Poverty-driven gaps in language and cognitive development hinder academic success for many students.

Poverty-related disparities in brain development, especially in language and executive function, contribute to persistent achievement gaps. Music training has been shown to strengthen auditory processing, which is foundational for language and literacy. Music-based mentoring programs combine music instruction with mentoring, aiming to foster resilience, confidence, and cognitive development.

NORC launches a five-year quasi-experimental study to rigorously assess the long-term impacts of music-based mentoring.

The D’Addario Foundation’s (D’Addario) Immersive Music Challenge (IMC) is an initiative to improve student achievement and social-emotional well-being through music instruction and mentoring for students in grades 2 through 12, beginning in the early primary grades. IMC implementation partners include music education nonprofit organizations, and nearby school districts and charter systems across the country. Through the IMC, nonprofit music programs partner with local schools to provide students with out-of-school time music-based mentoring for at least four hours per week over multiple years. The initial focus of the IMC is on enrolling and retaining students who attend high-poverty schools.

D’Addario has partnered with NORC at the University of Chicago (NORC) to conduct an IMC implementation evaluation study. With students enrolling in IMC-model programs in 2^nd and 3^rd grades, the IMC five-year Implementation Study will include analysis of student outcomes through 7^th grade. This study seeks to determine whether youth participating in IMC programming have systematically better future trajectories than similar but non-participating peers.

To answer this question, NORC will conduct a five-year, longitudinal, quasi-experimental study to evaluate the association between program involvement and gains in student outcomes, including standardized test scores for mathematics and English Language Arts, behavioral indices, school climate, and social and emotional learning. This evaluation was inspired by and will build upon encouraging findings from a Holbrook et al (2022)^[1] study conducted of a music-based mentoring program at five high-poverty elementary schools in Long Beach, California. Based on prior randomized research that found significant improvement in students’ brain development and function, the Long Beach program was found to be associated with greater 3rd-grade-level reading achievement for music-based mentoring participants, but not for controls.

[1] Holbrook, H. M., Martin, M., Glik, D., Hudziak, J. J., Copeland, W. E., Lund, C., & Fender, J. G. (2022). Music-Based Mentoring and Academic Improvement in High-Poverty Elementary Schools. Journal of Youth Development, 17(1), 32-45