[CALIBK12] [CSLA Research Update] Music (and reading) Study and Analysis

[Lesley Farmer]

Stephen Krashen writes:According to a recent column in Science
Daily, "A new study in the journal Social Science Quarterly reveals
that music participation, defined as music lessons taken in or out of
school and parents attending concerts with their children, has a
positive effect on reading and mathematic achievement in early
childhood and adolescence."This kind of announcement deserves a close
look at the actual data. As usual, the cheerful announcement of the
benefits of music was not quite accurate, and some very important
results were not mentioned.Fortunately, the analysis was multivariate,
which means that important factors such as socio-economic status were
controlled. Unfortunately, it is difficult to quantity the impact of
all the predictors, as many were simply coded as "present" or "absent"
(score of 1 or zero), so my statements about strong and weak effects
are somewhat imprecise.Music lessons outside of school, it turns out,
had no impact on math scores, and was actually negatively correlated
with children's reading scores. It had a small positive effect on
adolescents' reading scores.Music courses taken between grades eight
and ten had a small positive effect on adolescents test scores.Music
participation in school (at least once a week) had a modest effect on
both reading and math for children, and a much weaker effect for
adolescents in reading and was not significant for adolescents in
reading.Parents attending concerts had no effect on reading at all, no
effect on adolescent math scores and a weak positive effect for
children and math. It is also not clear from the paper what this
variable means, whether it means attending concerts with or without
their children, or concerts in which children are performing.In other
words, not all these predictors counted. More important, those that
counted were not very strong.The most dramatic case is adolescent
reading: Adolescents who do music both inside and outside of school are
predicted to score 1.32 points higher in reading. In contrast, the
study also reports that having more than 50 books in the home, and
higher socioeconomic status predicts a score of nearly seven points
higher (6.97). Higher socio-economic status, as has been pointed out,
means, among other things, more books available in the community and at
school, as well as at home. A reasonable interpretation is that access
to books is a much stronger factor that music.I wonder if some people
will conclude from the Science Daily summary that music classes are all
we need: Since we have music, we don't need to worry about school
library quality. There are plenty of good reasons to include music in
the school curriculum, but ironically the article provides more
evidence for supporting libraries than for music when it comes to
reading as well as math.Southgate, D. and Roseigno, V. 2009. The Impact
of Music on Childhood and Adolescent Achievement. Social Science
Quarterly 90,
1:4-21.http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/117976158/home?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0Adolescents
Involved With Music Do Better In School. (2009).
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090210110043.htm

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Posted By Lesley Farmer to CSLA Research Update at 2/15/2009 12:10:00 PM
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