Thomas J. West Music

In this era of policy-makers demanding accountability in our public education system, high-stakes testing (student test outcomes tied directly to school funding sources), and teacher accountability, the performing and fine arts are pushed even further to the side than ever. Despite efforts to demonstrate the value of performing arts in research and in subjective observation, it primarily continues to be seen as "fun and games" - a social outlet and expressive medium for high schoolers.

Public school systems have been notoriously slow to adopt new paradigms and best practices in a world that increasingly demands independent creative thinkers and problem-solvers. The result of this inflexibility has led to education's stakeholders, private citizens and private sector businesses, stepping in and forcing public education to become accountable with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, commonly referred to as "No Child Left Behind". This has led to a business-like solution to the problem - create a data-driven system where schools are held accountable financially for their success in training students to answer questions on a standardized test. Mathematics and Language Arts are the only subjects that truly matter in NCLB, and even the writing prompts are scored using rubrics.

As I wrote in detail in a previous article entitled The Challenge Of Assessing Music Performance, the fine arts tend to defy quantitative analysis. How do you know that music or art students are learning? You look and listen to their work - that's the easy answer. But, people outside of the art form lack the jargon and experience to even begin to understand the nuances of the artform, much less try to quanitfy it.

Blended Learning Can Provide Hard Data Music Programs Need

Blended learning combines computer software and online resources with traditional classroom teaching, allowing students to work at their own pace and aptitude level. For performing music classrooms, there are a growing number of electronic resources that allow music teachers to create differentiated lessons that students can work on in the classroom or from their computer at home.

I am using Theta Music Trainer to track student progress on a variety of ear training and music theory skills, Noteflight Classroom to deliver music notation, theory, and composition assignments, and SmartMusic to assess student learning on their primary instrument.

Theta Trainer provides teachers with detailed reports of student progress on every game on their site, downloadable as an Excel file. Noteflight allows teachers to create scores for assignments and keeps track of every revision of the score by any user, making it easy to see what each student contributed. And SmartMusic recently announced a partnership with the states of Florida and Texas to deliver state-wide assessment in music performance [LINK].

Using blended learning tools to create data that quantifies music student learning is a step towards making music education a more valued part of public school education. Or at the very least, it can serve as a tool to music teachers to assess more than just their students' ability to perform their part of the spring concert repertoire.

This article (c) 2011 Thomas J. West. All content on ThomasJWestMusic dot com is licensed under a Creative Contributions Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Please contact the author before publishing on or off-line.

Subscribe by RSS Subscribe by email