• Overview
• Introduction
• The NAEP Arts Assessment
• Student Achievement
• Responding Scores and Students' Music Experiences
• Performing and Creating Scores and In-School Music Activities
• Performing and Creating Scores and In- and Out-of-School Activities
• Relationships Among Responding and Performing and Creating Results
• Conclusion
• References

Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 1997 Arts Assessment in Music, which covered eighth-grade students only, regardless of whether they had received instruction in music, show that student involvement in a variety of music activities-playing an instrument in particular-is positively related to student music achievement.

In 1997, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) assessed arts education in the United States for the first time in almost 20 years.¹ At first glance, some findings of the assessment were surprising and disappointing to many arts educators. In music, for example, the assessment found that students attending schools where they received instruction in music three or four times a week did not necessarily outperform students attending schools where music was not taught (Persky, Sandene, and Askew 1998, 144 ff). The same was true of students attending schools where the great majority of students received instruction in music as compared to students attending schools where very few received instruction in music. (The music assessment was given to a general sample of students, regardless of whether they had received any instruction in music.)

However, a closer look at in-school instructional activities, most notably those requiring students to play a musical instrument, did show a consistent relationship to higher student achievement in music. This NAEPfact discusses relationships between students' achievement in music and their involvement in a variety of in- and out-of-school activities. These activities can range from students listening to music on their own to being required to play their instruments in class. Analysis of data gathered in the assessment shows a relationship between many such activities and higher student achievement in music.

The NAEP arts assessment measured students' ability to create and perform works of art as well as to respond to existing works. For music, students were assessed on three arts processes: Creating, Performing, and Responding. In the arts assessment framework (National Assessment Governing Board 1994),

• Creating refers to expressing ideas and feelings in the form of an original work of art, for example, a musical improvisation.

• Performing refers to performing an existing work, a process that calls upon the interpretive or re-creative skills of the student.

• Responding refers to observing, describing, analyzing, and evaluating works of art.

In order to capture all three processes, the arts assessment exercises included Creating and Performingtasks in addition to standard paper-and-pencil tasks. These tasks, among other things, asked students to sing and play instruments, to sight-read music, and to improvise. In these tasks, students were also asked to comment in writing on their work. The Responding tasks asked students to describe, analyze, interpret, and evaluate works of art, both by writing short statements and essays and by answering multiple-choice questions.

The NAEP 1997 Music Assessment used a nationally representative sample of 2,275 eighth-grade students. All students engaged in Responding and Creatingand/or Performing tasks.²

Student performance on the arts assessment is presented in several ways. The overall summaries of results treat each of the three processes-Creating, Performing, and Responding-separately. Responding results for music are summarized on a scale that ranges from 0 to 300. Scores that fell in the bottom 25 percent of the scale were labeled "Lower Level" scores; those in the middle 50 percent were labeled "Middle Level"; and those in the top 25 percent were labeled "Upper Level."Creating and Performingresults for music are not summarized using a standard NAEP scale. Instead of a scale, Creating and Performingresults are presented as average percentages of the maximum possible score on exercises. These average scores represent the overall mean percentage students earned of the possible number of points for the components of Creating and Performingtasks. For example, if the maximum possible score on the Creating tasks in the music assessment was 129, and the average student had a combined score of 43, then the average percentage would be 33 (i.e., 43 is 33 percent of 129).

Differences in music achievement are reported here only if they are statistically significant. This means that the observed differences in the samples are likely to reflect real differences in the population and are highly unlikely to have resulted from chance factors associated with sampling variability. Reporting of these differences is not intended to imply any judgment about cause and effect nor to make any judgment on the educational relevance of the differences.

As table 1 demonstrates, student involvement in many different music activities was positively related to higher Responding scores. In fact, of the 13 activities surveyed, only one, "Take private singing lessons," did not show a positive relationship. For 8 of the 13 activities considered, Middle Level students were more likely to be engaged in the selected activity than Lower Level students. Upper Level students were more likely to be active than Lower Level students in 12 of the 13 activities, and more likely to be active than Middle Level students in 11 of the activities.

Table 1.—Student participation in music activities by level of performance on the Music Responding Scale

Table 2 provides data on students' in-school music activities, as they reported them, in comparison with students' Performing and Creatingscores. Students were asked how often their teachers asked them to perform certain music activities.

As the table indicates, some 34 to 40 percent of eighth-grade students reported that they were not currently enrolled in music class. For each of the five activities considered, these students had lower scores than at least one group of students who were taking music. However, not all students who were taking music had higher scores than students who were not.

It is notable that students who were asked to play their instruments almost every day had higher scores than all other students, for both Performing and Creating. Students whose teachers asked them to sing almost every day had higher Creatingscores than all students except those whose teachers asked them to sing once or twice a month. However, in Performing, students whose teachers asked them to sing almost every day outscored only those students who did not take music; they did not outscore students who sang in class less frequently.

It is also notable that students whose teachers played music for them to listen to once or twice a month had higher scores than students whose teachers played music for them to listen to almost every day, for both Performing and Creating. These students also outscored students who did not take music.

For Creatingscores only, students whose teachers played music for them to listen to once or twice a week or once or twice a month also outperformed students whose teachers never or hardly ever played music for them to listen to. Thus, for Creatingscores, there is an overall pattern that students whose teachers occasionally required them to listen to music in class had higher average scores than both those students whose teachers rarely required them to listen to music and those whose teachers required them to do so almost every day.

Table 2.—Students' music Performing and Creating scores by involvement in in-school music activities

Table 3 shows the percentages of students engaged in various in- and out-of-school music activities and their Performing and Creatingscores. In every case where data were available, students who had engaged in the activity had higher scores than those who had not. There is a substantial overlap in categories for table 3 and table 1, which considers students' Respondingscores. Both tables demonstrate a generally positive relationship between involvement in music activities and student achievement in music.

Table 3.—Students' music Performing and Creating scores and their involvement in in-school and out-of-school music activities

As table 4 demonstrates, students who scored higher on the Respondingportion of the music assessment were likely to score higher on both the Performingand Creating portions of the music assessment as well. For both Performingand Creating, students who scored in the Middle Level of the Responding Scale had higher average scores than those who scored in the Lower Level, and students who scored in the Upper Level of the Responding Scale had higher average scores than those who scored in the Middle Level.

Table 4.—Average student scores on Performing and Creating by level of performance on the Music Responding Scale

The NAEP 1997 Arts Assessment in Music confirmed what many educators would predict, that student involvement in music activities is positively related to student achievement in music. The assessment also found a positive relationship between students responding to music and students "doing" music-creating and performing.

These findings are not demonstrations of causal relationships. For example, schools that initiate a requirement that students play their instruments almost every day may have a more extensive music program than most schools; or they may be located in higher income areas, where it is not unreasonable to ask that every student purchase an inexpensive instrument or where the school can afford to provide every student with an instrument. A wide variety of factors influence student achievement in any subject. But the findings highlighted in this NAEPfact can have relevance to future research and practice in music education.

¹ NCES assessed music in 1972 and 1978 and visual arts in 1975 and 1978.