Reflection on 'Documenting Student Learning in Music Performance', a music education article

Music assessment can be considered as an area of debate amongst a number of educators.

Standardized music tests, performance-based tests, all of these have their own points of contentions among the professionals in the sphere of education, especially as countries, regions in the world have their ways and means to assess but with no international standard being adhered to.

This article that I read takes a look at music assessment in the classroom and provides a framework in which to document student growth and achievement in music performance, offering two assessment models, one based on assessment for accountability and the other assessment for academic improvement.

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Concerning the driving force behind the interest in the assessment methods, the Race to the Top agenda was stimulated by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, an economic package focused to improving the infrastructure of the government with funds allocated for several departments including the Department of Education. The RTTT (Race to the Top State Incentive Grant Program) encouraged and rewarded states that had educational reform and innovation.

The writer provides a compelling argument in regards to the music assessment structures offered. One of the problems of music educators is the assessment for music learning and achievement, which, as most professionals in the field of music education would agree with, do not at most times reflect the needed knowledge and skill to make a proper evaluation of the students.

Student-learning objective (SLO) statements are offered as a means for measuring student growth, encouraging that teacher-derived SLOs were better for assessing as the teachers themselves could create them based on what they could see and diagnose, making the data that they gather more credible in concerns to the goals they set. This is a fairly persuasive view as it is a majority would agree that it would be hard to measure a student’s musical growth with standard paper tests, and that with the different levels of music growth of students, only a teacher directly involved could assess the student performance regarding practical knowledge and skill in music.

According to the author, to develop the framework for assessment in regards with the expectations of the RTTT involved a nine-step process, which upon further study provides an excellent model for creating assessments that would suit the needs of the students based on how the educator would develop his/her assessment. All in all, the article gives a solid step-by-step process to follow in obtaining a good assessment framework.

But the problem in this case would be the plausibility of using this method in countries in which music education has not been developed in the school system. An example would be the Philippines. The development of the system of framework could be used by the teacher in the classroom, but with the meagre amount of time given for music classes and the lack of trained music educators, the assessment model will be hard to use to its best capacity.

The nine-step process for the development of an assessment system:

• Step 1: Establishing an SLO
• Step 2: Define Benchmarks, Growth Targets, and Scoring
• Step 3: Plan Appropriate Assessment Tools
• Step 4: Diagnostic (Pretest) Assessments
• Step 5: Revise SLO Based on Diagnostic Data
• Step 6: Multiple Formative Assessments and Differentiated Instruction
• Step 7: Summative (Posttest) Assessments
• Step 8: Track Data— Portfolio Assessments
• Step 9: Relating Assessment to Teacher Effectiveness and Program Development

The article concentrates on providing music educators with an assessment model that can be developed to suit the needs of the students as the teacher sees it. Not only does the assessment rely on the teacher’s expertise, but it also evaluates a student’s learning capabilities and understanding.

The example would be concerning Step 8, which concerns doing portfolio assessments that includes self-assessment for students. Notably, it could be seen that in following this development framework, it not only checks the proficiency of the student in regards to theory, but also checks their skill and practical understanding of the subjects assessed.

In regards to the major thing that the article expresses would be that the effectiveness of the teacher is proportional to how the framework could be made. Without the knowledge and skill in the particular area, specifically music, it would be hard to create an assessment model that would suit the subject matter. It also stresses the importance of documenting the academic growth of the students, which would serve as data for improvement.

“More important, the process of how music educators document student growth plays a prominent part in how they are evaluated in teacher effectiveness frameworks.” (Wesolowski, 2014, p.83).

It connects student achievement to teacher effectiveness, which is a part of the RTTT’s agenda.

It explains the importance of being prepared to make decisions based on facts gathered from data taken from assessments. The author states:

“The more informed an educator is about the outcomes of instruction, the better prepared he or she is to make remedial decisions about the instructional process. The result of this preparedness will improve teaching and program effectiveness.” (Wesolowski, 2014, p.84).

This indicates the importance of having a solid framework impacts the effectiveness of the instruction process and student achievement. It comes down on the shoulders of the educator to develop a framework that would be functional, efficient and consistent in assessment so that the process of documentation of student growth and achievement would be good.

All in all, it places the responsibility of the effectiveness of student learning on the capabilities of the teacher, solidifying the connection of student growth to teacher effectiveness.

An excellent insight is provided into the responsibilities of a music educator.

Unlike subject areas like history, math or the sciences, music is a little more complicated to assess in that knowledge of theory does not always equal practical skill and vice versa. It also indicates the solemn importance of being prepared and knowledgeable enough to tackle educating youngsters in a way that would be effective and efficient.

It was interesting to see that, at the start the author states that there are subjects that cannot be accurately assessed with standard paper-pencil tests. Though this is exactly what a lot of educators do not understand. In a way, because music is a performance-based subject, they would just let the students perform, or another extreme would be that they would do paper-pencil assessment and no performance. Basically, music education is balance of theory and skill, abandoning one means that the level of excellence would not be achieved in its truest form.

In relation to life experience, this indicates that a framework, or maybe goal would be appropriate in having a more effective path. While spontaneity is occasionally good for the soul, having a long term goal or mind set would be in the long run more helpful.

♫♪♫♪Writer's Thoughts♫♪♫♪

I really find music education as an interesting area of research, after all, music is pretty much part of life, whether you're a performer in the field, a hobbyist, or even just a person who hums off tune, it is connected to being alive (unless you're deaf, but Beethoven even got over that).

Oh, and here's a link to the article mentioned above, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0027432114540475

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