Date

6-19-2024

Department

School of Music

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy in Music Education (PhD)

Chair

Nathan Street

Keywords

charter school music, innovation, nontraditional music courses

Disciplines

Education | Music

Abstract

The school choice movement is gaining popularity in the American education system, with supporters touting innovation and improvement in educational outcomes. Research on school choice efficacy—particularly comparisons between charter and traditional public schools (TPS)—is in its infancy. The purpose of this causal-comparative study was to compare the incidence of nontraditional music courses in secondary charters and TPS in the Southwest. Secondly, the study utilized the Climate for Innovation Measure (CIM) to quantify teachers’ perceptions of organizational innovation. This research collected a randomized sample (N = 30) of secondary charter school music teachers (n = 15) and TPS music teachers (n = 15) from Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. ANOVA provided analyses for the collected data, suggesting that charter schools offer a higher incidence of nontraditional courses than their TPS counterparts, Welch’s F(1, 17.562) = 6.418, p < 0.05, np2 = .186. However, there was no significant difference between the CIM scores among charters and TPS, F(1, 28) = 1.368, p = .252, np2 = .047.

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