It’s been close to two decades since the Standards Movement swept our country; a major reform created and driven by non-educators.  In its wake, we have been left with a pervasive “achievement gap”, major teacher attrition, anxious and bored students, and — perhaps worst of all — a narrow, standardized, one-size-fits-all approach to educating all of our beautiful children that barely includes the arts and creative subjects.

Most people I speak with feel in their gut that our children need a different type of educational experience than they are currently receiving.  And most of the time, it is clear that the standards movement is at odds with this vision.  My neighbors and friends realize that our children have different abilities, personalities, and potential passions yet to be realized — yet there are several subjects that align to these interests which are not part of daily offerings in school.  However, when push comes to shove, these same people are scared to move away from the same quantifiable and standardized practices that they proport to loath so much.

Why is this?  What makes schools — and their leadership, especially — so afraid to embrace a rich and balanced curriculum that includes robust arts instruction after so many years of failure trying things “the other way”?

Here are three reasons I believe schools are afraid of expanding arts instruction:

1.  We default to easy when it comes time to assess “learning”.  Metrics-driven leadership is now, and has been, the default for a long time — and it’s going to be hard to get everyone to think a little out of that box. Boards of Education — and therefore Superintendents, Principals, and down the line — set numerical goals in an attempt to solve every problem that ails our schools.  The sad result? We score teachers’ and students’ performance in school solely on “technical merit”. We default to the easy bar graphs to determine a “linear learning progression”, while completely ignoring the more nuanced and “messy” elements of what teaching and learning is actually about; elements like emotional engagement, passion, creativity, and purpose that are critical drivers of long-term success and satisfaction.  This is where the arts get short shrift in school scheduling, budgetary priorities, and even a place at the table when we are talking about school report cards and other metrics of success.
2. Leaders don’t trust the managers, teachers, or even themselves, to make creative decisions.  Let’s face it: we live in an educational ecosystem where even our youngest pre-schoolers are not allowed to develop at their own pace; they are on a quantifiable metric track for their entire school lives.  Numbers feel safer and test scores for a narrow set of subjects are far more easier to measure.  This is high stakes stuff, after all, so where is the reward in the system for school leadership to rely heavily on arts and creative subjects to balance out our children’s lives?  School leaders feel that passion and emotional engagement is hard to measure — I argue it is not.  We know beautiful art and emotional engagement when we see it, and we know that process matters along the way.  Superintendents can tell when a principal cares about their school; students can tell when their teacher is passionate about a subject (and vice versa); the paid professionals in school districts need to be trusted to have some judgment in making creative decisions.
3.  Developing a rich, broad set of curricular offerings is hard. Creativity, artistic expression, collaboration, and love of knowledge and learning are things we should teach and support with all our might.  It takes time, money, and courage.  It’s hard, and that’s exactly why we should do it instead of avoiding it.

There is no doubt that there are profound political pressures bearing down on education.  While the policies themselves must be challenged and changed, school leaders still have the latitude to embrace and create that change from below — not wait for non-educator legislators to do it from above.  The more we embrace creativity and the arts from within, the more likely the entire system is to change as a result.  We can no longer take the risk of devoting so much time to metrics that we lose sight of what we are really here to do: to create beautiful, life-changing moments when students light the spark of creativity and love of learning.  This can only be done if we shed our fear of expanding arts instruction in our school day and work together to ensure our children grow up not as plots on a line graph, but as balanced and fulfilled individuals.

There have been more studies of the brain completed in the past twenty years than perhaps the past 200 years combined.  We all have more access to knowledge about how humans learn that we have ever had before.  These brain studies have shown us many things, including how children learn in different ways, how learning changes physical brain structure, and that “talent” as we know it is generally learned and developed — not inborn and inherent.

Yet our public school schedules and offerings have remain unchanged, for the most part, for decades.

As far as school subject offerings are concerned, an abundance of research continues to show that arts education has a profound effect on a child’s life, both within and beyond school walls.  But here is the rub: Some of the most crucial life skills that studying music imparts on a child is not quantified and reflected on the current iteration of local and state report cards — therefore, science has been all but ignored by legislators and administrators.

Regardless of the many reasons to study art for arts’ sake, brain research (and the subsequent data from it) should be more than enough to ensure that the arts are not only offered in their unfettered forms, but are infused into every nook and cranny of school curricula.

Here are three vital human characteristics that research of the brain has shown music provides all students in their school day:

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This is a guest post by Dr. Anita Collins.  Anita is an award-winning Australian educator, academic and researcher in the area of music education, particularly in the impact of music education on cognitive development. Anita is a communicator, a conduit between neuroscientific researchers, music educators, musicians, parents and the general public, and works to update our understanding of the purpose and benefits of music education to overall cognitive development and health.  In 2014 Anita was involved with the TED.com network through two project; as author of a short animated film for TED Ed and as a presenter at TEDx Canberra. Both of these projects have been very well received with the TED Ed film reached 14 million and TEDxTalk reaching 1 million views to date.  You can read more about Anita and her work here.

This title could lead you the think that this article is going to be along the lines of “your child can do anything if they put their mind to it”.  Well it is and it isn’t, but I will let you decide where you stand on the question of musical talent after you finish reading.

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Whether you realize it or not, if your child is starting music study through their school’s music program this year, you are now a potentially powerful advocate for music education.

Since your child expressed an interest in singing or playing an instrument — and you said “yes: — you, and hundreds of thousands of other parents around the world, stated loud and clear that you value music as part of your child’s education.

Those of us who have enjoyed an education rich in the arts are aware of its many benefits. Although I developed high-level musical abilities and a lifelong appreciation of music with the help of my school program, research has proven that music education does much more than that: it develops creativity, responsibility, discipline, perseverance, composure, pride in results, collaboration, confidence, social and communications skills, and emotional maturity for all students, not just a chosen few.

Still, music education finds itself on the “danger of extinction list” each year due to budget constraints, scheduling trends, and — perhaps most concerning — public apathy.  A general lack of awareness of the importance of music in every school day can (and will) lead to an erosion in that school’s program. Even in districts where most students start an instrument in school in 4th or 5th grade, teachers and parents continue to search to find strength in numbers when it comes time to advocate for their programs.

As I have written before, it’s important for students to study and enjoy “art for art’s sake” — and for us to advocate for music education using this mantra, at times.  But the sad truth is that ironically, due to decades of attrition in school music programs, most parents, teachers, and administrators have not experienced the intrinsic joy of music making and the value it could have offered in their own school lives.  Therefore, it is up to this generation of parents and students to create a new level of understanding utilizing a viewpoint school administrators and boards can understand — albeit narrow and sometimes short-sighted.  And that is the effect of music education on the whole child, including test scores.  The more data parents can gather regarding the benefit of music education on all aspects of humanity, the more we can build advocacy efforts by creating dialogue that best relates to those who will determine the future of our music programs, sad as that me be to some of us.

Being a music advocate is not always about selling brownies at a music concert, helping wash band uniforms, or attending countless Board of Education meetings to give a speech on the value of music education (although all of these things are important!).  Rather, supporting children in their musical instruction, understanding the value it has on their human development, and being present when it counts is sometimes all that is needed to create a powerful force for music education in schools.

Here are 3 ways you can be a music advocate without completely changing your life around:

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Regardless of the social and economic circumstances of our time, the arts have an essential place in the balanced education of our children.

In all the education discussion I hear and the literature I read, the arts are consistently given little to no attention.  At the same time, a large portion of our population is tired of having to plead to make the case for arts in schools.  We all want an education system that delivers a broad-based curriculum that takes into account the continuing and varied needs of our children — not a system obsessed with academic learning alone.

While many in our world still think that the arts are for a chosen few and that “artists” are simply “born that way”, I believe that our narrowed thinking of creativity is more due to a lack of contact time of creative subjects in schools.  To get people to think about the issue of arts in a child’s school life, I start with a basic question:  What would happen if any subject was delivered only once a week in school?  And doesn’t that mean that there aren’t more creative people in our world simply because we do not cultivate that creativity in school on a daily basis?

Here are three awful truths about the adverse effects from a lack of arts in schools has on our children:

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There is no more exciting or important time in a child’s musical life than the day they choose which instrument they want to learn to play in school.  More often than not, this choice occurs on a day where the instruments of the band and orchestra are introduced to students during an assembly or some other format.

In order to ignite the proper spark in students, it’s crucial that their first exposure to instruments that are offered is well planned and extremely well executed.  The more thought and preparation that goes in to the presentation, the more rewarding the musical experience will be for years to come for students, parents and teachers.

The instrument demonstration is also a unique opportunity for children, teachers, and professional musicians to come together in mutually beneficial ways — this “trifecta” of arts immersion is the key to a successful school arts programs.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when introducing instruments to children on a “recruiting day”:

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Dear Families:

As our school year comes to a close, we want to congratulate you on embarking on what we hope is just one of many years of your child’s (and your own) musical journey.

Perhaps you were thinking that this year may be your last as part of our music program.  Maybe you feel as if you “tried” music and now it’s time to move on.  But before you make that rather drastic choice, we believe it’s important for you to understand some things your child experienced and learned this year through music — whether you know it or not.  Additionally, we are asking you today to join hundreds of parents in this district –and thousands across this nation — in building our music parents’ association in order to come together and strengthen what we believe is an essential part of the core of our children’s education and our community.

We are not necessarily asking you to run bake sales or fundraisers, although we would appreciate if you choose to become involved in that way.  We are asking you to be a part of something more enduring and powerful than that.  We are asking you to be mindful of the power of music instruction in your children’s K-12 life and come together to form a grassroots movement which powerfully states that music education is a crucial component to your child’s education.  Just to know that you are all behind us and will consistently advocate for what we do gives us comfort and strength during difficult times, both today and in the future.

Here are 4 things you are saying — loud and clear — when you join our music parents’ association:

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Somehow, some way, our school system has become completely standardized — yet our children are anything but that.

Instead of valuing children as individuals, our school system has designed itself to measure children against one thing — an average.  Students are ranked by comparing their performance to the average student in their grade.  Even grades and test scores are compared to an “average” ranking when applying to college.  A constant comparison to mediocrity abounds in our schools — and schools therefore strive for mediocrity as a “safe haven” from punitive measures by government and even community members.

Most of us truly understand that a standardized test score or GPA isn’t what defines our children.  But this concept of comparing our kids to an average yardstick has been beat into our skulls for decades, and I am shocked that more of us don’t question it more seriously.

The truth is, not only is mediocrity and average a dangerous thing to strive for, no human being is truly average or mediocre.  Yet schools can’t help but to design their curriculum this way — except for when it come so the arts.  Thank goodness teachers of the arts have always recognized that children have unrecognized and untapped potential.  They know that students do not get the chance to show what they are truly capable of in most of their classes, and they provide them ways to do so.

Here are 3 reasons music and arts education escapes “teaching to the middle’ in our education system:

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I have had the pleasure of meeting thousands of music educators while speaking at our nation’s music educator conventions this year. These teachers all are consistently and passionately engaged in looking for ways to develop themselves as educators and musicians.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of students learned to play an instrument for the very first time through their school program this year.  But if history is any indicator, more than half of these students will quit come next school year.

We can change this course of history — I believe we have a better chance to do this now than at any other time, in fact.  This is because we finally are hearing the words “creativity” and “innovation” creeping into  conversations regarding education from politicians, administrators, and educators.  This is a moment where music education has a chance to enter the limelight as a tool to enhance our children’s educational experience — as long as everyone is on board.

Here are some action steps stakeholders in our schools system need to take in order to ensure all students experience music throughout their K-12 education:

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