Abstract

When A Nation at Risk was published in 1983, Americans responded by demanding a quality system of public education. In turn, the country's leaders tried to determine what they could do to help strengthen American education. In February 1994 they passed Goals 2000: Educate America (P.L. 103-227) consisting of eight educational goals for our country. The arts were included as one of the core academic subjects in Goals 2000, a major victory for arts advocacy groups. The Consortium of National Arts Education Associations (CNAEA) then began to create the national standards for arts education. These standards were published in What Every Young American Should Know and Be Able to Do in the Arts. As a result, music educators need to evaluate their teaching practices in order to help students achieve these national standards. My teaching reflects the use of a variety of methods and resources including Yamaha Corporation of America’s Music In Education (MIE), which I use most heavily. MIE is a technology-assisted music program based on a sequential and conceptually based curriculum with a general music focus.

The Music Task Force of CNAEA created the standards with the belief that the standards would make a difference in the quality and accountability of music programs across our nation. The standards consist of nine content standards describing what music students should know and be able to do. The content standards are broken down into more specific tasks called achievement standards. Music teachers will need to educate themselves in order to become familiar with the standards and understand how they can help students to achieve them. Technology has the possibility of helping teachers accomplish this task.

The focus of my final project has been to compare MIE with the National Standards in Music Education. In what ways does the MIE curriculum coincide with the national standards? How might I adapt the MIE curriculum in order to emphasize the national standards? I have evaluated the students' engagement in musical activities. I have also created a reference of the first twenty MIE modules and what standards-related activities students participate in within those modules. This information was then translated into a table showing the approximate frequency with which each standard is addressed within the first twenty modules of MIE. My analysis clearly illustrates that the MIE curriculum excels in regard to student participation in singing, playing instruments, reading and notating music, listening to and analyzing music, and describing music. Improvising, composing, understanding relationships and understanding music in relation to history and culture are included to a lesser degree, but are presented in a way that offers great potential for expansion by a teacher concerned about meeting the standards. In strict accordance to the way the standards were written, standard 7, evaluating music and music performances, occurs twice in the first twenty modules. This is an area that would need to be supplemented in a standards-based program. Again, the MIE curriculum offers teachers an excellent format for adding such activities because of the wide variety of musical examples, which are included in the program. MIE teachers would do well to use MIE for the basis of their music program because students are consistently involved in standards-related, student-centered music making activities. Teachers should look for places within the MIE curriculum in which they may expand the activities to further address less prominent standards.