THE NEW JERSEY MUSIC EDUCATORS ASSOCIATION a federated state association of NATIONAL ASSOCIATION for MUSIC EDUCATION News From Our Board of Directors
Administration Dennis H. Argul
dennisargul@gmail.com
I have been working with Robert Hamm, K-12 Supervisor, Arts Education & Library for the East Windsor Public Schools for a number of years as members of both NJMEA and NJMAA. Robert and I are
members of the IDEA committee which was formed under Jeff Santoro’s tenure as President of NJMEA and continued now with Patrick O’Keefe as a part of the Strategic Plan for NJMEA. Robert has done an incredible job of collecting important information to guide us all in our next steps as we address the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access challenges in our state.
Tell me about your journey in music education? How did you end up as a Supervisor? Music has always been “home” for me, and it was always my desire to help build “musical homes” for students. After teaching Band
and Elementary General Music for 11 years, I earned my administrative credentials and was hired in Neptune Township School District as the Supervisor for the Arts, then moved to my current position, East Windsor Regional School District, again as Supervisor for Arts Education. I’ve been an administrator for the past 7 years.
How did you become interested in this IDEA data collection? As an administrator, I’ve developed a passion for tracking student participation, and how it impacts the overall program (special
thank you to Mr. Rusty Palmer, Band Director, friend, colleague from NTSD). Initially the committee focused on review of the performance literature. I started working on that piece first. After we saw the outcome, we felt we needed to dive deeper into actual student participation. We determined that even though we would not be able to have actual student demographics, having an established estimate, based on the demographics of the districts represented in the All-State or Region Ensembles, painted a picture of student participation over the past 10 years.
Tell us a little bit about the project The NJMEA IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Access) reviewed the following data sources to create a baseline to inform decision
making. These sources included All State Performance literature from 2009 to 2020, Non-Traditional Ensemble participation, review of All State and Region student participation from 2009 to 2020, and Music Teacher distribution.
How did you go about collecting and putting together the information? We reached out to the NJMEA ensemble chairs, and Region Boards, requesting student participation and audition information from 2009 to 2020 (pre-COVID). We also reviewed past programs, researching background information of various composers, used publicly available District demographic information from the DOE, NJMEA membership data, and made an OPRA request for the total number of Music teachers in various districts.
What directed your focus? The focus was developing as complete of a picture as possible, using the available information. We looked to see how the demographics
of represented districts impacted the estimated demographics of student participants. The focus was creating a valid “equity lens” to see where areas are that we can improve our outreach. The question being, how reflective are estimated participant demographics, when compared to state-wide and region overall student population demographics. We looked at the four largest racial demographics: White, Black, Hispanic, Asian; and students considered Economically Disadvantaged, as determined by Federal Free or Reduced Lunch eligibility.
TEMPO 10 MAY 2021
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