Abstract
Policies often directly impact teachers’ lives and practice, requiring them to engage in spite of extremely busy schedules. This article offers encouragement to music educators wanting to be active—and become activists—in education policy. Before becoming active, one must understand how music education policies come to be. I argue that arts education policies mostly come to be indirectly, as an afterthought. This operates in numerous ways, involving collateral damage in other policy-making processes; nongermane, eleventh-hour negotiations; and incomplete or subverted policy implementation. To demonstrate these processes, I reference examples including access to a high-quality music education, content of national and state music standards, and music graduation education requirements. I also offer general recommendations for music educators who wish to advocate for positive change.
Music teachers have the ability to make a difference through engagement with policy at all levels.
Music educators may want to avoid educational policy conversations. After all, music teachers are likely to be uniquely busy, filling myriad roles of educator, director, scheduler, keeper of inventory, trip planner, and more. 1 Secondary music teachers can work with classes of 50 to 100 students at a time. Elementary music teachers can see 400 or more students in a week. Music teachers are more likely than other teachers to be itinerant. 2 Given such a situation, expecting a music teacher to be actively involved in policy matters seems futile. But music educators often find that policy cannot be avoided.
As a beginning teacher in southeast Michigan with instrumental music students in grades six through twelve and traveling between two buildings, I wanted nothing more than to close my door and teach. But my first year brought politics and policy through my closed door. Our district’s teachers were without a contract, and we met in a tense union meeting to approve a strike should negotiations fail. The next year, students in my sixth-grade band began to be pulled out of class more frequently—a frustrating experience for young instrumentalists trying to keep up with early instruction. Soon I realized they were being “double-blocked” into an extra period of remedial math after a low score on the fall precursor to the state test. A few years later, I saw our district’s elementary music teacher for kindergarten and first grade retire. Instead of hiring a new music teacher in her place, these young students were offered a “movement” elective class taught once a week by classroom generalists.
These three examples were policy related and involved different levels of policy making. The union situation was decidedly local and concerned compensation, schedule, and the district’s budget, which was affected by state expenditures. When students were pulled out of class, it was a de facto school policy drafted in response to state and federal accountability policy. When the music teacher was not replaced, it was in response to permissive policy in Michigan, one of seven states that did not (and still does not) require arts instruction in kindergarten through fifth grades 3 and allows classroom teachers to teach elementary art, music, and physical education. 4 It became clear that I could not avoid policy even if I wanted to.
Becoming active in policy matters at the local, state, and even federal levels began to feel necessary to my students’ thriving. More important, I realized that my involvement was necessary to the enactment of policy. As political scientist Michael Lipsky suggested, policies often rely on people on the ground; he noted that “policy implementation in the end comes down to the people who actually implement it.” 5 Lipsky termed such people “street-level bureaucrats.” Avoiding involvement in policy matters would, according to this theory, simply mean that someone other than me would govern how the policy influenced my work and my students. But what would meaningful involvement look like? What should it look like?
In this article, I offer an explanation of policy processes and encouragement to music educators wanting to be active—and become activists in education policy. By activism, I mean what scholar Juliet Hess describes as critical, political engagement with issues found to be troubling or problematic. 6 Before becoming active, one must understand how music education policies come to be. Such an understanding can illuminate paths of activism. In this sense, knowledge precedes and directs action. Therefore, my focus is on the knowledge of processes that can serve as preparation for activism.
Specifically, I argue that arts education policies mostly come to be indirectly, as an afterthought. This operates in numerous ways, involving collateral damage in other policy-making processes; nongermane, eleventh-hour negotiations; contemporary policy making that actively excludes democratic debates; and incomplete or opaque policy implementation. To demonstrate these processes, I reference examples including access to certified/endorsed music teachers, the content of national and state music standards, music graduation education requirements, and more. By being aware of some examples of these policies and the processes by which they are born, music educators can be better acquainted with the genesis of current and future policies and will be better equipped to advocate and be agents for positive change in policy situations.
Collateral Damage
Music education policy often comes about indirectly, in reaction to other policies. As the term collateral damage implies, music education policy forms in the aftermath of other policy-making efforts and is frequently negatively impacted by the main policy effort. The clearest examples relate to the curriculum narrowing that marginalized arts education in the wake of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation. Across a variety of studies, schools saw lost instructional minutes for the arts because the “tested subjects” (e.g., math and English language arts) took more of the school day. 7 This narrowing was most concentrated in high-minority, high-poverty settings. 8 Access to visual arts and music classes remains strong on average, 9 but many programs have been “hollowed out,” and glaring disparities exist by socioeconomic status and race. 10
One can also find examples of the tested subjects “creeping” into music education courses. In the post-NCLB era, it is not uncommon for music teachers to be required to focus on Common Core literacy objectives. In a conversation I had with a middle school principal, the collateral damage from a focus on the tested subjects of math and reading was evident. I asked whether it was fair to have music educators be responsible for literacy instruction, to which she replied, “All teachers are teachers of literacy—everyone needs to get on board.” 11 Music teachers have been asked to use their courses to teach argumentative writing, fractions, and more. 12 This is an involuntary but concrete music education policy formed in response to the accountability policies at state and federal levels.
When accountability-focused policy prioritizes specific kinds of data, it is no surprise that music education policies are negatively affected. In the NCLB era, instances of “triage” abounded—where students closest to the proficiency cutoff score were given extra attention to improve the school’s test-score average. 13 This commonly resulted in “double-blocking”: assigning these “bubble kids” (those considered “on the bubble” for passing the state test) to an extra period of math or English language arts. In studies of double-blocking, one can see the doubled instructional time in the tested subjects coming at the expense of arts classes. 14 Again, the de facto policy here is that struggling students were, in a real sense, not eligible for arts classes.
Music education has also been dealt collateral damage in the recent emphasis on economic competition and workforce readiness. In this situation, music is not explicitly put in a secondary position but is instead emphasized for its instrumental value. In other words, music becomes a policy lever to facilitate other, more prized outcomes. The most prevalent example is evidenced in arts integration programming. Arts integration varies but usually involves the enrichment of core subjects (e.g., math, reading, science, social studies) with artistic approaches. Even though numerous descriptions of high-quality arts integration emphasize the involvement of a certified arts specialist and the pursuit of arts objectives, 15 actual implementation can be lacking, involving only noncertified teaching artists and/or learning low-level core content with little attention to the art form involved.
Using the arts as a policy lever can also be seen in large-scale school turnaround efforts, such as the Turnaround Arts program of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Turnaround Arts aims to turn around focus and priority schools (i.e., those having low student performance on test scores or with large achievement gaps) through an infusion of arts experiences. The emphasis on the arts as a policy lever can be seen throughout Turnaround Arts materials, including a quote from former first lady Michelle Obama: “Arts education isn’t something we add on after we’ve achieved other priorities like raising test scores and getting kids into college. It’s actually critical for achieving those priorities in the first place. That’s what the Turnaround Arts program is all about.” 16 In a section on program impact, the website text emphasizes a three-year improvement in math and reading scores and positive changes in disciplinary referrals and attendance as a result of program involvement. 17 Here, the status of arts education across Turnaround Arts schools is secondary an indirect outcome of other policy priorities. In programs like this, the arts may be a means to an end, facilitating other non-arts priorities.
Another example of the arts as collateral damage can be seen in recent state-level policies focused on career readiness. Music education—and arts education more broadly—has been identified as crucial to the development of so-called 21st-century skills, a concept celebrated by numerous arts education advocates. These skills include what are sometimes called “the 4 Cs”: creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. 18 Another push with similar goals involves the interdisciplinary focus on STEAM curriculum, which adds the arts to integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. 19 Education policies that follow this career readiness thrust attempt to focus on general, transferable ways of thinking that facilitate innovation in the business and tech arenas. Here, arts policy is again formed in the aftermath of other policies.
Eleventh-Hour Additions
Music education policy is also frequently the result of what I call nongermane, eleventh-hour negotiations. By nongermane, I mean that music education policy goals are added into broader legislation that is focused on non-music-specific policies. One can see this at play in recent iterations of federal education policies. For example, the initial list of “core” subjects in the lead-up to the Goals 2000 legislation passed in the early 1990s included only English, mathematics, science, history, and geography. 20 Amid ensuing fights over federal control versus state control of standards and assessments, the list of subjects was broadened to eventually include the arts among eight total subjects. 21 This policy outcome was achieved through lobbying and pressure from music education policy brokers but was clearly an eleventh-hour addition and not germane to the genesis of the legislation.
In 2001–2002, when the NCLB legislation was passed, policy makers kept the same list of core subjects. Although eleventh-hour negotiations were not necessary for the inclusion of the arts, one can still see the nongermane status of the arts at play. NCLB established accountability metrics based only on annual testing in math and reading in grades three through eight, 22 excluding the arts. As a result, many have argued that the arts were firmly established as secondary, or, as scholar Julia Koza put it, “worth less.” 23 As discussed earlier, the arts were core under NCLB, but this did not stop curriculum narrowing and did not halt the negative effects of NCLB on high school music course enrollment for some groups. 24 When the standards movement reemerged, with the much publicized Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards, there was no clamor or policy will to revisit and update music education standards. When arts standards were updated in 2014, it was without government funding and with little fanfare outside arts education circles.
An important step in becoming active is recognizing how music education policies are often eleventh-hour additions to non-music-specific policies. Given the weak positioning of the arts in the school curriculum, recognizing chances to add the arts to other policy moves may be one of the only ways to achieve policy outcomes for music education, especially at the state and federal levels. This represents an opportunity for music teacher policy activism. When a state chooses student assessments that can be used in teacher evaluations, music teachers can get involved to ensure that music is not ignored. When states reorganize teacher certificate structures (e.g., designating who can teach what class), music may not be expressly considered—unless music educators ask to be part of the conversation. When a state or district drafts graduation requirements, the arts could be left out initially. Here, again, music teachers can become active in fighting for the prioritization of the arts in the curriculum.
When Policy Is Subverted
Frequently, policy making in education involves complex negotiations, arguments, and coalition building but little specificity or oversight. In other words, attention is paid to policy formation but less so to implementation. 25 This is especially true in education where the enormous system (15,000 or so school districts in the United States) intersects with a lack of funding. It is simply not possible for every policy mandate to be enforced even when states and districts are involved. One example within music education concerns graduation requirements. In Michigan, students must take one credit of visual, performing, or applied arts to graduate. But without a strong mechanism in place to enforce such a requirement, a significant number of schools appear to be out of compliance. 26
Even when there is specificity and a mechanism for enforcement, educational policies are almost always being interpreted, reinterpreted, and negotiated. State lawmakers and members of the state board of education may scrap or delay a policy depending on changing public opinion or political winds. Administrators may pick and choose what provisions of a mandate to attend to, exercising agency. Teacher performance evaluation policy, which in many states has been a slowly developing policy situation over ten years or so, serves as an illustration. In an attempt to gain federal funds, Michigan passed a “soft law” in 2011 27 setting up loose requirements for a future evaluation system. A commission was established to fill in the specifics of the system, but when the commission released its recommendations, only a few were actually adopted. A more specific law was then passed in 2015, 28 but the full implementation was intentionally delayed to ensure a slow rollout of the law’s percentages surrounding the weighting of student test score achievement/growth. In 2019, when the law would finally be fully implemented, the legislature voted to delay implementation further. 29
The negotiation does not stop there, however. Because the law only prescribes that teachers in nontested grades and subjects measure student growth based on some sort of local, standards-based measure—student learning objectives (SLOs) are common—there is leeway and choice at the district and/or building level. 30 Music teachers are commonly the ones who choose the assessments and specifics of the goals to use in their SLOs. In sum, this is an example of a constantly evolving policy and is one that is open to agency in enactment at almost every stage. Other examples abound, including requirements for course curricula. Instead of a district-approved curriculum (e.g., as in a fourth-grade math class), music teachers or fine arts teams are largely left to design curriculum. These instances give credence to Lipsky’s idea of the importance of street-level bureaucrats: the policy implementers are de facto policy makers in these instances.
So What?
Thus far, I have sought to establish the indirect ways that music education policy becomes collateral damage in the wake of other policy making. Understanding policy processes can help music educators become active and effective in influencing policy developments. I conclude with some general recommendations for translating this policy knowledge into action. Because music education policy is decidedly local and differs in numerous ways, applicability of these recommendations will vary. Thus, the focus here is on general principles for organizing advocacy.
Recommendation 1: Determine State-Level Policy-Making Venues
Many important education policies are created at the state level by the legislature, state board of education (and/or superintendent), and state department of education (for more detail on this, see Hellman’s article in this issue). Legislative bodies will typically have committees that work on education bills, and these committees hold regular meetings to discuss and vote on policies. To be active at the state level, music educators and music education associations (MEAs) need to follow committee work closely and—depending on the state—should similarly track the state board of education’s meetings. Larger organizations such as state education associations (i.e., unions) and principals’ groups may have dedicated lobbyists who draft legislative updates. Simply following developments, however, may not result in positive changes. Music educators should consider visiting lawmakers to ask them to sponsor legislation. In Michigan, for example, our state MEA is pursuing a music requirement for kindergarten through fifth grade. 31 An important first step was identifying a lawmaker in the state house and state senate who would be supportive of the bills. Additionally, when a policy needs to be fleshed out, the state’s department of education will typically form work groups. Having a music education advocate in the room for such work group meetings is an important step for policy activism.
Recommendation 2: Forecast Effects of Non-Music-Specific Policies on Equity
With much music education policy coming to be indirectly—as collateral damage in other policy processes—forecasting possible negative effects becomes crucial. This can be challenging, of course. Policies aimed at increasing standardized testing or the weight given to growth on such tests can be predicted to steal time from arts education courses and make it harder for low-performing students to take arts courses. But other policy effects are more nebulous at the outset. Will a new STEAM program supplement sequential music education or supplant it? Will a new teacher evaluation policy focused on SLOs help teachers reflect on and improve practice or force them to administer paper/pencil tests that disrupt music-making? Will a new partnership with a charitable foundation mean improved opportunities or instead mean investing in field trips instead of standards-based arts education? There are no easy answers, but it behooves the activist music educator to turn a cynical eye on new policies and how they may indirectly affect other programs. This stance on policy can help to fend off negative consequences for music programs.
Recommendation 3: Establish Proactive Music Education Advocacy Coalitions
By the time negative outcomes—such as staffing or program cuts—are considered by decision makers, it may be too late to organize an opposition coalition. A recent example is illustrative on this front. In 2013, the Lansing Public Schools (in Lansing, Michigan’s capital city) needed a solution to close an $8 million budget gap. Their eventual proposal would be to cut planning time—and by doing so, cut more than eighty teachers in elementary music, art, and physical education. The proposal ended up passing, and as a teacher at the time noted, “no one stormed the board meeting.” In short, there was no advocacy coalition in place to mobilize resistance to the cuts. Some teachers had heard rumors, and a few community arts leaders were notified, but it was too late for the needed coordination. 32 However, there are frequent accounts of the opposite outcome—proposed cuts to a music program are met with an overwhelming response of concerned parents, students, and arts education advocates. 33 To be effective at fending off cuts, advocacy coalitions must exist before such cuts are proposed. This can be especially challenging in urban communities where parents may lack the social capital needed to connect with one another and confront school boards.
Activism Is Key
Far from a distant concern, policy makes its way into every music teacher’s classroom. The most important point to reiterate is that many educational policies are open to interpretation and are formed by the implementers, who are often school administrators and teachers. School personnel are the street-level bureaucrats that Lipsky recognized, and their action is essential. Also, because music education policies often come to be indirectly—as collateral damage stemming from other policy moves—activism by engaged music educators is key to counteracting negative impacts. Music educators should consider themselves an important part of the policy process and proactively work toward solutions that benefit them and their students.
