The school was founded in 1999 by administrators and faculty members at the New England Conservatory who thought a music-centered curriculum fit logically within the state mandate that charter schools strive to be laboratories of innovation. (As the performance scheduled for Thursday at NEC's Jordan Hall suggests, the school retains a close relationship with the conservatory.)
"What is different here is that music is taught as a daily core curriculum subject," says Rappaport. "The development of critical-thinking skills is so important, and a lot of that comes out of the music." He points out that music has a mathematical basis, with phrases divided into measures and measures divided into beats. "Music has a very profound effect on the cognitive development of young people," he says. "I think we're proving it here."
Rappaport admits, though, that it has been a struggle to raise the standardized test scores of the students. With such a small student body, the sample size for standardized tests is relatively minuscule. Last year the school finished below the state average in a number of categories. However, it improved from the previous year, prompting the state Department of Education to say the school had achieved "adequate yearly progress" in math and English language arts. Rappaport says he expects further improvement this year.
The ratio of students to teachers at the school is 9 to 1. The student body is a broad cross section of Boston: Nearly 40 percent of the students are black, 30 percent are Hispanic or Latino, 20 percent are white, and 4.5 percent are Asian-American. More than 70 percent of the students come from low-income families; for more than one-third of the students, English is not their first language.
Young as they are, the students seem to have grasped that the time they spend rehearsing and performing music may help them master the three R's. "You have to be patient," Bernard says. "You can't just pick up a violin and play a song you haven't learned yet." Malcolm adds: "Sometimes I use music to do my math. I'll think of adding quarter-notes, half-notes. I put my notes together as math." Beyond such pragmatism, of course, lies the pure joy of performing music. "It has a lot of emotion," says Yarimar Muniz, 11, a fourth-grader from Roxbury, though she admits "it's a little bit complicated when you first learn a new song."
Back in the classroom, the students are running through their song one last time. Hakim offers praise, advice, and something more. "The harmony, I want you guys to keep the pitch up, be a little stronger," she says, while a roomful of young strivers listens attentively. "With the melody, you have that nice soaring melody."
"That's what I want from you," she says. "Soar."
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