Musicians have to think about the “big picture”. That is, how does the music program fit into the grand scheme of education. Musicians should develop long term goals for music education. Educational decision makers are implementing school reform and class size reduction, assessing student achievement. Musical school enrollment has increased now-a-days. Enrollment affects budgets as they affect the economy and legislation. When the economy is booming then the education also booms. One requiresremembering is the tax initiatives. There are many devastating effects of legislation on school music programs. Class size reduction was implemented in 20th century itself. There are two major problems for music school in implementing the class size reduction. They are lack of teachers and lack of classroom size. Class size reduction compels the administrators in the music school to move the instrumental music program outside the school. The number of portable classrooms is restricted by their size at those schools.

When class size reduction was implemented in the music schools, general music teachers lost classrooms immediately. Instrumental teachers also followed them. School-to-work programs have detrimental effects on school music programs. Music school reform leads to the block scheduling. Student achievement is quickly becoming the biggest issue in music school nationwide. The Academic Performance Index Report surveys about the student achievement in every music school. It also inquires about the growth targets of individual schools, and ranks every school in the state. As you can read on uponmusic.com - music schools that fail to meet their targets are considered as Underperforming schools or intervention schools. Schools that exceed their target will be rewarded for their achievement.

Music educators of underperforming schools will have to take drastic measures to improve the test scores of the large number of students from low socioeconomic and from minority groups. Teacher retirements and the lack of students in music school make the administrators in pursuing a music teacher. But there is a shortage of teacher in many parts of the world. These issues may alternatively affect music education. Music educators must start to develop measurable, long term goals and objectives for the music program that includes student achievement. They must research the benefits of music education for children. They should promote their goals, current research and music student achievement to music education. Music educators will improve the music schools at all levels and prepare the schools to be considered as Highly-performing music school.