Dearth of MPS music programs disproportionately affects low-income, African American students

In a school district of haves and have-nots, the music program at Milwaukee's Ronald Reagan College Preparatory High School is about as good as it gets.

At Reagan, nearly 500 students — more than one-third of the student body — take classes in orchestra, band or chorus, taught by three full-time, certified music teachers. And guest artists from nonprofit arts groups like Present Music and the Florentine Opera routinely cycle through, offering, say, a master class for vocalists before their senior recitals, or working with student composers on string quartets that will be performed by professional ensembles.

But that's not the norm at most of Milwaukee's public schools, where music programs have been squeezed, and in many cases gutted, by budget cuts and shifting priorities that disproportionately affect those schools with the highest concentrations of low-income students and children of color.

Late last month, the Milwaukee Public Schools board adopted a plan to address those disparities. Over the next five years, it said, MPS will spend at least $26 million to hire an additional 85 music teachers, buy and maintain instruments and equipment, and implement a new policy setting minimum standards for music instruction in all of its schools.

Board members have not said where the struggling district, which faces looming deficits in the years ahead, intends to get the money. But the disparities in music illustrate the kinds of inequities they've said they hope to address if they can get a referendum on the ballot next spring.

"We have to start somewhere. We have to make an effort to provide equally for all of our students," said board member Marva Herndon, who represents the largely African American northwest side of the city, where many students have limited or no access to music instruction.

"In the African-American community ... students have lost so much of what students enjoy about school."

The board's vote came after intense lobbying by music teachers who have for years raised concerns about the disparities. MPS, they argue, is woefully out of compliance with both state law and standards set by the Department of Public Instruction. 

Music, they argue, is a core subject on par with history and social studies. And every student should have access, they say, to high-quality, sequential instruction — including the opportunity to read music and play an instrument — as part of a well-rounded education.

"There are 30,000 students that have virtually no music instruction in the city right now," said Ben Zabor, band and orchestra director at Milwaukee's Rufus King High School, which like Reagan, has extensive music offerings.

"If you go a few miles outside of Milwaukee (to surrounding suburbs), those students are offered those opportunities," said Erica Breitbarth, who chairs the music department at Reagan. "And we believe all of our students should have that, too."

Haves and have-nots

The disparities between MPS and its surrounding districts have been well-documented. Less well-known are the often vast opportunity gaps among students within MPS, the state's largest district, which serves primarily low-income children of color. And music instruction is one of those.

According to the district, MPS employs just 73 licensed and certified music teachers for almost 76,000 students. And an analysis by the Journal Sentinel shows that students in nearly two-thirds of its 130 or so traditional, Montessori and charter schools have limited or no access to certified music instructors as part of their regular curriculum.

This year, about 40 of those schools have no full- or part-time certified music teacher on staff, according to data provided by the district. Almost 40 other schools share teachers who travel among as many as five different buildings, or tap a cadre of district-wide instructors for small group lessons.

Those disparities cut clearly across racial and socio-economic lines.

Schools with no dedicated music program — no full- or part-time teacher and no small group lessons — are overwhelmingly located in the predominantly African-American central city and northwest side.

Schools where there were higher concentrations of white children are much more likely to have a certified music teacher on staff, according to the Journal Sentinel analysis. 

For example, schools where 10% or more of the students are white are nearly twice as likely to have licensed certified music teachers on staff as those with a smaller percentage of white students.

Similarly, schools where there are higher concentrations of students considered economically disadvantaged are less likely to have music teachers on staff.

Many MPS students do have access to high-quality music instruction, including its higher-performing selective enrollment schools like Reagan and King, where students must test in; some arts-focused schools like High School of the Art and Lincoln Middle School; and others.

But programs at even the best-resourced high schools have suffered because of the collapse of music programming in elementary and middle schools across the district.

"We just can't accept that other people's kids don't have the same opportunities as our kids," said Sharie Garcia, band director at High School of the Arts, who studied the disparities in access to music instruction in MPS as part of her MBA program in educational leadership at Milwaukee School of Engineering.

According to Garcia's analysis of 2017-18 data, even when schools were demographically similar — in ethnic and racial makeup, special education enrollment and percentage of low-income children —  those with robust music programs scored 20 points higher on their state report cards than those that had none.

She found geographic disparities as well.

"On the south side of the (I-94) freeway, there were six functional instrumental music programs (in K-8 and middle schools) that were meeting expectations," she said. "And on the north side, there no functional instrumental programs in middle and K-8 schools, and those schools were not meeting expectations" on their state report cards.

"Opportunities should not be decided by your address. If you're in the same district, you should get the same things." 

MPS declined repeated requests to allow fine arts manager Deb Bowling and music curriculum specialist Tony Soyak to be interviewed for this story. However, district spokesman Andy Nelson did answer questions via email and did not dispute the findings of the Journal Sentinel's analysis.

The proposed minimum standards for instruction, which were drafted by the music teachers with help from the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association, would require all students to receive a minimum 60 to 100 minutes of instruction a week, depending on the grade level, and more for performance-based classes like chorus, band and orchestra. In addition, all students would have access to vocal and instrumental music instruction and small group lessons by traveling teachers.

The plan is to start with the elementary schools and work up from there. Proponents of the plan believe it could help MPS address some of the academic deficiencies and challenging behaviors it sees in some of its schools.

Music and the brain

While those shortcomings are the results of myriad factors, decades of neuroscience research support the contention that high-quality music instruction affects brain development in ways that can help children do better in schools, said Assal Habibi, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Southern California, who works in conjunction with USC's Brain & Creativity Institute.

"The short story is this: We have good evidence that music training does have benefits in child developments in multiple domains," said Habibi, whose latest findings involving a longitudinal study of 1,000 low-income children in Los Angeles will be published later this month in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

There is clear evidence, she said, that children who receive music training have higher executive function skills, which affect their abilities to make decisions and plan for the future. They are better able to delay gratification; detect emotion in another person, which Habibi called "the building block of empathy;" and have more mature auditory pathways between the ear and brain, which create a greater capacity for language and reading.

Music training, she said, physically changes the cortical matter of the brain — what's known as the gray matter — strengthening the communication pathways between the left and right hemispheres.

"What we know now is that the brain does not function by region. It functions as a network," she said. "And children who have music training have more robust communications between the two hemispheres compared to their age-matched counterparts."

The MPS test scores show a correlation between high achievement and access to music instruction.

As for academic performance, schools that provided regular music instruction had drastically higher rates of reading and math proficiency than those that did not, and they scored higher overall on their state report cards, according to the Journal Sentinel analysis.

In the schools with no music instruction, about 8% of students scored as proficient or advanced in English and math in the 2018-19 Forward exams. Schools that had music instruction doubled those rates, with 18% proficient or advanced in English and 17% in math.

These numbers don’t prove lack of music instruction causes lower academic achievement, but they do show music instruction is less available in the schools that struggle most.

'Funding is always an issue'

MPS was once a national leader in music education. The district added music to its curriculum in the 1870s, and its music superintendent took part in the founding meeting in 1907 of what is now the National Association for Music Education. 

Well into the 1980s, students at most if not all schools had instruction in choral and instrumental music as part of their regular school day, according to several sources. They had access to small group lessons and performed in school-based ensembles and marching bands.

The district produced the likes of Carl Allen, the renowned jazz drummer who would go on to lead the jazz studies program at The Julliard School, and the late Al Jarreau, the vocalist and musician who won seven Grammy Awards.

For most of that time, Milwaukee was a majority white and economically diverse district. But as its demographics changed, so too did its funding, priorities, enrollment, programming and staffing levels — all of which have affected its ability to maintain its music education programs.

As programs were shuttered, instruments were mothballed.

“There are a lot of instruments going unused,” said Breitbarth. “We have places where there are band rooms completely outfitted that are not being used."

A host of factors thinned the ranks of music teachers over the last three decades: the  soaring cost of benefits that led to layoffs; an exodus of early retirees in the wake of Act 10; the move from elementary and middle schools to K-8 buildings that weren't configured for choral, band or orchestra programs; and the advent of high-stakes testing brought on by No Child Left Behind.

As proficiency rates plummeted in subjects like math and reading, principals poured more resources into those subjects, squeezing out the so-called "specials" like art, music, physical education and libraries.

"As principals, we are forced to make hard choices to focus on the core content areas," said Daryl Burns, of Vincent High School, which has one music teacher for almost 800 students. He'd like to offer choir, band, keyboards and drum line, but right now, he can only offer an introduction-to-music class.

"Funding is always an issue," said Burns who studied French horn and trombone growing up in Chicago Public Schools and supports the board's decision to amp up music instruction. "And it's hard to tell teachers who have the will and skill that it's not in the budget."

Nonprofits vs. teachers

The music teachers say MPS has perpetuated the inequities by creating partial positions that forced teachers to cobble together shifts at multiple schools to reach full-time hours — a situation few teachers will attempt. In addition, they say, the district has failed to aggressively recruit new hires and makes it more difficult for college students to student teach music in the district.

To fill the void, MPS has spent millions of dollars over the years contracting with nonprofit groups to offer arts and music instruction in underserved schools — money, teachers say, that could have been used to hire certified teachers.

One program alone, known as Fill the Gaps, contracted to pay $6.1 million over the last three years to five groups: the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, Arts @ Large, Black Arts MKE, TBEY Arts Center and the Milwaukee Children's Choir, according to the district.

At least one of the nonprofits, the Conservatory of Music, has credited the program with helping to put it back on firm financial footing. Fill the Gaps was not renewed this year after music teachers raised concerns that the organizations were being enriched at the expense of MPS staffing.

But school board President Larry Miller said he is working with those nonprofits to ensure schools without teachers would continue to be served while the district ramps up its staffing. Once it is fully staffed — assuming that happens — MPS would continue to contract with outside arts groups, but to supplement teachers in the classroom rather than replace them, Miller said.

He singled out the Conservatory of Music, which was in almost 30 schools last year, calling it a strong partner and saying it would be part of a task force created to implement the new policy.

Eric Tillich, president of the Conservatory, said he backs the district's move to rebuild its music programming and wrote a letter in support of the music teachers' proposed policy.

"We're on board with that. We're not trying to replace teachers," Tillich said. "We just want to make sure every child gets quality music education in the classroom." 

Contact Annysa Johnson at anjohnson@jrn.com or 414-224-2061. Follow her on Twitter at @JSEdbeat. And join the Journal Sentinel conversation about education issues at www.facebook.com/groups/WisconsinEducation.