The whirlwind of recent congressional activity on reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), ultimately culminating in the Senate’s passage of the bipartisan Every Child Achieves Act (S. 1177) and the House’s Student Success Act (H.R. 5), has sparked a great number of questions from music and arts educators, as to the implications of these pieces of legislation, both in policy and practice. For those interested, a thorough legislative analysis of what exactly the bills WOULD do for music and arts (primarily as a result of their listing as core academic subjects) is available from Americans for the Arts. I am routinely asked by music educators, however, about several bigger picture issues, and how they pertain to the Senate bill, in particular, with regard to what it WOULD NOT do. As such, I thought it would be useful to try and speak to those concerns directly, all at once – and try to outline the limits of a new ESEA. Here it goes:

1. The Senate bill WOULD NOT make music a part of Common Core. The Common Core State Standards are part of an initiative that details what K–12 students should know in English language arts and mathematics at the end of each grade. Needless to say, it has been hugely controversial. Common Core has absolutely zero relation to the Core Academic Subjects provision in S. 1177, and music is most certainly not about to become a part of the Common Core. You can learn more about Common Core here.

2. The Senate bill WOULD NOT result in music being subjected to more standardized tests. There is a tremendous bipartisan movement right now to get Congress out of state and local-level education decision-making. Will that result in the U.S. Department of Education going away or Congress not writing education bills? No. Absolutely not. But it does mean that the Every Child Achieves Act is aimed at cutting back on federally mandated testing, and there is most certainly no energy or willingness to add such testing for music. More about the overall philosophies of the key players behind this most recent ESEA reauthorization push here.

3. The Senate bill WOULD NOT mean that Congress decides what music educators teach in their classrooms, what their qualifications are, or how they are hired, on a state-by-state basis. Again, the Every Child Achieves Act is designed to cut way back on federal overreach. Congress is not interested in being prescriptive right now. These are decisions that will continue to be made at the state- and local-levels.

4. The Senate bill WOULD NOT mandate that music education be taught in every school, or provide protection against cuts to music programs. See – on occasion, government overreach wouldn’t be such a bad thing, now would it?? I kid, but seriously – consistent with the other points listed here, unfortunately, this legislation does not have the “teeth” necessary to ensure that every child has access to a high-quality school music experience. Nothing that Washington does or says now or in the future is very likely to alter the need for and importance of grassroots advocacy and coalition building as the first line of defense against cuts to music programs. That’s just the reality of the world that we live in as advocates, and we need to own it.

For those interested in learning more about the general impacts of No Child Left Behind on music education, and what NAfME is seeking to accomplish in a new ESEA, I would strongly encourage checking out the archived footage of our recent congressional briefing on the topic, available here. We also post breaking news and advocacy updates on our Music Advocacy Groundswell site, and you can gain access to a variety of wonderful advocacy tools as a part of our Broader Minded: Think Beyond the Bubbles campaign. Lastly, I am always available as a resource to chat about ESEA, or any other national-, state- or local-level music advocacy issue. I can be reached directly at [email protected].