Learning Loss Remedy: study showing Music Education benefits published in 2020

#57 Early shelter-in-place orders catalyzed parents to demand long-desired reform in reading instruction. What's to be done about math?

Jul 28, 2023

Singer, composer and bass player Carmen Caruso leads her band Agouti through the “D.I.Y. psych-rock” movement in San Francisco.

Contents:

Music Education
4-11: Long COVID’s Four Types Caused by 11 Likely Mechanisms
Healthtech & Nurse-to-Patient Ratios
Economy
Summer COVID Uptick
Infodemic
Investigations

‘Spurious’ Correlations: Even though he teaches Music Education at University of Kansas, Martin Bergee was so skeptical of the hyped correlation between music education and achievement in math and reading, he took ten years to disprove it once grant money became available for such an in-depth study. Controlling for fifteen to twenty variables including sex, ethnicity, urbanicity, parent education level, and testing 1,000+ students in standardized Music Achievement Tests MAT-1 and MAT-2, Bergee and his co-author lined those results alongside the students’ math & reading scores.¹ To their surprise they found an even stronger music-math performance correlation than the hype suggested.

Their study is titled “Multilevel Models of the Relationship Between Music Achievement and Reading and Math Achievement” and it published in the Journal of Research in Music Education at the end of 2020, just as healthcare workers jumped to the front of the line to get their COVID vaccines.

One would have to be living under a rock to not have heard about pandemic-induced learning loss, evidenced by falling test scores in reading and math.

But the nations’ reading instruction, ironically, is undergoing a long-desired correction precisely because of early COVID shelter-in-place directives.

Parents eavesdropping on Zoom class discovered faulty instruction materials that swept the nation beginning in the 1990s actively discouraged young readers from sounding out words using phonics, and steered them to instead guess words based on context, story illustrations, or the first letter of a word. Education reporter Emily Hanford found the first-letter-guess method carries grave consequences and needs to be consciously unlearned for literacy to take root. Students must unlearn the technique because guessing precludes reading. “A middle school teacher gave me the example of a kid who thought that in 1939 Poland invited the Germans into their country. That’s a lot different from what really happened. The Germans invaded Poland.”²

Hanford had been reporting this phenomenon for three years when early COVID shutdowns brought more parents a close-up view of their children’s education progress, which schools had assured them was on track. “Schools think they’re teaching kids to read,” Hanford said. Those parents then searched the internet for answers to the incongruity, finding Hanford’s “Sold a Story” reporting for American Public Media [link→]. They shared her multi-episode podcast, which she updated using their responses. Now “The Right to Read” documentary produced by LeVar Burton is traveling the film festival circuit, and bipartisan efforts in multiple state legislatures are moving to ban – yes, ban – the guess-instead-of-read method instruction. The faulty reading instruction technique stemmed largely from one publisher named Heineman, which produces textbook materials.³ The reform is messy and Hanford’s still reporting on the fallout.

But long-awaited movement on the reading front opens space to ask: what about math? Reports show a decline in standardized test scores that started in 2012 worsened since COVID started, widening the gap between rich and poor students.

What Bergee surmised after the surprising results of his ten-year study on music education’s correlation to math and reading scores is that learning might be less modular than we’ve long assumed. People in his field distinguish between domain-specific centers of the mind and domain-general centers of the mind. His music education colleagues through the 2010’s have been conducting studies on why and how music programs get cut during budget negotiations under these assumptions only recently realized in hard data. Bergee told the Topeka Capital-Journal: “In other words, learning is a completely interrelated phenomenon,” he said. “It’s hard to separate, it’s not modular. Take music out of the learning environment, and everything suffers. The whole learning process suffers.”⁴

Congress directed school districts to spend most of the $190 billion in COVID education relief money by September 2023 and September 2024, and 20% must be explicitly spent on learning-loss remedies.⁵ The education tech industry is primed, ready and willing to accept those funds in exchange for their software and tech products. Private venture capital increased three-fold their investments in education software startup companies, from $5 billion to nearly $17 billion between 2019 and 2021.⁶

Across three days in June, The International Society for Technology in Education filled the Philadelphia Convention Center for a tradeshow to market their software to school administrators. But no news yet has surfaced of a parallel conference, to market the findings of studies like Bergee’s, or to present music educators, music education nonprofits and instrument drives to district administrators and school boards.

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Music Education

Jul 21 Popularity of homeschooling in Georgia continues to soar post-pandemic (WXIA-TV NBC 11 Atlanta GA) - “The Georgia Department of Education reports about 59,000 homeschoolers in the state in 2015, and by 2022, that number jumped to 91,000.”

Mar 1950 Child's Music Bill of Rights (National Association of Music Education) - “7. As their right, all children must have the opportunity to grow in music knowledge, skills, and appreciation so as to bring joy and satisfaction to their lives, challenge their minds, stimulate their imaginations, and exalt their spirits.”

Nov 2020 Study shows strong links between music and math, reading achievement (Science Daily) - “Music educator Martin J. Bergee thought that if he could just control his study for the myriad factors that might have influenced previous ones -- race, income, education, etc. -- he could disprove the notion of a link between students' musical and mathematical achievement. Nope. His new study, ’Multilevel Models of the Relationship Between Music Achievement and Reading and Math Achievement,’ published in the Journal of Research in Music Education, showed statistically significant associations between the two at both the individual and the school-district levels.”

Jul 07 Opinion: A surge in absentee students might require a radical rethink of schools (Washington Post) - “All this strikes at the core of the challenge: Children need to want to go to school. Chronic absenteeism, in many cases, results from logistical challenges: bus routes that bypass some students houses; walking routes through unsafe streets; poverty or homelessness or, in a surprising number of cases, asthma. Add to these the emotional reasons that kids are wary of venturing into the classroom bullying, along with hopelessness about ever catching up after covid quarantine.“

Jul 05 City students lack access to instrumental music instruction | READER COMMENTARY (Baltimore Sun) - “Recently, The Baltimore Sun featured a story about commendable efforts being made by area organizations to address inequities regarding opportunities in classical music (Change of tune, June 24).” However “in Baltimore, only about 15% of students have an opportunity to participate in either band or string instrument programs. The inequity of opportunity both within Baltimore City Public Schools and between it and every other school district is glaring.”

Jul 10 Music education for every child in Detroit Q&A with Damien Crutcher: Nonprofit Journal Project (Model D Media Magazine) - “My music education workgroup has teachers, principals, retired superintendents, artists, city leaders, civic-minded people. Crescendo Detroit is represented, Detroit Public Schools is represented by administration and teachers, charter schools, churches, other nonprofits like Sphinx, Seven Mile Music, Interlochen, Blue Lake, MSU Community Music School, Motown. They've been meeting with me for the last two years to make it come to life.”

Jul 07 Award winning guitarist G.E. Smith performing to help Belchertown Music Boosters (WWLP NBC 2 Springfield MA) - “I think it gives a lot of kids an outlet to a creative side that they wouldn't necessarily get in mainstream academia, but it's also one of the first programs to get cut in the budget. I'm very excited because as Sara said, if a kid gets to play an instrument, it helps them I think open up to possibilities of other things, too. I started playing when I was real little, but I was really shy about it. When I did get to play with other people it helped me socially.”

Jun 23 Sonoma schools will have less music education next year. Here’s why. (Sonoma Index-Tribune) - “My feedback from the administration at the high school is that I need to be recruiting more (students) to get my numbers up, even though the number for all of my classes' sign ups are bigger than the current enrollment, Fitch said. You're telling me that I need to get more kids in, well more kids signed up.”

Jul 21 Bootsy Collins On Music Education, Music Will And Modern Band Summit Keynote (Forbes) - Music Will is a 501(c)(3) that offers musical instruments, develops diverse music curriculum and provides training to teachers. Delivering a keynote address last week at the organization’s annual Modern Band Summit, bassist, songwriter and producer Bootsy Collins stressed the importance of music during uncertain times. He looks back and feels good about “keeping hope alive” and entertaining people, now that he no longer can. Collins said “I needed special attention. I needed something that I really liked to draw me into doing other stuff that I didn’t like so much, say science or history or all of that. That was alright. But my music class? Nothing topped that.”

4-11: Long COVID’s Four Types Caused by 11 Likely Mechanisms

A rigorous article in the journal Nature titled “Immunology of Long COVID” advances the story by itemizing the different stratifications of long COVID–one study found four subtypes, another found six, a third reduced the variety to 11–scoring systems all based on patient symptoms. The article then kicks into gear by describing the 11 likely mechanisms causing said symptoms. This moves the conversation a step closer to articulating better clinical trial boundaries for therapeutics to relieve these debilitations. Until these types and mechanisms are distinguished and circulated enough to identify consensus, funding for both treatment and research will, rightfully, be stalled. As the report’s authors concluded: “The oncoming burden of long COVID faced by patients, health-care providers, governments and economies is so large as to be unfathomable, which is possibly why minimal high-level planning is currently allocated to it.”

Jul 11 The immunology of long COVID (Nature) - “Thus, the current picture is one of convergence towards a map of an immunopathogenic aetiology of long COVID, though as yet with insufficient data for a mechanistic synthesis or to fully inform therapeutic pathways.” “The key point has been that, even with vaccination and milder presentations of acute infection across recent variant waves, the cumulative burden of long COVID has continued to rise (Fig. 1).” “However, it is invidious at this stage to attempt any mechanistic synthesis that could draw the connecting lines between those parts of the picture that seem to be largely agreed: infection by SARS-CoV-2 leaves a lasting imprinting of variably apparent, radiologically detectable end-organ damage, including in the CNS, as well as immune subset perturbations, enhanced cytokine levels, including CCL11, and a range of pathologies relating to coagulopathy.” ... “Interestingly, none of the trials listed addresses two disease axes for which some of the most exciting data are accruing — the possibility of ameliorating any effects on neurocognitive function by targeting [antibody] CCL11 or that of inhibiting [Epstein–Barr virus] EBV reactivation through therapeutic vaccination or antivirals.”

Nov 2022 Study Identifies Four Major Subtypes of Long COVID (Weill Cornell Medicine) - “The post-COVID syndrome known as long COVID has four major subtypes defined by different clusters of symptoms, according to a study led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine. The study, published Dec. 1 in Nature Medicine, was the largest of its kind to examine long COVID.”

Dec 2022 Generalisable long COVID subtypes: findings from the NIH N3C and RECOVER programmes (The Lancet's eBioMedicine) - “We found six clusters of PASC patients, each with distinct profiles of phenotypic abnormalities, including clusters with distinct pulmonary, neuropsychiatric, and cardiovascular abnormalities, and a cluster associated with broad, severe manifestations and increased mortality.”

Jun 2022 A core outcome set for post-COVID-19 condition in adults for use in clinical practice and research: an international Delphi consensus study (The Lancet's Respiratory Medicine) - After the authors' international consensus study, "eleven outcomes achieved consensus for inclusion in the final [core outcome set] COS: fatigue; pain; post-exertion symptoms; work or occupational and study changes; survival; and functioning, symptoms, and conditions for each of cardiovascular, respiratory, nervous system, cognitive, mental health, and physical outcomes."

Healthtech & Nurse-to-Patient Ratios

Jul 09 EHRs negatively affect wellbeing of healthcare teams, study finds (Healthcare Finance News) - “Electronic health records are the dominant form of communication among healthcare teams, but while a JAMA Network Open study found that they do facilitate straightforward, task-related communication, they limit ‘rich and social’ communication. In other words, EHRs have a negative effect on team function and team wellbeing, according to authors. …This is relevant, because not only do team function and communication play a role in clinician wellbeing, but these dimensions of organizational behavior also affect institutions' financial, clinical and operational performance.”

Jun 30 Death by Patient Portal (JAMA Network) - “The world was returning to normal. But there was that patient portal! Like most physicians, I was getting many more messages than I had before the pandemic and was spending multiple hours a day answering them. I told my husband that I could fill my entire day just responding to patient messages and never actually examine anyone.”

Jul 07 What are your thoughts about AI? (Medical Economics) - “Stories about artificial intelligence (AI) have been everywhere in the news recently. And while it’s still early days, many doctors are already feeling AIs impact. With that in mind, we want to know what our readers think about AI, its potential, and how it has affected your practice. Please let us know by taking our brief survey . We will report the results in a future issue. Thank you.”

Jul 19 EHR vendor NextGen Healthcare paying $31 million in False Claims Act settlement (Healthcare Finance News) - “NextGen Healthcare has agreed to pay $31 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by misrepresenting the capabilities of certain versions of its EHR software, and providing unlawful payment to its users to induce them to recommend NextGen's software, according to the Department of Justice.”

Jul 08 Google’s medical AI chatbot is already being tested in hospitals | The Mayo Clinic has reportedly been testing the system since April. (The Verge) - “According to Google senior research director Greg Corrado, WSJ says, Med-PaLM 2 is still in its early stages. Corrado said that while he wouldn’t want it to be a part of his own family’s healthcare journey, he believes Med-PaLM 2 takes the places in healthcare where AI can be beneficial and expands them by 10-fold.”

Jul 11 Penn Medicine CEO supports staffing minimums for nurses, breaking with his peers (Philadelphia Inquirer) - “Penn Medicine CEO Kevin Mahoney supports a bill that would impose nurse staffing minimums on Pennsylvania hospitals, while nurse leaders of nearly every other health system in the Philadelphia area have signed a letter in opposition. If enacted, the Patient Safety Act would make Pennsylvania one of the first states in the nation with a law detailing nurse staffing standards.”

Jun 28 Pennsylvania House approves bill to require nurse staffing minimums in hospitals (Philadelphia Inquirer) - “Nurses’ unions have advocated for the measure, which many hospital systems and trade groups oppose. Critics say the requirements are unrealistic and may force rural and small hospitals to reduce services or even close.”

Jun 22 Would mandating nurse-to-patient ratios make Michigan hospitals safer? (Michigan Radio) - “Nurses are taking care of more patients than they have been in recent years: on a med-surg [general inpatient] unit, they are taking care of up to eight patients, when it should be no more than four. And 42% of nurses have said that they know of a patient death due to understaffing in the last year,” said Michigan Nurses Association president Jamie Brown. She was citing an MNA poll of 400 state nurses.

🗄️ Oct 2021 Hospitals in Crisis: Why Nurses Are Burned Out and Quitting (Amanpour and Company) - The contract travel nurse interviewed reported she makes ten times the income of her staff nurse friend who also was interviewed. The staff nurse had become so demoralized she left the profession.

Economy

Jul 21 37% of applicants ineligible for Medicaid in Wisconsin's first renewals since COVID-19 pandemic (Wisconsin State Journal) - “Of about 99,000 Wisconsin residents asked to renew their Medicaid eligibility last month, 61,000 started the process, with nearly half of them keeping coverage and 37% found to be ineligible, state health officials said Thursday.”

Jul 21Widespread budget cuts at the CDC are affecting Philly. Health officials worry about future reductions. (Philadelphia Inquirer) - “Mark ONeill, spokesperson for the state health department, said in a statement that $4 million in federal funding that had been set to go toward modernizing the state’s data tracking on immunizations was cut.”

Jul 21 'Barbie' and 'Oppenheimer' send fans back to theaters as industry bounces back from Covid (WJBK FOX 2 Detroit) - Movie Theater Emagine's President, Paul Glantz, said it was a very rough couple of years for the industry as a whole but things are starting to turn around. "Covid was Gruesome for movie theaters," Glantz said.

Jul 23 It’s Taylor Swift’s Economy, and We’re All Living in It | Swifties flocking to Eras Tour cities are filling hotels and crowding restaurants; the Fed has noticed, too (Wall Street Journal) - “It felt like 2019 again in Las Vegas when Swift performed there in March. The tourism authority in Vegas credited the superstar’s concerts with boosting visitor numbers to nearly prepandemic levels. The tour also got a shout out from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, which said May was the city’s strongest month for hotel revenue since the onset of the pandemic largely due to the Eras Tour. Chicago and Minneapolis broke all-time records for the number of hotel rooms occupied while Swift performed there.”

Summer COVID Uptick

Jul 22 Another rise in COVID-19 cases this summer? Why this year is different than the last three (Austin American-Statesman) - “At local hospitals, there have been more cases recently of people coming in with flu-like symptoms who are testing positive for COVID-19, said Dr. Nicholas Steinour, the emergency department director for Ascension Seton hospitals. Most patients are not severe enough to need hospitalization, he said.”

Jul 21 Early US indicators show ongoing slight rise in COVID-19 activity (CIDRAP University of Minnesota) - “Though the nation's COVID-19 activity is still at very low levels, for the second week in a row early indicators such as emergency department (ED) visits and test-positivity rates show small rises, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in its latest data updates.”

Jul 21 White House launches permanent pandemic office (STAT News) - “The creation of a pandemic preparedness office was one of the last major bipartisan pushes for Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) before retiring. He and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) pressed congressional leadership to include the office's establishment and other pandemic provisions in a spending package passed last December.”

Jul 21 FDA official pushes for a dedicated emerging pathogens team to prepare for the next pandemic (STAT News) - “Rather than having to essentially reassign whole groups of people and disrupt things, the idea is to have a group of people who are constantly working on this.” “Sens. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) and Ted Budd (R-N.C.) successfully added an amendment creating that team to a key pandemic preparedness bill that must be reauthorized by the end of September.”

Infodemic

Jul 25 Twitter Deletes Fact-Check Of Musk Connecting Bronny James Cardiac Arrest To Covid Vaccine (Forbes) - “X, the recently rebranded version of Twitter, removed a fact-check from a Tuesday post by company owner Elon Musk that linked the cardiac arrest suffered by college basketball player Bronny James to the Covid-19 vaccine … Musk’s post was met with a since-removed fact-check that noted the risk of myocarditis, a rare condition involving the inflammation of a layer of the hearts wall, is significantly higher after a Covid infection than after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine, citing articles from CBS News and the Yale School of Medicine.”

Jan 04, Updated Jul 25 Viral graph uses flawed data to falsely connect athlete deaths to the COVID-19 vaccine | VERIFY analyzed the data and found many of the deaths listed were not among athletes or from cardiac arrest. There’s scant evidence that many were even vaccinated. (KTVB NBC 7 Boise ID) -

Jul 26 Democrats defend pandemic school closures: 3 takeaways from a heated House hearing (WSB-TV ABC 2 Atlanta) - “In a matter of weeks, children across the nation will return to school. The vast majority will do so without masks, or having to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination. Yet for many families, the learning loss and emotional trauma caused by remote learning linger, a painful reminder of what is now widely considered one of the biggest policy mistakes of the pandemic.”

PRE-BUNK: The following editorial is actually an “advertorial” or paid advertisement, labeled as “Partnered Content from the Wellness Company.” Few people who took the vaccine ask how to get it out of their body, so this is disinformation. Peter McCullough is not an infectious disease specialist, but rather an infamous and discredited cardiologist. This is the second Las Vegas Review-Journal infodemic artifact appearing in this newsletter in two months.

Jul 27 [Disinformation: ] Dr. Peter McCullough On “The Holy Grail Of COVID-19 Vaccine Detoxification” (Las Vegas Review-Journal) - “Dr. Peter McCullough has been a voice of reason in a medical system, deemed by some as, crazed by COVID-19 hysteria.” “In a recent article, Dr. McCullough said: ‘Far and away, the most common question I get from those who took one of the COVID-19 vaccines is: ‘How do I get this out of my body?’’”

DEBUNK: Dr. Peter McCullough, in addition to being known for peddling antivaccine myths, was sued for claiming affiliation with a medical practice. Aug 2021 Lawsuit: Doc Using Old Baylor Affiliation While Dishing COVID Vax Falsehoods | Baylor Scott & White Health says Peter McCullough, MD, used former title during media interviews (Medpage Today) - “Since McCullough entered a confidential employment separation agreement with Baylor in February, the cardiologist has conducted ‘dozens, if not hundreds’ of media interviews in which he used his former affiliation, according to legal documents. Baylor Scott & White Health and the HealthTexas Provider Network, the other listed plaintiff, have accused the cardiologist of breaching his contract.”

Investigations

Jul 26 Doctors who put lives at risk with covid misinformation rarely punished (Washington Post) - Despite scientific findings that ivermectin and hydroxichloriquine do not fight COVID-19, Missouri, North Dakota and Tennessee passed laws protecting doctors from medical board discipline if they prescribe the medications. And attorney generals from six states issued opinions saying doctors can safely prescribe ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for off-label use. Florida has gone the furthest, passing a law this May protecting doctors who spread COVID misinformation online. This is a thorough investigation of state medical boards and their ability to track doctors who have been accused by complainants of spreading medical misinformation.

Jul 10 Who Employs Your Doctor? Increasingly, a Private Equity Firm. | A new study finds that private equity firms own more than half of all specialists in certain U.S. markets. (New York Times) - A new report from the antitrust institute finds that Private Equity groups buy up competing practices in regions. "When a firm controlled more than 30 percent of the market, the cost of care in three specialties — gastroenterology, dermatology, and obstetrics and gynecology — increased by double digits." "Lawmakers in the House are considering legislation to require more reporting when the firms buy health care companies. Currently, the acquisitions can be difficult to track."

Agouti’s “State of Blue” composition & lyrics by Carmen Caruso. Animation by Steph with an F.

Notes

1 Dec 2020 Examining The Link Between Music And Scores For Math, Reading (WUSF 89.7-FM Florida Public Radio) -

2 Oct 2022 Transcript of Sold a Story E1: The Problem (APM Reports) -

3 Nov 2022 Transcript of Sold a Story E5: The Company (APM Reports) -

4 Dec 2020 CapFed Best News: KU study confirms correlation between music, math and reading outcomes (Topeka Capital-Journal) -

5 Sep 2022 The New Learning Economy: It’s Time To Build in Education (Andreessen Horowitz a16z) - “The pandemic has created a once-in-a-lifetime economic opportunity for early stage companies to reach an eager customer base. The U.S. government’s Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds (ESSER funds) are the largest one-time infusion of funds in education from the federal government with almost no strings attached.”

6 Jul 24 “We’re Huge in Learning Loss!” Cashing in on the Post-Pandemic Education Crisis. (ProPublica) -