Welcome to the new school year!

As my spring semester was winding down, I was beginning to look forward to teaching a couple of summer courses, rebuilding a deck, and recharging for the fall. But a lunch date with John Taylor in May added a challenge to my summer that I had not planned as he offered me the job as the editor of the Kansas Music Review. I am humbled by the opportunity to serve my fellow music teachers, and with God's help and the help of a great staff and friends who know more about editing than I, I will do the best I can to keep the KMR on the top of the heap as far as state music education journals are concerned.

You may not know this—I sure didn't—but the KMR has been leading the way among state journals. After I accepted the position as editor, I began to look at other state journals and found that very few offer the content that we do and fewer still utilize a web presence as well as we do. The great content is due to the leadership of the strong editing from Cathy Hunt and Harold Popp before her. The incredible journal website is the product of Troy Johnson's amazing IT skills, great graphic design by Desiree Kelsch, and the advertising management of Bob Lee. I have been leaning on the expertise of these people all summer long and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

While my goal as editor is to maintain the KMR's high position among state journals, I realize that we can't maintain that position by maintaining the status quo. As a professional journal, we must remain relevant to our readers—the music teachers of Kansas. That means we must address the topics you are interested in, we must utilize authors who understand the needs of Kansas music education, and we must present those topics in a way that fits the times and improves teaching. To this end, we will continue to address current political, social, technological, and pedagogical topics as they relate to music education. Further, we will utilize our capabilities as a web-based journal to present information through multimedia as well as through the written word.

Now here's where you come in. We're always looking for authors and I believe you who are practicing teachers have a wealth of knowledge that we could all benefit from. Please consider sharing your experience with the rest of us. Many of you already do something like this when you present great sessions at the state In-service Workshop each February in Wichita. Now I'm asking you to consider writing and recording yourself for the KMR. If you have an idea for an article, please contact me and we can discuss the possibilities.

THE COMMON CORE & THE NEW ARTS STANDARDS
The focus for this issue of the KMR is the new national Core Arts Standards in music education and their relationship to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The national trend toward higher standards, assessment, and teacher accountability is not going anywhere anytime soon. The Kansas State Board of Education (KSDE) formally adopted the Kansas CCSS for English Language Arts and Mathematics in October of 2010. Now, the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards (NCCAS) are finalizing the initial drafts of a new set of standards for the arts, aligned with the CCSS, to replace the arts standards written in 1994. The NCCAS is planning to finalize the standards, with model assessments in an online format, in March of 2014.

Much has been said about the CCSS in the news. Those in support of the standards believe they will help American education regain its international standing. They trust in the research that informed the standards and the efforts of the experts who wrote them. Further, they laud the benefits of an integrated literacy approach and the fact that all educators have a shared responsibility for literacy instruction, regardless of discipline or content area (ksde.org, 2013). Others are concerned that states have moved too fast to adopt untested standards and that states have been pressured to adopt the CCSS by the federal government. Kansas state legislators closely defeated an attempt to block the implementation of the state standards earlier this year (Carpenter, 2013).

My hope is that we remember that the standards themselves do not teach our students. We do. And, if we use them correctly, the CCSS and the Core Arts Standards have the potential to help us. But, music teachers especially must beware of the vision of the CCSS: "College and Career Readiness." According to the CCSS website, "The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers." While on the surface, this sounds like a great goal, one must ask, "is the sole purpose of education to prepare students for the workforce?" Jonathan Cohen, cofounder and president of the National School Climate Center, states that, Is education really just about developing young adults ready for college and careers? Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in a speech at Morehouse College in 1948 said, This is where the arts come in. Character is important, and the arts are an important medium through which character is developed. When taught well, music and the other arts can help students learn to communicate and empathize with others at a deep level, as they learn to express and respond to the arts. When taught well, music and the other arts can teach students to collaborate as they work together to create a great performance. When taught well, music and the other arts can teach students self-discipline as they learn to perfect their art form. When taught well, music and the other arts have the capacity to teach our children that there is more to life than being a worker bee within the nation's economic landscape. Our job as teachers is to help students become contributing citizens to a society and to help them reach their full personal potential as well as their full economic potential.

We must communicate our goals to the community. Otherwise, the purpose of education may devolve into no more than an economic necessity and the arts will have an increasingly smaller role in the schools. The good news is that when taught well, the CCSS and the new Core Arts Standards can be tools used by good teachers to develop children with character, but we must keep our eyes on the prize. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true MUSIC education.

The more you know about these standards, the better equipped you will be to be a positive influence in your schools. The four articles in this issue give four perspectives of the CCSS and the new Core Arts Standards. I also highly recommend that you access the KSDE website (http://www.ksde.org/Default.aspx?tabid=4605 or http://www.ksde.org/Default.aspx?tabid=4754) to learn more about the Kansas Common Core ELA and Math Standards and access the NCCAS website (http://nccas.wikispaces.com) to learn more about the new Core Arts Standards.

Good luck this year as you teach well, make music, and build men and women of intelligence and character!

REFERENCES