- 1995 Ohio Study Finds Elementary
Pull-Out Instrumental Lessons Do Not
Harm Students' Academic Achievement
-
- "Pull-outs have become almost a nightmare for many
elementary
- school principals, who view the practice as a kind of
pernicious
- anemia that attacks whole-class instruction time. Once
pull-outs
- take hold in a school, there appears to be no end to them,
and no
- way to rid the instructional program of their debilitating
impact."
- - From "Pull-outs: How much do they erode whole-class
- teaching?" by F. English, appearing in Principal, May 1984,
p. 32.
-
- BACKGROUND
- Many school instrumental music programs remove students from
a
- regular classroom for individual or small-group
instrumental
- instruction. Often, this practice causes tension among
teachers and
- administrators. Many of those opposed to pull-out lessons
are
- concerned that students will fall behind in their
academic
- performance by missing classroom instruction time. In the
study
- described below, the test scores of students who leave
their
- classroom for thirty-minute string instrument lessons twice
each
- week are compared to the scores of students who remain in
the
- classroom.
-
- STUDY METHOD
- The authors studied the 1995 results of the Ohio Proficiency
Test
- (OPT) given to fourth-grade students in Hamilton, Ohio. To
make
- the comparison between string and non-string students as fair
as
- possible, the researchers looked at students' scores on a
previous
- standardized test, the Cognitive Abilities Test, or COGAT.
Each
- of the 148 fourth-grade string students was matched to a
non-string
- student who achieved the same verbal score on the COGAT.
This
- made a total of 296 students whose scores on the Ohio
Proficiency
- Test were analyzed, and the academic abilities of the
non-string
- students selected for the study matched the academic abilities
of
- the string students as closely as possible.
-
- RESULTS
- Listed below are the mean (average) Ohio Proficiency Test
scores
- for the students in this study:
-
- WRITING
- String Students: 5.05
- Non-String Students: 4.85
-
- READING
- String Students: 229.5
- Non-String Students: 223.2
-
- MATHEMATICS
- String Students: 214.8
- Non-String Students: 211.8
-
- CITIZENSHIP (Social Studies)
- String Students: 231.3
- Non-String Students: 224.8
-
-
- Listed below are the percentages of students in this study
achieving
- test scores at or above standard performance. The standard for
the
- 1995 Ohio Proficiency Test is 4.0 in reading and 200 in all
other
- areas.
-
- WRITING
- String students: 85%
- Non-string students: 85%
-
- READING
- String students: 89%
- Non-string students: 87%
-
- MATHEMATICS
- String students: 76%
- Non-string students: 65%
-
- CITIZENSHIP
- String students: 93%
- Non-string students: 87%
-
- AT STANDARD ON ALL SECTIONS OF THE TEST
- String students: 68%
- Non-string students: 58%
-
-
- CONCLUSIONS
- From the results of this study we can conclude that the
string
- students did not suffer negative academic effects when
compared
- to students of similar academic capability who remained in
the
- classroom. We can also conclude that the overall Ohio
- Proficiency Test performance of the students who participated
in
- string pull-out lessons was better than the performance of
the
- students of similar ability who did not participate in the
string
- program.
-
- The results of this study seem to indicate that students who
study
- instruments in a small-group or individual setting actually
improve
- their academic abilities, however this study was not designed
to
- document improvement, and further study is needed before
- drawing this conclusion.
-
- The author of the Ohio report offers this analysis of what
takes place
- during pull-out string instruction:
-
- "When string students are excused from their classrooms for
string
- class, they are not leaving instruction. They are moving to
another
- classroom in a different area of the building. The concepts
taught
- in string [lessons] go far beyond pitch and rhythm.
For example, a
- student must understand fractions and their relationships to
each
- other in order to manipulate rhythm. The student who has
trouble
- understanding the abstract concept that a half is twice one
quarter
- may comprehend the concrete example of his or her bow
moving
- twice as far on half notes as quarter notes. The musician
reads
- abstract concepts from the page and then translates them
into
- concrete phenomena that involve time and space."
-
- Source:
- http://www.menc.org/publication/articles/academic/wallick.htm
-
-
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