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Improving Music Teacher Quality

147 Live Views 5 In Crowd Co-sponsored by Rhode Island College, Rhode Island Music Educators Association, and College Band Directors National Association.

All parents want great teachers for their children. Students want great teachers. Principals want their teachers to… Co-sponsored by Rhode Island College, Rhode Island Music Educators Association, and College Band Directors National Association.

All parents want great teachers for their children. Students want great teachers. Principals want their teachers to excel, and most teachers want to do their very best for their students. It all seems so simple. Both Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Rhode Island Commissioner of Education Deborah Gist have made teacher quality a priority in their administrations.

In fact, “teacher quality” is paradoxically among the most important and most difficult-to-define factors in education. This is especially true in the arts, where student learning can’t be assessed by easy-to-administer standardized tests, and where curricula vary widely from school to school.

In the second of an ongoing series of panel discussions about music education, four experts in education will convene in a live and online discussion about improving teacher quality in music education. The first event, “Whither School Bands: A Town Hall Meeting” took place on October 8, 2009. The topic for this second event comes directly from the discussion which took place then, as it was agreed that the chief factor in the success of any music program is the quality of the teacher standing in front of the students.

A panel of regional and national experts in education will convene in a “town hall meeting” format, responding to issues raised in the first discussion, as well as questions from a live audience and simultaneous webcast viewers. Audience members will include music teachers from public schools and higher education, music teacher preparation faculty from area institutions, public school music students, parents, and administrators. The panelists include nationally recognized experts from higher education, public school music education, and public school administration.

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