Cool Facts About Music Education

• · Students with high levels of arts participation outperform “arts-poor” students by virtually every measure. (“Champions of Change: The Impact of the Arts on Learning” study)
• · College-bound seniors with school music experience scored 57 points higher on the verbal portion of their SATs and 41 points higher in math (98 points combined) than those without arts instruction. (Profiles of SAT and Achievement Test Takers, The College Board, 2001)

• · Regardless of socioeconomic background, music-making students get higher marks in standardized tests than those who have no music involvement, according to a 10-year study that tracked more than 25,000 students. The test scores studied were not only standardized tests, such as the SAT, but also in reading proficiency exams. (Dr. James Catterall, UCLA, 1997)
• The very best engineers and technical designers in the Silicon Valley industry are, nearly without exception, practicing musicians. — (Grant Venerable, "The Paradox of the Silicon Savior," as reported in "The Case for Sequential Music Education in the Core Curriculum of the Public Schools," The Center for the Arts in the Basic Curriculum, New York, 1989)

• · Music-makers are 52 percent more likely to go on to college and other higher education than non-music music makers. They also watch less TV and are more optimistic about their futures than non-music makers. (The American Music Conference)
• · A comprehensive series of skill tests were run on 5,154 fifth graders found that kids who were learning to play a musical instrument received higher marks than their classmates who were not. The longer the school children had been in the instrumental programs, the higher they scored. (The American Music Conference)

• · Musical training can be a big help in getting to the top in business and politics, according to most CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and members of Congress. Ninety percent of the CEOs and Congress people interviewed for a study sponsored by the McDonald’s Corporation said playing a musical instrument as a child helped them develop “character and leadership skills.” (USA TODAY, January 1987)

Back to bandboard.net’s Little Kids Rock Main Page