Excusing Elementary School Students from Regular Classroom Activities for the Study of Instrumental Music: The Effect on Sixth-Grade Reading, Language, and Mathematics Achievement

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to ascertain whether significant differences exist in sixth-grade reading, language, and mathematics achievement between students who are excused from regular classroom activities for the study of instrumental music and students not studying instrumental music. Four public school districts from a major metropolitan area were used in the study. The study employed a single-sample multivariate matched-pairs design. Hotelling's T2 for correlated samples was applied to the sixth-grade achievement data from the districts individually and computed with the Finn Multivariance program. Results from these analyses indicated that T2 was not significant at the .05 level in all four school districts. Therefore, it was concluded that there was no significant difference in sixth-grade reading, language, and mathematics achievement between students who are excused from regular classroom activities for the study of instrumental music and students not studying instrumental music.