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Despite the encouraging data reported herein,
there is another underlying problem that must be addressed by
educators if all students are to be served adequately. That problem
is the increasingly high rate of our at-risk students regardless
of ethnicity.
At the high school level, 12% of youth aged 16
to 24 had dropped out of school in 1995, a slight increase from
1993, but a decline from levels during the 1980s. Gender was not
a factor. The 12.1 % dropout rate of African Americans in 1995
was higher than the 8.6% dropout rate among Whites aged 16 to
24. Hispanics had the highest dropout rate—30%—among
the three groups in 1995. Foreign-born Hispanics and Hispanics
who spoke little or no English at home were more likely to have
dropped out of school.
Two model university programs that have distinguished
themselves as successfully attacking the problem of children-at-risk
are the University of Wisconsin
System's Institute on Race and Ethnicity and Yale
University's Child Study Center. The University of Wisconsin
System has led the nation in its pursuit of educational excellence
and diversity through expanded opportunity. In 1988, it was the
first university system to adopt a long-range plan for racial/ethnic
diversity. That plan, Design
for Diversity, was based on the belief that a public university
must serve all the people of the state and must lead the way in
increasing educational opportunity for targeted racial/ethnic
groups. Design for Diversity is concluding this year, and
Plan 2008, its successor, has just been completed and builds
on collaboratively developed plans that offer a vision of a better,
diverse University of Wisconsin (UW) System for the decade ahead.
Plan
2008 statewide contributors included students, faculty,
staff, community members, regents administrators, legislators,
representatives of the Department of Public Instruction and Wisconsin
Technical College System, and others. The UW System recognizes
"the need to provide educational experiences in and out of
the classroom, that respect cultivate and build upon ehe diversity
that all groups bring (i.e., gender, religion, nationality, sexual
orientation, and differently-abled)."25
Concept #5 of that plan states, "African American, Hispanic/Latino,
Southeast Asian, American Indian, and economically disadvantaged
students in grades K-12 have often been stereotyped as 'children-at-risk.'
The UW System views all students as 'children-of-promise.' They
are valuable assets to society, their communities and the University."26
The problem of Hispanic school dropouts is currently
one of the UW System's foremost areas of academic concentrations
and research efforts.27
U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley, at the urging of New
Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman, appointed a group of research scholars,
policy analysts, and practitioners to study issues surrounding
Hispanic school dropouts and to report back to him with a set
of relevant policy recommendations. From 1995 through 1997 the
Hispanic Dropout
Project (HDP)28
held open hearings and took public testimony in locations around
the nation whose schools enrolled large numbers of Hispanic students.
The HDP held press conferences at those sites to publicize the
problem of Hispanic dropout. The project reviewed the extant research
on at-risk students and school dropouts. "No More Excuses,"
the commission's final report,29
reemphasized the need for the collective will of parents and families,
teachers, school districts, state and national policymakers and
stakeholders, and communities to work together to solve a very
important but, until now, largely invisible national problem.
The report concluded that while some Hispanic students behave
in an antisocial manner and there does exist some dysfunctional
behavior within their family structures, their problems are not
unlike many other ethnic students, and the crisis of Hispanic
dropout is neither acceptable nor does it reside within the Hispanic
community alone.
The School
Development Program (SDP), in Yale Child Study Center, has
for three decades worked to serve the needs of children by fostering
schools that nurture them through a collaboration of teachers.
administrators, families, and others in the community.30
Inspired by universal wisdom of the African proverb "it takes
a whole village to raise a child," and backed by extensive
child-development research, SDP brings caring adults together
to work for the children of each school or "village."
The program (which began in two New Haven, Connecticut, public
schools) has been adopted by six hundred schools in twenty states,
the District of Columbia, Trinidad, Tobago, and England. The program
originally addressed the needs of urban students and schools,
but experience has shown that it benefits all children in a broad
array of diverse communities. High student retention is but one
of its outstanding accomplishments.
A report sponsored by the Council
of Arts Accrediting Associations (CAAA), entitled Minority
Students and Access to Arts Study31
addresses the question of building minds through access to study
by briefing the reader on a large number of facts that have connecting
issues derived from those facts. The report verifies the data
that have been presented in this paper. It acknowledges and supports
the premise that involvement of qualified minority students in
higher education depends, to a large degree, on the availability
of quality instruction and the development of competencies in
the precollegiate years. The premise refers both to formal school-based
arts education and to specialized training in the arts. The report
further points to a glaring need: assessment of the readiness
of minority students to do college-level work in the arts. It
further asserts that research on the issue of precollegiate arts
education for minority students has not to date been a priority
for researchers in arts education, the arts, or education.
By not conducting studies in classrooms populated
by minorities, researchers are ignoring a veritable cornucopia
of data that are sorely needed by music educators. How do minorities
learn specific skills and knowledge in the teaching/learning process
most effectively? What are their music preferences and aptitudes?
Are there specific teacher behaviors by which to achieve desired
student academic and social behaviors? Music teachers need that
kind of information more than ever. That area of research will
more than likely take on a new urgency as we move into the next
millennium. Ultimately, all students regardless of ethnicity will
benefit from such research efforts. The following studies are
examples of empirical work needed for our future success in music
teaching.
Nancy Barry found that students who had participated
in music ensembles in schools and churches did not agree strongly
with a questionnaire statement: "Elementary classroom music
should include experiences with ethnic music of different cultures."32
She concluded that this result reflects the eurocentricity prevalent
in the repertoire of many performing groups. It appears that participation
in an ensemble that limits its repertoire to specific types of
literature (usually from the Western European tradition) may serve
to bias students against those of other forms and styles that
are excluded.33
Jan McCrary examined the effects of listeners'
and performers' race on music preferences.Her findings acknowledge
the importance of the "cultural legacy" of diverse racial
and ethnic groups and offer data to recommend the use of specific
teaching strategies and curricular materials that should not be
limited to familiar and easily accessible popular styles that
tend to stereotype, but should be extended to Black performers
of art music as well.34
E. Victor Fung investigated undergraduate nonmusic
majors' world music performance and multicultural attitudes. His
study explored two other variables: (1) world music preferences
as a function of age, and (2) knowledge of a foreign language.
A significant correlation between world music preferences and
multicultural attitudes supports the view that social/cultural
attitudes play a role in world music preference. Knowledge of
foreign language(s) also has an impact on world music preference.35
Several implications were advanced: (1) Music may be a means for
students' cultural experiences that could help to foster multicultural
education for the general education of students, (2) instrumental
world music may be a good medium to begin with when teaching world
musical styles that involve listening,36
and (3) among the eight style categories included in the study,
music from China, Indonesia, Japan, Africa, and India may be used
in the early stages of teaching world music most effectively.
Vocal styles received lower preference ratings, probably due to
unfamiliar vocal tone production, language barriers, unusual tessitura
and gender of singer. Younger students had more positive multicultural
attitudes.
The
Status of Arts Education in American Public Schools
37 was summarized in the CAAA report. The report states,
"It has been found, however tentatively, that many minority
students are undoubtedly affected, perhaps disproportionately
so, by program inconsistency. Finally, compensatory education
programs of the federal government aimed, in large part, at minority
students, seem to stress instruction in the arts as a means to
other educational and social goals and not in the art forms themselves.
Such an emphasis is not conducive to future specialization in
the arts."38 The report discusses
two possible avenues to access of minorities to higher education
programs that are germane to the focus of this paper:
( 1 ) The future collaboration of arts high
schools and arts magnet schools, arts organizations, community
schools of the arts, private instruction, and parental influences.Community
music schools of the arts especially, would seem to be fertile
territory for the preparation of minority students qualified for
admission to post-secondary arts programs, especially if those
experiences serve to supplement the skills and knowledge students
gain through quality school based arts education programs.39
A briefing paper by the National Association of Schools of Music
suggests that the success of community schools of music can enable
music units in higher education to be more effective for all students.
Historically this impact has been felt more
in regions where community education movement continues to expand.
Its influence will be increasingly felt by all postsecondary
music programs. This prospect places special responsibilities
on the shoulders of those involved with music in higher education
who seek to begin or expand community education programs in
their institutions. A primary goal must be to extend the potential
for accomplishment already evident in the community education
movement to serve a broader and more varied constituency in
communities throughout the nation. The potentials are enormous.40
(2) School-college partnerships in the
arts. The report cites programs that vary in purpose from
enrichment to skill development to college preparation and recruitment.
A number of these partnership programs evidence features that
may point to successful minority preparation for and involvement
in higher education. These include:
• a early identification of minority students
with high academic potential
• a provision of a sequential set of learning
experiences that progressively build upon each other
• comprehensive approaches that address
the breadth of skills needed for college admission
• attention to preparing students for the
precollege work necessary for admission to higher education
• evaluation of program effectiveness in
terms of minority recruitment and, in some cases, retention
• explicit objectives to encourage students
toward specific career paths 41
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