Highlighting the Essential Role of Music in Public Education
Kaufman Music Center continues to advance a national conversation about the role of music in public education through a conversation on ABC News Live featuring President & CEO Tony Mazzocchi and Special Music School fourth grader Alexander Zhou.
In the live news segment, Mazzocchi reflects on the impact of intensive music education during the school day and the ways it shapes academic, social, emotional, and community outcomes for students. “We have the only K–12 public school in the nation that prioritizes music in each and every day of these children’s lives,” Mazzocchi notes, “and it just so happens we have the best academic, social, emotional, and community outcomes that a public school could ask for.”
Music education at Kaufman Music Center is grounded in the belief that skills such as focus, empathy, discipline, collaboration, and creative problem-solving are not supplementary, but essential to holistic human development
This philosophy is reflected not only at Special Music School, the nation’s only public K–12 school with music at the core of the curriculum during the academic day, but also in Kaufman Music Center’s expanding partnerships.
Most recently, Kaufman Music Center announced the launch of a new partnership with New York City Public Schools at P.S. 149 in Harlem. Modeled after Special Music School, the new program will treat music as a core subject for incoming kindergarten students, equal to all other academic disciplines, and extend Kaufman Music Center’s approach to public education.
Watch the Video
Learn More about the P.S. 149 Partnership
