MUSIC ADVOCACY: Caring Enough to Put the Student First
June 29, 2005
The Danger of Public Opinion Surveys
One of the most difficult situations for any school board or administration is attempting to preserve a quality educational environment in the presence of a financial crisis. Regardless of the cause of the situation, those in charge of the decision-making process face a variety of crucial issues from loss of staff to decline in public support and educational programming.
In order to assist them in moving forward a district will often develop a public survey to assess community opinion regarding educational values. Survey results may be used to justify referendums to increase funding, justify educational reform, or on occasion to justify the development of a new program that may be a "pet project" of a particular individual or special interest group.
The same data may also be used to determine priorities for the elimination of programs.If a levy referendum increase is voted down, the "no" vote may be interpreted as a "mandate" from the community to eliminate perceived low priority programs.In other cases, I have seen administrators attempt use the same survey data to justify their recommended "cuts" whether the data justified the decision or not.Two districts are included below as examples.
District #1:
·11,000-12,000 students
·District facing an $8 million budget deficit
·Failure to pass a levy referendum would require the district to eliminate 150 of the 750 teachers in the district
The district sent a public opinion survey to 60,000 residences that included all staff and employees. The survey listed 200 programs for evaluation in three categories:
Category A:Programs most important to retain
Category B:Cut these programs first
Category C:Save these programs if you can
When the voters turned down the levy referendum the district interpreted the rejection as a voter mandate to adopt cuts based on survey results.Consequently, the administration proposed and the board approved a 70% reduction in orchestra staff and a 48% reduction in band staff.Among other negative results this would have eliminate the entire elementary instrumental curriculum.
Upon closer scrutiny the parents committee to save the music program made some interesting discoveries.Out of 60,000 surveys, only 211 surveys were completed and returned to the district, rendering survey results invalid.Because of the invalid results, no one in the district bothered to collate the actual results of the survey.The parents did, and here is what they found.
Of the 200 curricular areas listed in the survey.Ten components of the music curriculum were included.They are listed below with their ranking and percentile as "most important to retain" according to the survey results.
Music Rankings in Category A: Most Important to Retain
(out of 200 programs listed)
MusicProgram
Category Ranks as Most Important to Retain
Percentile Rank as Most Important to retain
Music: Secondary Schools
37
82
Summer School Music
38
81
Music: Elementary
50
75
Music: Co-curricular, JHS
62
69
Music: Co-curricular, SHS
65
68
Elementary Instrumental Music
71
65
Music Curriculum
80
60
Music Instrument repair
88
56
District String Program
110
45
Analysis of survey results completed by the parents provided evidence that…
…music was viewed as of equal importance to other curricular and co-curricular subject;
… music as a curricular entity was out-ranked only by the traditional "three R's," and federal/state mandated programs;
…music out-ranked all (non-music) extra-curricular activities as "most important to retain; and,
…that the administration had completely discounted the survey results, except to use it to justify the recommendation they had planned on making throughout the entire process.
District #2:
·9,000-10,000 students
·Facing a budget deficit of $4 million
·District appears on the "Best 100 Music Communities in America" list.(78% of the students in grade 5 participate in band or orchestra)
Faced with a major budget deficit, the district developed a survey to determine which programs were of highest priority in the community.The survey was conducted by the district administration in live public meetings. It is unclear how many individuals participated.Results of that survey were published and made available to the community as summarized below.
Program-Related Questions
Eight questions were included in the survey to explore voter reaction to a number of the district's programs and offerings.Six program areas were presented to those interviewed after the following introduction:"In order to maintain a balanced budget, the School Board may be forced to make a number of changes in the programs offered to local students.I am going to read to you a list of programs now offered.For each please tell me if you believe the program is extremely important, very important, somewhat important, somewhat unimportant, or very unimportant for our students."The responses to the questions that followed can be ranked by a mean score again by assigning a number to each response.In this case, extremely important is assigned to the number 1 and very unimportant is assigned to 5.Therefore, the closer the mean is to 1 the more important the program area is in the minds of the local voters.Ranked in this way, the music program can be identified as the most important program among those presented in the survey.76.2% said that having a music program for local students was extremely or very important.
Voters in the district believe it is extremely or very important that the district provides a program that is more comprehensive and effective than the program funded by the state.Reminding voters of the tax implications of this belief reduced the number saying it is extremely or very important to 75.8%--still a significant majority."
In spite of the survey results indicating that the community valued music above all other areas considered, the list of proposed cuts developed by the administration included the elimination of the entire elementary instrumental curriculum and enough other music cuts to exceed the total $4 million deficit.It became evident that district had developed its own list of priorities for cuts that included only the six programs included in their survey.
* * * * *
I am pleased to tell you that in both cases the community music coalitions united to confront the district on their fallacious interpretation of the survey results and the negative impacts their recommendations would have to the music program and the entire educational system.Both programs were completely restored.No components of the music curriculum were eliminated, and all teaching positions in music were retained.
A couple of suggestions:(1)Do everything you can to keep the music curriculum of this type of survey; and, (2) make sure that you have an independent analysis done of survey results if your district develops one.
