Music education helps kids learn to read

Arts educators have for years been telling school reformers obsessed with reading and math that the arts teach valuable skills and ways of thinking that can help academics. Here cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham writes about a study that shows a link between music training and reading. Willingham is a professor and director of graduate studies in psychology at the University of Virginia and author of “Why Don’t Students Like School?” His latest book is “When Can You Trust The Experts?

Common Core Standards

• There are no Common Core Standards for music (or other arts), but I think we can relate ourselves to reading and math, too. There seems to be a bigger focus on reading for information, which we can all incorporate into our classes. I know we all have limited time, but incorporating more reading/analysis across all disciplines can really help out. As far as math goes, we can always get into fractions and patterns in our classes. Science is a little harder (Common Core is science, too. . . right? I’m not sure), but there could be ways.
  Common Core does sound great. . . in theory.

What’s the difference between the 1994 and 2014 standards?

• The new standards focus on conceptual understanding.  This is somewhat different from the 1994 standards, which consisted primarily of knowledge and skills.  The new standards provide a framework for developing student independence and musical literacy. 
• The new standards achieve this through by cultivating students’ ability to carry out the Three Artistic Processes of Creating, Performing and Responding, which are articulated in specific process components (steps) with related Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions.  In the past, few teachers taught just one 1994 Content Standard during a lesson.  There was no clear structure that helped teachers put the standards together. The Three Artistic Processes model will aid instruction by closely matching the actual processes in which musicians engage
• The 2014 standards are presented through a grade-by-grade sequence of standards from PK through 8, and through discrete strands at the secondary level that include classes commonly found in schools – Ensembles, Guitar/Harmonizing Instruments, Music Composition/Theory, and Music Technology.  This greater specificity will help teachers to write grade-by-grade objectives.  Separate strands at the high school level will provide teachers with standards that more closely match the unique goals of their specialized classes.
• Model Cornerstone Assessments will also be associated with the standards.  These tasks, currently in draft form, will eventually provide teachers with research-based assessments that can be modified for classroom, district or statewide use.   As a result of piloting – in which music teachers will participate – they will also generate student work that can be used to clarify the standards themselves.

Final public review of NCCAS arts standards

The National Coalition for Core Arts Standards (NCCAS) has launched a final public review of the draft PreK-12 arts standards in dance, media arts, music, theatre, and visual arts. The review opened on February 14, 2014, and will close February 28, on the coalition’s wiki page at http://nccas.wikispaces.com.

NCCAS is the partnership of national arts and education organizations and media arts representatives that are developing the 2014 National Core Arts Standards. The new, voluntary grade-by-grade web-based standards are intended to affirm the place of arts education in a balanced core curriculum, support the 21st-century needs of students and teachers, and help ensure that all students are college and career ready.

This third and concluding review reflects NCCAS’s ongoing commitment to a responsive and transparent strategy that allows adequate time for each arts discipline’s standards writing team to incorporate changes to the drafts suggested by reviewers, in preparation for a web-based release of the standards in June, 2014.

According to Lynn Tuttle, director of arts education for the Arizona Department of Education, and an NCCAS Leadership member, the review incorporates significant updates to the standards structure and focus, based on comments received in two previous reviews and analysis by NCCAS leadership. “The feedback we received suggested a need for us to clarify some aspects of the drafts, particularly on how the Understanding by Design format guides and undergirds the performance standards. Plus, we wanted our reviewers to focus on the standards themselves, and to consider how things like Process Components and Essential Questions are articulated in the standards’ supplemental instructional materials.”

To that end, the review’s downloadable Excel spreadsheets include eleven overarching anchor standards that align with all disciplines’ performance standards across four artistic processes—Creating, Performing, Responding, and Connecting. While the spreadsheet does not include all the standards’ Understanding by Design (UbD) format elements (Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions), they are embedded in the Model Cornerstone Assessment examples that are also part of this review.

Why Arts Education Is Crucial, and Who's Doing It Best

Art and music are key to student development.

BY FRAN SMITH

"Art does not solve problems, but makes us aware of their existence," sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz has said. Arts education, on the other hand, does solve problems. Years of research show that it's closely linked to almost everything that we as a nation say we want for our children and demand from our schools: academic achievement, social and emotional development, civic engagement, and equitable opportunity.

Involvement in the arts is associated with gains in math, reading, cognitive ability, critical thinking, and verbal skill. Arts learning can also improve motivation, concentration, confidence, and teamwork. A 2005report by the Rand Corporation about the visual arts argues that the intrinsic pleasures and stimulation of the art experience do more than sweeten an individual's life -- according to the report, they "can connect people more deeply to the world and open them to new ways of seeing," creating the foundation to forge social bonds and community cohesion. And strong arts programming in schools helps close a gap that has left many a child behind: From Mozart for babies to tutus for toddlers to family trips to the museum, the children of affluent, aspiring parents generally get exposed to the arts whether or not public schools provide them. Low-income children, often, do not. "Arts education enables those children from a financially challenged background to have a more level playing field with children who have had those enrichment experiences,'' says Eric Cooper, president and founder of the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education.

It has become a mantra in education that No Child Left Behind, with its pressure to raise test scores, has reduced classroom time devoted to the arts (and science, social studies, and everything else besides reading and math). Evidence supports this contention -- we'll get to the statistics in a minute -- but the reality is more complex. Arts education has been slipping for more than three decades, the result of tight budgets, an ever-growing list of state mandates that have crammed the classroom curriculum, and a public sense that the arts are lovely but not essential.

Quotes About Music

Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Or, How to Philosophize With the Hammer


Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent”
― Victor Hugo

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination
and life to everything.”
― Plat

“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.”
― Albert Einstein

Music, Implementing the Common Core

Identify What You Already Do
The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are not a replacement for the Illinois
Learning Standards in Fine Arts. As a result, music educators do not need to
completely remake existing curricula. In most cases, educators are already doing much
of the learning outlined in the CCSS. Music teachers will find that simply reviewing the
CCSS through the College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards will reveal many
similarities in instruction.

Use the College and Career Anchor Standards
The CCSS Initiative began by identifying the skills students need to be prepared for—
and exceed in—college and future careers. These “anchor” standards are divided into
four domains: writing, reading, speaking & listening, and language. They are also
separated between K-5 and 6-12 grade levels.
Since all grade-specific standards are based off of an anchor, sometimes the best
strategy is to read through the College & Career Readiness anchor standards while
comparing the learning found within your own instructional unit. Once you find an
anchor standard that incorporates your classroom activity, you can find the specific
grade standard and code and add it to your existing list of standards for that unit.

Anchor Standards vs. Grade-Specific Standards
The CCSS has two levels of learning standards. The College & Career Readiness
Anchor Standards are broad, multi-grade learning standards whereas the English
Language Arts Learning Standards for History, Science and Technical Subjects and the
Mathematical Standards are more narrower standards that are targeted to specific
grades. In the interest in helping the widest number of music educators (and reducing
the size of this document) only the CCR Anchor Standards will be addressed.
If asked why a music teacher should use the CCR Anchor Standards and not the
grade-specific standards, it might be useful to point out that many educators teach
across multiple grade levels and any lesson plan which is applied to more than one
grade level would be a better fit for the CCR Anchors