Can studying music help students to achieve college- and career-ready goals? That was the case for Fatima Salcido, a student at Tulane University, and Christian Martinez, a high school junior who is earning college credits from Los Angeles City College. For both Fatima and Christian, the Harmony Project, a nonprofit instrumental music program in Los Angeles, provided them not only music instruction, but skills that helped them succeed in academic areas like reading.
Researchers at Northwestern University are conducting studies of the impact of music education on child and adolescent brain development, focusing on students participating in both the Harmony Project and public charter schools in Chicago. They are looking at how music education affects learning and communication skills, and exploring the possibility that music can positively affect the academic achievement gap between groups of students.
On Thursday, July 25th at 3:30 p.m., representatives of the Harmony Project and the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University will join staff from ED’s Office of Innovation and Improvement and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in a webinar to share their findings to date and plans for future research. The webinar is part of a series sponsored by the NEA’s Federal Interagency Task Force on the Arts and Human Development.
Click here to read more about Fatima and Christian, the Harmony Project, the unfolding research, and to register for the webinar.
