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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2005 > December > 29
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Flunked by the Beatles
Imagine this: your fourth grader flunks the state achievement test because she doesn’t know the difference between the Britney and the Beatles.
Ridiculous? It could happen in Florida, where lawmakers are seriously thinking about adding a music test to the state fourth grade assessment that, for now, would be voluntary.
So what kind of far out quack would propose such a wacky idea?
Would you believe music teachers?
If there was ever a subject that was ill suited for measurement with a standardized test, it’s music. And in fact, the proposed test does not measure student talents for singing, dancing or playing instruments. It does not measure if kids can read music.
What does it measure? The Miami Herald says:
“As part of the test, students would listen to music and then answer questions about the instruments, voices and style of music.”
To which I must ask, what will those test results tell us that will be of any value? Not much, I expect.
So why do music teachers want such a test? The simple answer: to maintain relevance.
This is actually very interesting. Having a state test in your specialty is a matter of self preservation. Because if a subject is not tested, guess what? Nobody cares about it. When it’s time to cut, the untested subjects are going to be at the front of the line.
So if music teachers want to assure that music stays in schools (and, by the way, that music teachers keep their jobs) the best way to do that is to make music more relevant and the one way administrators today judge relevance is by asking the question — is it tested?
So if this goes down in Florida, music will stay in school. And music teachers will spend hours of class time training kids to listen for the difference between reggae and funk, a cello and a violin, a baritone and a tenor. That’s time those teachers could have used to teach the kids to sing or play guitar.
But perhaps they’ll know Eleanor Rigby from Christina Aguilera.
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