'm done.

...and (having pretty much been self-governing person for the better part of a half century) I certainly don't have any patience for some overseeing entity telling me that there are certain (perfectly neutral) words that I am to avoid using because they "trigger" some people.