Sent to Membership 9/5/07

Sent to Membership 3/20/07
Advocacy Article
Subject:        Music Training 'Tunes' Human Auditory System
Date:   Sun, 18 Mar 2007 11:35:51 -0400
From:   Richard Victor <rdv11@scasd.org>

EDITOR'S NOTE: Here is an article recently distributed by the Council for Exceptional Children to their list serv - - RV

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Music Training 'Tunes' Human Auditory System

A newly published study by Northwestern University researchers suggests that Mom was right when she insisted that you continue music lessons -- even after it was clear that a professional music career was not in your future.

The study, which will appear in the April issue of Nature Neuroscience, is the first to provide concrete evidence that playing a musical instrument significantly enhances the brainstem's sensitivity to speech sounds. This finding has broad implications because it applies to sound encoding skills involved not only in music but also in language.

The findings indicate that experience with music at a young age in effect can "fine-tune" the brain's auditory system. "Increasing music experience appears to benefit all children -- whether musically exceptional or not -- in a wide range of learning activities," says Nina
Kraus, director of Northwestern's Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory and senior author of the study.

"Our findings underscore the pervasive impact of musical training on neurological development. Yet music classes are often among the first to be cut when school budgets get tight. That's a mistake," says Kraus, Hugh Knowles Professor of Neurobiology and Physiology and professor of communication sciences and disorders.

"Our study is the first to ask whether enhancing the sound environment -- in this case with musical training -- will positively affect the way an individual encodes sound even at a level as basic as the brainstem," says Patrick Wong, primary author of "Musical Experience Shapes Human Brainstem Encoding of Linguistic Pitch Patterns." An old structure from an evolutionary standpoint, the brainstem once was thought to only play
a passive role in auditory processing.

Using a novel experimental design, the researchers presented the Mandarin word "mi" to 20 adults as they watched a movie. Half had at least six years of musical instrument training starting before the age of 12. The other half had minimal (less than 2 years) or no musical training. All were native English speakers with no knowledge of Mandarin, a tone language.

In tone languages, a single word can differ in meaning depending on pitch patterns called "tones." For example, the Mandarin word "mi" delivered in a level tone means "to squint," in a rising tone means "to bewilder," and in a dipping (falling then rising) tone means "rice." English, on the other hand, only uses pitch to reflect intonation (as when rising pitch is used in questions). As the subjects watched the movie, the researchers used
electrophysiological methods to measure and graph the accuracy of their brainstem ability to track the three differently pitched "mi" sounds.

"Even with their attention focused on the movie and though the sounds had no linguistic or musical meaning for them, we found our musically trained subjects were far better at tracking the three different tones than the non-musicians," says Wong, director of Northwestern's Speech Research Laboratory and assistant professor of communication sciences and disorders.

The research by co-authors Wong, Kraus, Erika Skoe, Nicole Russo and Tasha Dees represents a new way of defining the relationship between the brainstem -- a lower order brain structure thought to be unchangeable and uninvolved in complex processing -- and the neocortex, a higher order brain structure associated with music, language and other complex processing.

These findings are in line with previous studies by Wong and his group suggesting that musical experience can improve one's ability to learn tone languages in adulthood and level of musical experience plays a role in the degree of activation in the auditory cortex. Wong also is a faculty member in Northwestern's Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program.

The findings also are consistent with studies by Kraus and her research team that have revealed anomalies in brainstem sound encoding in some children with learning disabilities which can be improved by auditory training.

"We've found that by playing music -- an action thought of as a function of the neocortex -- a person may actually be tuning the brainstem," says Kraus. "This suggests that the relationship between the brainstem and neocortex is a dynamic and reciprocal one and tells us that our basic sensory circuitry is more malleable than we previously thought."

Overall, the findings assist in unfolding new lines of inquiry. The researchers now are looking to find ways to "train" the brain to better encode sound -- work that potentially has far-reaching educational and clinical implications. The study was supported by Northwestern University, grants from the National Institutes of Health and a grant
from the National Science Foundation.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Northwestern University.

SOURCE: sciencedaily.com 
 

Sent to Membership 2/26/07
Advocacy Article
EDITOR'S NOTE: Here is an editorial which appeared Sunday in my local newspaper - the Centre Daily Times.  Hopefully, editorials and articles such as this one have appeared and will continue to appear in newspapers throughout the state.  If a good advocacy article or editorial appears in your local newspaper and is reprinted online, then please send me an email with a link to that article so I can share it with everyone on the Advocacy network. - - RV

Richard Victor
PMEA Advocacy Chairperson
rdv11@scasd.org

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It's time to leave this act behind
Sunday, Feb 25, 2007

By 2014, the United States should have the best test-taking students in the industrialized world as a result of the centerpiece of the Bush administration's educational policy, the No Child Left Behind Act.

But problem solvers, creative thinkers, artists and musicians? Sorry, there just isn't the time to develop them.

The quest for accountability and establishing minimum standards for all students has forced educators to "teach to the test."

Flexibility, creativity, inspiration? There just isn't time.

Nor is there the money that is needed -- desperately in many school districts -- to ensure that the mandated standards are met.

Special reading and math programs aren't free. Nor are they funded by the federal law that makes them necessary.

So local administrators are left with a choice, which really isn't a choice at all: raise taxes even higher (unlikely or impossible) or rob Peter (in this case, art, music, physical education and other subject areas that help develop well-rounded, creative, adaptive problem solvers) to pay for Paul's (or Uncle Sam's) mandates.

The goals behind No Child Left Behind were, and remain, laudable: raising the level of achievement for all students, reducing the achievement gap between whites and minorities, improving failing school districts and holding everyone in the educational process accountable.

Five years in, however, the act has yet to prove its effectiveness. Two federal reports released last week indicate that students may be earning more credits, taking more challenging courses and getting better grades, but high school seniors are still doing poorly on national math and reading tests.

The gap in reading scores between whites and minorities is relatively unchanged since 2002.

The Bush administration wants to add more testing. What is needed, however, is more teaching.

Let the teachers teach. That is what they are trained to do. That is their passion, the reason they went into education: to help awaken young minds, not to help kids prepare for the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment Tests year after year after year.

But what choice do today's teachers have? Districts that don't meet the standards set in Harrisburg or Washington -- arguably, the districts that need the most help -- are punished. They get less of what they need -- money and resources -- and more oversight.

We're from the government and we're here to help -- to help show you how to take tests.

Not every school district is the same. The State College Area School District bears little resemblance to one in, say, Plano, Texas. It may not have all that much in common with its neighbors adjacent to or within Centre County either.

It seems short-sighted to impose a one-size-fits-all standard on young minds.

That is what our schools, ideally, should be developing: Young people who can contribute to and better our society, not those who are capable of passing multiple-choice and essay tests, not No. 2 pencil-wielding automatons.

And just as soldiers on the ground know more about what they need to succeed than do the stateside planners in the strategy room, so do the teachers know -- much more so, than the politicians -- what is required in the classroom.

Let them teach.

Let local administrators administer -- real education, not just tests.

The No Child Left Behind Act has been put to the test and found wanting.
It's time to get much more creative.

SOURCE: centredaily.com

Sent to Membership 2/15/07
Grammy President Hits a High Note for Music Education
Subject: Grammy President Hits a High Note for Music Education
Date:     Mon, 12 Feb 2007 14:59:36 -0500
From:     Richard Victor <rdv11@scasd.org>

Editors Note: Grammy President Neil Portow gave this speech at last night's Grammy Awards.  Please take a minute to follow up his wonderful speech by sending an email to Governor Rendell and your local state representatives.  Just click on the link below.  It will only take you a few minutes!  - - - RV

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Grammy President Hits a High Note for Music Education

Neil Portnow, Recording Academy President, took to the stage of the 49th Annual Grammy Awards to ask the country to take a stand for music and arts education.

What if the GRAMMYs had to give up the Best New Artist category because there weren't any? Well, as long as The Recording Academy has anything to say about it, that's not going to happen! Tonight, we've already met some of this year's remarkable Best New Artist nominees, and in a few minutes, we'll see a fresh new face experience her "ultimate" GRAMMY Moment provided by The Academy.

When I was just 6 years old, I watched Elvis on TV, and knew what I wanted to do with my life. And thanks to my parents and the dedicated music teachers at school, I realized my dream of a career in music. Now, we need to make sure that others have that same chance.

Let me show you exactly what I'm talking about. Meet Anne Lee, a very talented 15-year-old public school music student, and Christian Sands, a 17 year old who won a spot in our GRAMMY Jazz Ensemble.

Our GRAMMY Foundation programs like GRAMMY in the Schools and GRAMMY Camp teach and encourage thousands of kids who love music, and whose lives are better for it. This underscores the most fundamental point - every child deserves exposure to music and the arts in school!

There are some encouraging signs out there. Just this year, The Recording Academy and the music community rallied their forces here in California to reverse the trend of reduced funding. The result: more than 100 million dollars for music education with millions more for instruments in schools.

The time is now to contact your elected leaders. Tell them that music is just as essential to the next generation's development as any other subject. We'll make it easy for you - go to GRAMMY.com. We'll connect you directly to your representatives so your voice can be heard.

You're here - or out there - because music is an important part of your life. Together let us all ensure that music stays just as vital and alive for generations still to come.

Lend your voice to the effort here!
<http://www3.capwiz.com/grammy/issues/alert/?alertid=9325291&type=ml> 
(link to grammy. com)
Source: The Recording Academy

Sent to Membership 2/7/07
Post Gazette Advocacy Article
Kate Pielemeier is a Coro Fellow and is spending four weeks at the Post-Gazette as a staff writer. Click on the link below to read her article from Wednesday's edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette entitled, "Human resource experts say workers could benefit more from art than from math and science."  Then, pass it on to your administrators!

        Click here to view the article from 2/7/07

Sent to Membership 1/23/07
Advocacy Information from State Chair
Click on the following files to view articles sent to our membership from State Advocacy Chair Richard Victor.  The first is an article, then the text of an e-mail about Act 1, followed by a spreadsheet referred to in the Act 1 e-mail.

Article: "Joining Children in Sweet Harmony"
E-mail from R. Victor: Act 1 Information
Act 1 Spreadsheet