Education Through Music

In ETM’s model, all students, including those with special needs, have access to comprehensive, sequential, skills- and standards-based music instruction. We involve the full school community to build support for music as part of a well-rounded education.

The ETM model aims to promote growth and achievement in:
• Students’ motivation to learn and engage in school.
• Students’ social-emotional development.
• Music teachers’ abilities to deliver effective, meaningful instruction.
• Community and school support for music programs.
• Build schools’ capacity to sustain music as a core subject in the long-term.

ETM's ultimate goal is for schools to directly provide music education as a core subject to every student. We seek to have more and more teachers hired to school staff so that schools are no longer dependent on ETM and ETM's funders in order to provide services to students.

To sustain music programs at the individual school level, ETM forms close, collaborative relationships with partner school principals, so that they understand and value the program. Our ultimate long-term plan for each school is that they will hire sufficient music faculty to staff to provide in-school music instruction to all students without relying on externally funded staffing. As each school builds more program expenses into its own budget, the dependence on ETM's services and funders is decreased; ETM can then serve in an advisory capacity to these schools and devote the majority of our resources to building new partnerships and reaching additional children.

For each school, the transition from having no music program to building the capacity to support direct music education expenses is a long-term process. As such, ETM is committed to partnering with schools for several years and conducts ongoing fundraising to cover the costs that partner schools are not yet able to support.

ETM has over 30 years of experience working in close partnership with under-resourced schools to effect change through music education.

Internal strengths include staffing expertise and sound fiscal management. Our executive and program staff members have extensive experience teaching and working in under-resourced schools. We have a dedicated evaluation team, and work hard to stay aware of successes and challenges, to adapt and improve. We pay close attention to organizational structure and finances so that we can be productive and effective in both programmatic and non-programmatic areas.

External strengths include a network of partner school principals, and their supervisors at the district/network level, who aid one another in fighting to implement school-wide music education in the face of so many other demands.

We continue to reach out to build new networks of supporters in order to raise awareness of the importance of music education as a core subject for all students.

External evaluation in 2005-08 found ETM supports improvements in students' music skills, test performance and general development; music teachers' abilities as educators; and teachers' abilities to collaborate to support learning.

Findings from 2015 indicate students in ETM partner schools perform better academically than students in schools with similar demographics that do not have ETM. Participation in music class and performances contributed to creativity and to social and emotional capacities. The program encouraged motivation for school in general.

ETM's current evaluation is considering students’ sense of competence, autonomy, and relatedness for learning and engaging in music. Education research has established these as “active ingredients” in developing internalized motivation, which has been found to predict: persistence in learning despite challenges, achievement, and spillover effects into non-musical domains such as school engagement and social-emotional development.

Highlights from our recent Impact Report (released in 2019 and available at impact.etmonline.org) show that ETM is:
• Expanding music education for students least likely to have access: 40% of students at first-year ETM partner schools reported that they had never had a general music class prior to the current school year, and 54% of families of students at ETM partner schools reported they have had “hardly any” opportunities to get involved with music in their life.
• Sparking students’ passion for music: 83% of students across partner schools reported that they love singing or playing instruments, and 77% said they do their work in music class because they are motivated to learn new things.
• Providing professional development and mentoring activities that help music teachers be effective and avoid burnout: 80% of music teachers agreed that ETM has helped them become part of a community of peer teachers, and 96% agreed that their ETM mentor was timely and responsive to their needs.
• Helping build vibrant school communities: 88% of partner school principals rate ETM as “above average” or “excellent” at integrating the music program into their school culture, and 71% of music teachers agree that their school community collaborated to support their concerts.