Benefits of Music Education (Statistics Infographic)

The value of the arts and music education is clearly seen in both the public and private sector. Learning about music and playing an instrument has not only been shown to be vitality important to kids and younger students, but also to college students, graduates, and older adults. And what a lot of people don't realize is that participation in the arts, particularly music education, is growing both in the public and the private sector.

In our context, the advancement of online guitar lesson programs has been a major part of that movement.

I put this infographic together to display primarily two things:

1. The value of music education
2. Growth and participation data of music education programs

Feel free to share this infographic via the buttons below, or to use the embed code (beneath the infographic) to add it to your website. I only ask that you link back to either this page or the Guitar Chalk home page to credit the work.

Feel free to share but please credit:

4 Noteable Music Education Statistics from the Infographic

Here are some of the benefits of music education that I've highlighted from the above infographic. 

1. 69,390,000 American Households Have at Least One Instrument Playing Member

Of the roughly 128,000,000 households in the United States, 54% of them have at least one member that plays a musical instrument, putting that number around 69.4 million households. 

2. Infants Understand Music Before they Understand Words

Infants pickup on basic melodies before they can understand words, allowing them to mimic sounds and even tunes before they learn to talk.

3. 21% Higher Graduation Rate

Students attending high schools with a music education program are 21% more likely to graduate than students attending a high school without a music program.

4. Participation Rate by Gender Favors Girls

In high school, girls are 15% more likely to participate in a music program than boys.

Sources and Works Cited

• Schools with music education programs have an estimated 90.2% attendance rate
• Schools with music education programs have an estimated 93.9% graduation rate
• Schools without music education average 72.9% graduation
• Schools without music education average 84.9% attendance
• Music majors are the most likely group of college grads to be admitted to medical school. ~ Lewis Thomas, Case for Music in the Schools, Phi Delta Kappa
• Students who participate in school band or orchestra have the lowest levels of current and lifelong use of alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs among any group in our society. ~ H. Con. Res. 266, United States Senate
• High school music students have been shown to hold higher grade point averages (GPA) than non-musicians in the same school. ~ National Educational Longitudinal Study
• 78% of Americans feel learning a musical instrument helps students perform better in other subjects. ~ Gallup Poll, “American Attitudes Toward Music,”
• Nine out of ten adults and teenagers who play instruments agree that music making brings the family closer together. ~ Music Making and Our Schools, American Music Conference
• 71% of Americans surveyed by the Gallup Poll believe that teenagers who play an instrument are less likely to have disciplinary problems. ~ Gallup Poll, “American Attitudes Toward Music,”
• A study of 7,500 university students revealed that music majors scored the highest reading scores among all majors including English, biology, chemistry and math. ~ The Case for Music in the Schools, Phi Delta Kappa
• Students who were exposed to music-based lessons scored a full 100% higher on fractions tests than those who learned in the conventional manner. ~ Neurological Research and Music Education Statistics
• The schools that produced the highest academic achievement in the United States today are spending 20% to 30% of the day on the arts, with special emphasis on music. ~ International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement
• 95% of Americans in aGallup Poll believe that music is a key component in a child’s well-rounded education; three quarters of those surveyed feel that schools should mandate music education. ~ Gallup Poll, “American Attitudes Toward Music
• Nearly 100% of past winners in the prestigious Siemens Westinghouse Competition in Math, Science and Technology (for high school students) play one or more musical instruments. This led the Siemens Foundation to host a recital at Carnegie Hall in 2004, featuring some of these young people, after which a panel of experts debated the nature of the apparent science/music link. The Midland Chemist (American Chemical Society) Vol. 42, No.1, Feb. 2005
• Cognitive and neural benefits of musical experience continue throughout the lifespan, and counteract some of the negative effects of aging, such as memory and hearing difficulties in older adults. Parbery-Clark A, A.S., Kraus N. , Musical Experience and Hearing Loss: Perceptual, Cognitive and Neural Benefits. , in Association for Research in Otolaryngology Symposium. 2014: San Diego, CA.
• Research reveals strong connections between rhythm skills and pre-reading abilities in toddlers, Woodruff Carr K, W.-S.T., Tierney A, Strait D, Kraus N. , Beat synchronization and speech encoding in preschoolers: A neural synchrony framework for language development. , in Association for Research in Otolaryngology Symposium. 2014: San Diego, CA.
• Infants recognize the melody of a song long before they understand the words. They often try to mimic sounds and start moving to the music as soon as they are physically able. © 2015 Program for Early Parent Support (PEPS), a 501(C)(3) nonprofit organization
• Students who take music in middle school score signifcantly higher on algebra assignments in 9th grade than their non-music counterparts. Helmrich. B. H. (2010). Window of opportunity? Adolescence, music, and algebra. Journal of Adolescent Research. 25 (4). - See more at: http://www.artsedsearch.org/summaries/window-ofopportunity-adolescence-music-andalgebra#sthash.BvS0RoHP.dpuf

• Participation data: https://www.childtrends.org/indicators/performing-arts

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5618809/

• https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0027432117719462

Related Articles