Components of a Successful Retention Strategy

Retaining by Design

Bob Phillips

Components of a Successful Retention Strategy

In order to successfully retain music students there are a series of strategies that can be employed to dramatically increase the percentage of students who participate over time. Retaining music students can and should be done by design and not left to chance. These strategies can be broken down into several areas: marketing/advocacy, quality instruction, reasons for dropout, scheduling, re-recruiting activities and data collection, and analysis and follow-up. As a string teacher, the two most important parts of my job were recruiting and retaining. When you address those in a proscriptive way you create big successful programs that have impact on students’ lives and your community.

The Problem

Drop out is an insidious problem that can destroy a music program over time if left un-checked. An important principle to understand is that you can’t teach an empty chair, nor can anyone after you. A student lost not only affects the current year and ensemble but all those above it. Each time a student is allowed to drop out the negative impact expands over time. Here is a simple chart that demonstrates the corrosive nature of drop out. If you start a class of 100 music students in grade 5 and follow them over a span of eighth years you can see negative effects of drop out as the percentage of loss increases. Lowering the loss in the early years dramatically changes the number of students who participate in high school. Students often drop out in groups not individually. Once you have developed a culture of drop out it takes a lot of proscriptive work to change it. Once a high retention culture is created it is self-reinforcing. The lower the dropout rate, the easier the process becomes. The higher the dropout rate, the more challenging it is to turn it around.

Student enrollment
per year / 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / Total loss rate over 8 years
5% loss per year / 100 / 95 / 90 / 85 / 81 / 77 / 73 / 69 / 31%
10% loss per year / 100 / 90 / 81 / 73 / 65 / 58 / 52 / 47 / 53%
20% loss per year / 100 / 80 / 64 / 51 / 41 / 33 / 26 / 21 / 79%

Marketing and Advocacy

Attitude development, advocacy, program marketing, and public relations are issues that are important from before students start until after they graduate. The music program needs to be “marketed” to students, parents, administration, staff, the community, and the business community. Articulating the values of music instruction at concerts, parent open houses, board meetings, service club meetings, and community events is crucial. One of the best ways to accomplish this is through student performances in all of these environments. View every opportunity to perform and talk as an informance. This is your chance to educate people about the values and successes of the program. Surround the program with positive messaging about what the students are learning, how they are progressing, and their accomplishments. If you have great things happening in your program don’t let it be a secret to the outside world. You have at your disposal one of the greatest marketing tools of all time: excited, energetic students and music. Use these tools to further the ends of the music program. When the community at large is excited about what the students are doing, a “buzz” is created throughout the school that reinforces retention. The expectation is that students will continue and when someone drops out it is the exception not the rule.

Quality Instruction

There are a number of instructional issues that can affect retention. The first and most important is that there be high quality teaching in your room every day. If the students play well and learn to love music they will make big sacrifices to continue. Success builds enthusiasm and vice versa. Your level of enthusiasm is contagious. You have to be excited about music making and creating music every day. Students love to participate in quality activities. Part of quality instruction is having and using a comprehensive music curriculum. Repertoire also plays a big role in how students feel about their success. It is important the repertoire you choose supports the curriculum rather than the other way around. The Goldilocks principle applies here. Music that is too easy bores while music that is too hard frustrates. Music that is just right retains. Remember that you should be actively recruiting every day. Talk about their future in the program as if it is a foregone conclusion. “Next year when you are in ……ensemble you will be doing …..” This builds an expectation in the student’s mind that continuing is just what everyone does. Teachers have to be actors on a stage. No matter what our personality is we still have to motivate and inspire the students in the music classroom. That is our job. One way to do this is to always use music to motivate and as the reward. Extrinsic motivators only work for so long. The more students can be intrinsically motivated by music the greater chance they will continue to play for a lifetime.

Reasons for Dropout

There are a number of reasons for drop out that fall into two categories: the ones students tell you and the real ones. Students often make these decisions in cafeterias, on school busses, after school practices, and other social gathering points. Students often drop out in groups because of peer pressure. This is why every student matters. When you give up on a child you may also be losing five friends with them. Never give up.

A few of the reasons students will give for leaving the program include sports conflicts, time, school schedule, and college preparation classes. Most of the time these are excuses not reasons. If students have been engaged, challenged, and inspired they will most often work these issues out. Of course, some students really do have a conflict at certain times. This is when you have to work with them and their parents to resolve the issue. Often creative problem solving goes a long way to keeping students involved. Some additional valid reasons students drop out are a lack of technical success, difficulty reading, lack of money, and grade pressure. Any students who are not succeeding technically will be very frustrated. This may include such things as embouchure problems, bow hand problems, and vocal range issues. Don’t let these problems fester until they you can’t help them. A very common dropout reason in the early years is an inability to read music. Young students can mask reading problems by playing by ear. That works for a while but eventually catches up them. Students who can’t create characteristic sounds get very frustrated quickly. If they don’t sound good they are aware of it. This brings up the issue of learning modes. Most students have dominant learning modes that affect how they best take in information. Just of few of these include visual learners, aural learners, tactile learners, and global learners. No one learns in just one way, yet these learning modes can affect success. If you are a dominantly aural teacher at the beginning that will work really well for some students and not others. A dominantly visual teacher may have a different result with the same students. The common theme here is teacher awareness of these differences in order to cover as many learning modes as possible. Student evaluation becomes a retention tool. The more you know about your students the greater your ability to help them succeed.

Scheduling - School

Scheduling can be a factor in retention. Often students will use this as an excuse however sometimes it is real. It is very important that someone from the music department is involved in the creation of building schedules. This can happen by volunteering for a scheduling committee or just asking the building principal if you can give input. Remember the goal is to create the best possible schedule for student involvement not the best one for you. Always stay focused on student outcomes. Scheduling is a difficult process for any administrator. In many schools these schedules are done via computer scheduling programs. It is important to know what assumptions are being made in the programing. If schedules are created on paper by an administrator, volunteer to help.

Scheduling - Student

Someone in the music program should become an expert on the building schedule so they can act as an advisor to students when scheduling problems arise. A great way to prevent problems is gather all the music students in a grade or building level for a scheduling presentation. This is best accomplished several weeks before school counselors are slated to talk to them. Someone from the staff can layout the next year or years schedule in a way that allows students to participate. Most scheduling problems can be avoided by taking classes in a certain sequence. These are individual building and district problems that only you can address in your situation and with your students. When you find problems that can’t be solved it is time work with an administrator on the master schedule.

Re-recruiting Presentations and Data Collection

It is very important to have a retention or re-recruiting presentation for students each year. The goals include the following,

•Make sure students understand the schedule and how to make music fit.

•Generate enthusiasm about playing next year and the possibilities.

•Give students information they can understand.

•Address student and parent concerns about next year.

•Get students to psychologically commit to continuing.

•Have students fill out a retention form.

A great way to start a re-recruiting presentation is to have some older students come in and talk to the group. It could be students from the next grade level up or high school seniors. Before students come in to talk be sure to let them know what the goal of the presentation is. Provide suggestions on how they could appropriately share what music has meant to them. Be sure to have a diverse group of students present so everyone has someone to relate to. You may ask students to share how they were able to solve scheduling issues, sports conflicts, and other problems associated with the next level up. Ask the older students to invite the younger students to participate next year, perhaps saying that they are looking forward to making music together in high school. After the older students are finished you should wrap up their presentation by summarizing what they said. The next step is to inform students about schedule issues and make it clear you will help them resolve any conflicts they encounter. If there are any specific student or parent concerns that come up in your district you should address them now. The last part of the presentation should be a motivational talk from you to the students. Let them know what a great experience is ahead of them and how much you want them to continue next year. Finally you should hand out the retention forms, have students fill them out and return them.

Analysis and Follow-up

The next step is to analyze the retention forms. A variety of information can be gathered that will help your retention and teaching. All of the questions are aimed at finding out what was successful in the class and what was difficult or challenging. The answers can help you when talking to individual students about continuing or reshaping your class as common themes begin to appear. The first data point is how many students are continuing, how many are undecided, and how many are dropping out. Be sure to keep this data year to year. The mission is to start talking to and working on the students who are undecided. Often these are students who just want you to let them know you care and would like them to continue. Sometimes they need re-assurance and encouragement. In some cases, there are some real issues you may have to resolve. They may include time, money, sports, and other activity conflicts. In my experience, you can get all of the undecided students to continue. Once that is done it is time to start talking to the no’s and their parents. These are sometimes hard conversations but very instructive and help you grow as a teacher. Be sure to take the time to think about what they tell you. The no’s can sometimes be turned around but it harder to do than the maybe’s. The elementary questionnaire asks student to self-evaluate their progress. This is important because it will help you identify the problem areas for students so if they are frustrated, you can address it. Elementary music students often drop out because of reading and/or tone issues. The parent form gives you a chance to learn what the students are saying at home and how parents are perceiving the program. It is also a great reason to call them and discuss their child dropping out.

There is one more thing I like to do with this data. It is really interesting to take all the forms from a class and put it in different piles. An example would be to separate it by gender, race, economic status, social groups within the school, students with siblings in or not in the program, and sports or non-sports. Keep re-sorting by all these categories and record the data. Once you have done that look for any patterns that may be there. An example would be is one gender dropping out more than another? If so, what reasons are that could explain that. What could you do to change the paradigm? This kind of information helps me to understand if I have any hidden biases. It may also tell me that I am have a drop out culture in certain populations. The important thing to remember is that data isn’t good or bad. Being honest with yourself is the first step in changing retention problems.

Conclusion

Retaining a high percentage of students is possible with good teaching and careful planning. As someone who taught instrumental music in public school I tracked retention over 28 years. It changed my teaching and approach. This data is crucial. The time involved in tracking it is time invested, not time spent. Lack of awareness allows drop out to be a big problem. Once in my career I had 100% retention in grades five through twelve. It only happened once but it was always my goal. All teachers can improve their retention rates and, when they do, students are the ultimate winners.

Resources

String Clinics to Go: The Art of Recruiting, Gillespie and Phillips, distributed by Shar Products
Strategies for Teaching Strings: Building a Successful String and Orchestra Program – Hamann and Gillespie, Oxford University Press