The Grade the Music Died: A Survival Analysis of Student Persistence in School Music Electives from 6th to 12th Grade

According to ample claims from music educators, persistence beyond a student’s initial enrollment in middle and high school music is a real problem in the U.S. (Kratus, 2007; Williams, 2007, 2011) and worldwide (Ng & Hartwig, 2011), making one-time enrollment metrics a misleading indicator of music’s popularity in schools. Additionally, various lines of evidence show that prolonged engagement with music is associated with positive developmental outcomes for adolescents (Elpus, 2013). My prior work (Tucker & Winsler, 2023) looking at persistence in music during the transition from 8th to 9th grade showed that only 1 in 4 students persist during the transition to high school, and high academic achievers and students with disabilities were less likely to drop out of music during this transition. While this work provided valuable insight into music persistence, exploring differences in rates and predictors of persistence over a much larger time scale is the next step in this line of research. The current dissertation built off prior work from the Miami School Readiness Project (MSRP; Alegrado, 2021; Alegrado & Winsler, 2020; Tucker & Winsler, 2023; Winsler et al., 2020) and prospectively followed an ethnically-diverse (62% Hispanic), low-income (78% in poverty) sample of adolescents from the beginning of middle school to the end of high school (6th–12th grade) to better understand persistence in school music electives (band, chorus, orchestra, guitar) across all of middle (n = 4,165 music students) and high school (n = 2,194 music students). Multiple discrete-time maximum-likelihood survival analysis models (Allison, 1982) were run to identify the proportion of students that dropped out of (“did not survive”) music each grade (e.g., 6th to 7th, 7th to 8th, etc.), and how particular factors (predictors of persistence; e.g., gender, ethnicity, poverty status, prior academic achievement, etc.) increased or decreased the probability of dropping out of music in each grade. Results confirm the concerns of many music educators, providing evidence of persistence problems throughout middle and high school with more students leaving music (as opposed to staying) at each grade transition. For students that began enrolling in music in 6th grade, 51% have dropped out of music by 7th grade, and 82% dropped out by 8th grade. As for students in high school (students in music in 9th grade, including late-joining music students that started enrolling in music after 6th grade), 57% of students drop out by 10th grade, 85% by 11th grade, and 95% drop out by 12th grade. High reading test scores and attending an arts-focused school were always related to reduced odds of dropping out of music in middle and high school, while gender, ethnicity, giftedness, and ELL status were never related to music dropout. Also, some predictors were important in some grades, but not others. High GPA was related to lower odds of dropout throughout middle school, and again in the last grade of high school, but GPA was unrelated to dropout in the first few grades of high school. Depth of family poverty was an indicator of increased odds of dropping out of music all the way through middle school but was unrelated to music dropout in high school. Students with disabilities were less likely to drop out of music their senior year, but disability status was not linked to dropout in any other grade. Moving to a new school was related to higher music dropout rates in every grade except for the final grade of high school. Additional survival analyses were run within each music subtype (band, chorus, orchestra, guitar), and results varied somewhat by music subtype. By better understanding which students and which grades present the biggest risk for no longer persisting in music in secondary school, scholars and educators alike will be able to utilize a more targeted approach to researching, and ultimately attempting to increase, student persistence in music across all of middle and high school.

Author

• Tucker, Tevis L.

• dropout
• music
• persistence
• retention
• survival analysis

Identifier

hdl:1920/13853

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:MARS:1920/13853