Music Education Argumentative Essay

In many public schools, music education programs are being terminated, due to budget cuts and governmental program reforms; while some believe that the arts are secondary to courses such as math and science, it has been proven that musical education helps students to improve skills such as project management, team building, effective time management, leadership, cooperation and collaboration. Due to the fact that the benefits reaped from music education overwhelm any negatives associated with it, music education programs should be kept in public schools.

Music education has been quite prevalent in the United States for quite some time. Public education first began in the United States in the 1800s and Philadelphia and Boston were among the

Obama’s Race to the Top program contains three key elements: The first is that teachers will be evaluated on how their pupils score on standardized tests, the second is that schools that continue to get low test scores will be closed and turned into charter schools or given to private management, and the third is in low performing schools, principles will be fired and all or half of the staff will be fired. There are certainly pros to this program; for example, teachers will have an increased focus on student success, as they will be held responsible for their students’ success. With any plan there are also cons and in Obama’s Race to the Top Plan, there are quite a few. As a result of evaluating teachers based on student test scores, there will be an increase in time and resources spent on raising standardized test scores. Therefore, the curriculum will continue to narrow even more than it did under George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Program, as a result of the link created between teacher wages and student scores. Furthermore, there will be less time available for the arts, as most arts classes do not have standardized test to evaluate student performance (Ravitch). According to Obama’s Race to the Top Program, teachers in subject areas and grade levels that do not have required state tests (music, art, and kindergarten through third grade) or do not have enough state tests to accurately measure student growth will become the state’s responsibility to create an alternative system of evaluating student growth