Who Takes Music With Them When They Transition to High School?

In this study, music enrollment data sets from five cohorts of 8th grade music students totaling 3,393 were followed as they transitioned to high school. The students in the study were classified as mostly Hispanic and low-income.

Overall, only about 1 in 4 (24.5%) persisted in music as they transitioned to high school. The primary purpose of this study was to find predictors for persistence such as gender, income, academics, race, SES, and ELL status.

Not surprisingly, students who tended to score higher in math and language arts, and students with a higher GPA were more likely to persist with music in high school.

Interestingly enough, students classified as receiving special education services, and students who were former English Language Learners (ELL) were also more likely to persist with music in high school. Typically, these tend to be the students pulled out of electives in favor of some sort of an intervention-type class. Perhaps these students need music more than intervention…

Specifically, persisting students in band were more likely to be male, have a higher GPA, and have higher math scores. Yet only 20.4% continued with music in high school

About 1 in 5 (21.8%) choir students continued in high school. The data indicate that students who were more socioeconomically and academically advantaged were more likely to persist with choir in high school. The low SES factor is a surprise for choir, I would have expected that for band or orchestra.

Guitar students were the lowest group to persist with music when they went to high school (12.3%). In this group, being identified as male was the only significant predictor of continuation. [12.3%! what’s happening in that class?!]

Similar to band, 20.4% orchestra students persisted with music in high school. The only indicator of persistence with this group was students who were formerly classified as ELL.

Many non-musical factors, thankfully, were NOT influential in music persistence. In this study, factors such as gender, race, and SES weren’t overall predictors of attrition.

However, the importance of getting ALL students in the room for recruitment purposes is essential. The authors make a point to say that recruitment strategies should be different than strategies used for retention.

The authors also suggest that special populations of students (such as SPED tnd ELL) may find participation in music as a tool to assist with their transition to high school. Perhaps pulling them out into “other” classes for intervention is not the answer for these students’ academic and social success in high school.

This data is always fascinating to me. While we can’t draw through lines with this data to say that music means higher academic success, we can say that music education is for everyone. With the increased focus on the needs uf our vulnerable populations and ensuring their academic success, I think it says something that in some cases, these are the students that choose to continue. That tells me that there is something about this shared experience in music that connects them to school and their peers. That can be a powerful card to play when our special populations of students are being pulled from music classes. But also - our music classrooms MUST be inclusive!

I think the alarming thing though is that so many students are NOT continuing with music. It would be interesting to see the data on the same student sample showing why they did not continue with music in high school. There would be a lot to unpack there.