U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Cindy Marten to Participate in Symposium on Music in Schools

U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Cindy Marten will participate in the Yale School of Music’s 2021 Symposium on Music in Schools. The symposium, whose title and focus is Equity & Opportunity: Advancing Music Learning Ecosystems, will imagine a future that ensures an active music life for every child.

Marten, who previously served as superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District and has worked for more than 30 years in public education as a teacher and administrator, has long been committed “to educating the whole child through an emphasis on social and emotional learning and the arts, combined with academic rigor,” according to the U.S. Department of Education. During her tenure at Central Elementary School in City Heights, which the SDUSD has described as “one of San Diego’s most ethnically diverse and economically challenged school communities,” Marten “established a highly successful biliteracy program, a hands-on school garden program, integrated arts education, quality after-school and preschool programs, a daycare center for employees’ children, and a community health and wellness center for students and their families,” language on the SDUSD website indicates.

As a guest on the NAMM Foundation’s October 2020 webinar “Talking to Your Administrators About Why Music Education Matters,” Marten talked about “what it looked like to integrate the arts” into the Central Elementary School curriculum and the positive academic effect that effort had. She encouraged arts-advocates to “show how the arts are the vehicle to accomplish all that is good and right in public education.”

Yale School of Music Associate Dean Michael Yaffe will interview Marten at the 2021 Symposium on Music in Schools about the development of community music learning ecosystems with an eye on equity in music education across the United States. The symposium will outline the urgency of the moment and the importance of collaboration between representatives from the fields of music and education, funders, and those in government and the private sector. Participants will share and discuss strategies for better serving all of our nation’s students.

The Yale School of Music’s 2021 Symposium on Music in Schools, which is produced in partnership with the NAMM Foundation, will take place online on Wednesday, June 23, from 12:30 to 4 p.m., and is free and open to the public. Learn more and register at music.yale.edu/2021-symposium-music-schools.