Why is music so important??
Click here for how the arts benefit student achievement.
From: "An Investigation of the Effects of Music on Two Emotionally Disturbed Students' Writing Motivations and Writing Skills," Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Mid-South Research Association, New Orleans, LA, November 4-6, 1998
New York City elementary and middle schools students participating in the arts show significant increases in self-esteem and thinking skills.
From: National Arts Education Research Center, New York University, 1990
In a study of the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE) program, low socioeconomic elementary and high school students involved in an arts-integrated academic subject performed better on math and reading tests than their non-art counterparts.

From: "Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE): Evaluation Summary," James S. Catterall and Lynn Waldorf, In E. Fiske (Ed.), Champions of Change: The Impact of the Arts on Learning. The Arts Education Partnership and The President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, Washington, D.C., 1999
Preschool children who received keyboard training increased their mean score to over 85% above the national norm on standardized scores for spatial-temporal tasks (essential to math reasoning). Children who received computer language training instead of keyboard training ranked below the national norm.
From: "Music training causes long-term enhancement of preschool children's reasoning," Neurological Research 1997; 19:2.
Secondary band and orchestra students reported the lowest lifetime and current use of alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs.

From: "Texas Commission on Drug and Alcohol Abuse Report." Reported in Houston Chronicle, January 1998
Music teachers make a larger proportion of role-models for high school minority students than do teachers in any other discipline.

From: "Music teachers as role models for African-American students," Journal of Research in Music Education, 41, 1993
Students who are classified as "disruptive" (based on factors such as frequent skipping of classes, times in trouble, in-school suspensions, disciplinary reasons given, arrests, and dropouts) compose approximately 12% of the school population. This number drastically decreases to only 8% if the students are involved in music class.
From: Based on data from the "NELS:88 (National Education Longitudinal Study), second follow-up," 1992.
At-risk children who participated in an arts program (which included music, movement, dramatics, and art) substantially increased their overall self-concept.

From: Project ARISE: Meeting the needs of disadvantaged students through the arts, Auburn University, 1992
When given piano lessons in conjunction with a math software program, the whole second grade of a California test case school performed at a fourth-grade level of math comprehension. In fact, the top half of that second grade class performed at a fifth-grade level of comprehension.

From: "Music Spatial-Temporal Math Program for 2nd Graders Enhances Advanced Math Concepts and Stanford 9 Math Scores"
In the University of Manchester's Department of Psychology study on the relationship between the ability to discriminate musical sounds and reading performance, children who scored well on pitch discrimination also did well on phonemic awareness and showed good reading performance. The authors of the study concluded that a carefully structured musical training program should be an essential component in the primary school curriculum.

From: "The relationship between music and reading in beginning readers," Educational Psychology 1993; 13, (1).
College-bound seniors who study music score better than the average student in both the verbal and math sections of the SAT. In 2004, music students averaged 536 for verbal and 533 for math, while the overall average was 508 for verbal and 518 for math.

From: 2004 College-Bound Seniors: A Profile of SAT Program Test-Takers

An extensive study of over 25,000 eighth to tenth grade students found that students involved in the arts earn better grades and perform better on standardized tests than non-arts students. The study also found that high school arts students are less likely to drop out of school, have a more positive self-concept, perform more community service, watch fewer hours of television, and report less boredom in school.

From: "Involvement in the Arts and Success in Secondary School," James S. Catterall, Americans for the Arts Monographs, 1998, 1 (9), Washington, D.C.