Page 14 - North Star Magazine 2022

Exploring Inequality in Music Education: Underfunded, Underrepresented, and Unfair
by Summer Tierney
We, the kids of the Plattsburgh, NY school district, were all bright-eyed and excited when we finally got the chance to think about playing instruments for our school orchestra in 4th grade.
We sat on the chorus risers in the music room staring down at the instruments sprawled out on the floor: violin, viola, cello, and bass. The orchestra teacher demonstrated each, and we were mesmerized with the sound. We did not realize that those instruments in front
of us were just about the only functional school-issued instruments available, or that this was not just a commitment for us, but also a financial commitment for our parents. I was one of the lucky ones, being the one bassist chosen for this upcoming orchestra group, guaranteeing me a school-issued instrument. When the first day
of lessons started, the sheet on the classroom wall barely had any names on it. The number of kids participating dwindled from that year onward, in my own class and in upcoming classes, but why exactly? Is the Plattsburgh City School District’s (PCSD) music program too underfunded to get higher numbers of participation from the school population? Or perhaps, as Robert Putnam mentions in his book titled Our Kids, is there an underlying “pay-to- play” (Putnam 258) policy not explicitly stated that is turning lower- income kids away?
If I had had to rent or buy the bass I played throughout school, I would have not been able to participate in one of the
most important extracurriculars in my life. There is no question
that there have been many others who could not even participate at all, and the source of this unequal participation is income disparity. Participation in music, sports, clubs, or any other kinds of extracurricular activities have very advantageous benefits, especially for lower-income students. In Putnam’s Our Kids, he writes that
a study “showed that kids consistently involved in extracurricular activities were 70 percent more likely to go to college than kids who were only episodically involved— and roughly 400 percent more