What’s In A Grade? Some Thoughts On Music Assessment

I’ve always been intrigued by the prospect of a grading system applied to music.   Starting the saxophone in 5^th grade, I assume that my grade was based largely on attendance.   Then, in middle school and high school, I believe that the same criterion applied.  Our school did not have individual play tests, although I know of other schools that did.

Other grading systems were employed at the middle school and high school levels regarding solo & ensemble festivals.  There, we would receive a ranking of either “1,” “2,” or “3,” with “1” being the superior score.  Additionally, we would get a kind of report card where the judge would delineate both positive and negative areas in our playing.

By the time I got to university-level music studies, I was surprised once again to discover that my grades were largely contingent on participation.  That meant that, basically, as long as I showed up and played the part to the conductor’s satisfaction, I would receive an “A.”

 (Interestingly, I once missed a rehearsal, and somehow still managed to receive an “A”).

Why does this matter?  If nothing else, it belies the subjective nature of musical assessment.  Unlike math or science, with their binary criteria for adjudication (you either solve the problem correctly or you don’t; you either have the correct formula or you don’t), music is much harder to quantify.

Consider how that process would be determined.  If the student plays one wrong note, does that constitute an “A-“?  If s/he misses two notes, would s/he receive a “B”?  What about missed rhythms?  Is an incorrectly-played rhythm worth more than a missed note?

We discussed the issue of how best to grade musical skill and proficiency in my music education classes in college.  But, our discussions left me with more questions than answers.  I then deduced that even my professors did not have the answer to this question.

This point was made even more vivid for me in my student teaching assignment.  One day, the band director asked me to conduct a series of individual play tests of the various members of the concert band.  The members of each section were called in, one by one, to play the same passage from a piece that we were working on.

Without a set scale for assessing the students, and without having discussed how to judge them with the teacher beforehand, I arbitrarily based my grades on how well I felt each student performed the excerpt.

When it came time for a clarinetist to play the passage, he was visibly struggling with both the notes and the rhythms.  Based on his performance, I thought that his skills were not at a high school level.  Rather, they were so remedial that he appeared to me to be playing more at a beginning level as he was fumbling for fingerings.

Consequently, I gave him a poor grade.  (I forget the actual grade now, but I think that it was something like a “D” or “D-“).

I felt that this grade accurately reflected his lack of proficiency (or at least what I perceived to be his lack), particularly relative to other members of the clarinet section who could play the same passage flawlessly or close to it.

I subsequently found out from the band director that the student later went home and complained to his parents “See; I told you I couldn’t play!”  The band director later ended up changing the student’s mark to a passing grade. 

The band director and I had a brief discussion after this episode.  It was clear to me that he had wanted me to have the experience of grading the students this way so that I could better understand the nuances required in high school music assessment.

It was never my intention to make this boy feel that he was unable to play the clarinet.  However, I also felt at the time that it was unfair to the other clarinetists who played the passage near perfectly if I gave him the same grade that I had given them.

Suffice it to say that it was definitely a learning experience, albeit more so for me than for him.

This experience highlights another consideration in musical assessment: improvement.

After high school, where I was the first chair saxophonist who routinely received superior marks at our local solo & ensemble festivals, I found myself thrust into a totally different situation in college.  There, I was a small fish in a huge ocean surrounded by sharks. 

My peers in the saxophone studio had had very different musical experiences from mine.  Most had spent summers at band camps.  Some had studied abroad.  Some had studied with eminent college professors and professional saxophonists. Some already had undergraduate degrees and were pursuing graduate studies.

In this environment, I found myself quickly outclassed.   So, I focused self-improvement.  If I could play better by the end of the semester than I had at the beginning, that was a “win.”  I pushed myself further out of my comfort zone by performing 3 recitals over the course of 3 years, although my degree only required me to give one.  This was a huge success for me, especially as I had struggled for years with crippling performance anxiety.

I pushed myself further by taking private voice lessons, participating in a saxophone quartet, and developing proficiency on flute and clarinet so that I could start playing in pit orchestras for community theater work.  All of these things were above and beyond what was required by my degree.

And, somewhere in the process, I got better.  I became a better musician- more sensitive, technically more proficient, more skilled on more instruments.

It’s interesting to note that so far there has been no discussion of musical assessment taking into consideration the process of communicating, of conveying emotion that is essential to high-level musicmaking.

It would be simplistic and reductive to state that correct music performance involves only the accurate playing of notes and rhythms.

But, this other realm of music, beyond the note and rhythms, is perhaps the hardest to teach (and adjudicate) of all.  Call it the “spiritual realm.”  At the public school level, where students are still perfecting basic skills such as hand position, embouchure, fingering, and posture, as well as rudiments like intonation, dynamics, articulation, and rhythm, this “spiritual realm” of music often takes a backseat.  If it is addressed at all, it is usually as an afterthought.

I have to wonder, however, if by setting aside the process of emotional communication in music, we are not doing our students a disservice.  Certainly, all of the things listed above are necessary and of vital importance to accurate music making. 

However, why can’t we teach this “spiritual realm” of music making along with those skills?  Shouldn’t our students know from the beginning the ultimate goal of communicating the composer’s emotional intent to the listener?

Imagine an architect never sharing his design with the builders and contractors, so that they were only focused on individual bricks and mortar, nails and drywall, electrical circuits and pipes, without understanding how all of these things relate to the whole building?

And so, to return to our original question, what is the best way to assess musical proficiency?  Is it simply a matter of perfect attendance?  Is it playing all of the notes and rhythms of every piece correctly, in tune, with a good sound? Or is it simply a matter of whether the student demonstrated improvement over the course of the semester or school year? 

And for us as teachers, what is our ultimate goal?  Do we want all straight-A students?  Or, do we want to create better musicians?