ADVOCACY

How do you help your child succeed in overall academic performance? By supporting your school’s music education program! English, Mathematics, Science and Foreign language skills are all positively impacted by your child’s participation in your school’s chorus, orchestra or band. While many schools are cutting or downsizing their existing music classes, research and experience bear out that music appreciation and music performance in school are central to developing the whole child. Studies confirm that participation in music makes an even greater impact upon the life skills and academic performance of financially challenged and other a-risk students. Music invites creativity, self-expression, healthy release of emotions and self-esteem. Music and the arts are a critical part of a thriving community. 

RMF offers you advocacy tools such as local and national statistics, information regarding the “No Child Left Behind” act and two DVDs that can be used in multiple fashions – as educational or advocacy pieces.

BERKS COUNTY STATISTICS
Seventeen of Reading High School’s valedictorians and salutatorians between 1994 and 2004 were musicians, many of whom doubled on some combination of voice, keyboard and a band or orchestral instrument. 

Of the Reading Symphony Youth Orchestra’s seniors who graduated in 2004, 57% were members of the National Honor Society and/or a national language honor society, and over 60% intend to major in fields other than music, which include mathematics, science, engineering, pharmacy, veterinary medicine, history and English. 

In Governor Mifflin’s graduating class of 2005, the top five students were all string musicians.

NATIONAL STATISTICS
Students who participate in the arts at least nine hours each week for at least a year are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement, three times more likely to be elected to class office, four times more likely to win a school attendance award, four times more likely to participate in a science and math fair, and four times more likely to win an award for writing an essay or poem.  -National  Governors Association Center for Best Practices. The Impact of Arts Education on Workforce Preparation. Issue Brief, May 1, 2002. 

2004 SAT takers who had taken courses in music appreciation scored 63 points higher on the verbal portion and 41 points higher on the math portion of the exam than their peers who took no courses in the arts.- MENC, “Scores of Students in the Arts,” www.menc.org. 

Adult choral singers in the United States volunteer in their communities at twice the rate of adults in general, are five times more likely to make political contributions and are three times more likely to contribute to other arts organizations than American households in general. - Chorus America. America's Performing Art - A Study of Choruses, Choral Singers, and Their Impact, 2003. 

Second and third grade students who were taught fractions through musical rhythms scored 100% higher on fractions tests than those who learned in the conventional manner. - "Rhythm Students Learn Fractions More Easily," Neurological Research, March 15, 1999

Students who participate in the arts at least nine hours each week for at least a year are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement, three times more likely to be elected to class office, four times more likely to win a school attendance award, four times more likely to participate in a science and math fair, and four times more likely to win an award for writing an essay or poem. - National Governors Association Center for Best Practices. The Impact of Arts Education on Workforce Preparation. Issue Brief, May 1, 2002

College students majoring in music achieve scores higher than students of all other majors on college reading exams. - Carl Hartman, "Arts May Improve Students' Grades," The Associated Press, October 1999.

A research team exploring the link between music and intelligence reported that music training is far superior to computer instruction in dramatically enhancing children's abstract reasoning skills, the skills necessary for learning math and science. - Shaw, Rauscher, Levine, Wright, Dennis and Newcomb, "Music training causes long-term enhancement of preschool children's spatial-temporal reasoning," Neurological Research, Vol. 19, February 1997.

In an analysis of U.S. Department of Education data on more than 25,000 secondary school students (NELS:88, National Education Longitudinal Survey), researchers found that students who report consistent high levels of involvement in instrumental music over the middle and high school years show "significantly higher levels of mathematics proficiency by grade 12." This observation holds regardless of students' socio-economic status, and differences in those who are involved with instrumental music vs. those who are not are more significant over time. - Catterall, James S., Richard Chapleau, and John Iwanaga. "Involvement in the Arts and Human Development: General Involvement and Intensive Involvement in Music and Theater Arts. "Los Angeles, CA: The Imagination Project at UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, 1999.

Research shows that when a child listens to classical music, the right hemisphere of the brain is activated, but when a child studies a musical instrument both left and right hemispheres of the brain "light up." Significantly, the areas that become activated are the same areas that are involved in analytical and mathematical thinking.
-Dee Dickinson, "Music and the Mind," New Horizons for Learning, 1993.

To learn more about the benefits of music education, visit www.menc.org