In recent years, there has been heightened awareness of the importance of early childhood education and high school as intervention points in the educational lives of America's children. Less attention has been paid to the importance of the upper elementary grades and middle school and the role they must play in the preparation of students for…

Using identified factors that affect students' musical outcomes, this research study examined how instrumental music students attending "good" rural Appalachian high schools compared to other instrumental students. "Good" refers to those 12 Appalachian rural school districts identified as the best out of 46 rural county school…