It’s time to go to the fields

            What does it mean to say a school is making “adequate yearly progress”? What is the value of a standardized test that produces an aggregate score for a group of students in one school and has it compared in the local newspaper against scores from another? How does student performance on a standardized exam relate to future vocational aspirations? […]

Instrumental Music Education of the Future

In considering what instrumental music education may look like in the future to the music education profession, there are a number of themes, ideas, and philosophies that must be carefully examined.  Issues related to the relevancy of music education in today’s education system come to the forefront of the discussion in the light of teaching in age where “high-stakes” testing […]

Let’s start by asking better questions…

I am not one to make a new year’s resolution – the idea of self-regulation only once every 365 days is somewhat unsettling.  If you think that needs to happen only once every 8,760 hours, you might have some personal issues that no amount of blogging can ever fix – sorry to drop the hammer, just a personal view. That […]

Sticking the landing after the big leap…

Four very short weeks ago, the band program at Mercer took a big leap as we started our year with a unit on chamber music that culminated in our Fall Chamber Recital.  Over twenty different selections were presented in the recital ranging from Handel, Haydn, and Mozart to Sousa, and John Williams.  You can read a full copy of the […]

Get Adobe Flash player