Dr. Janice Weinman, CEO of Education Through Music, has an accomplished career spanning five decades in the top leadership positions of international and national not-for-profit organizations. Prior to Education Through Music, she served as the Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer of Hadassah for nine years. She has also served in two presidential administrations in addition to state and local governments. Her expertise and experience center around education, women’s issues, the arts, and humanitarian outreach and relief. In the course of her career, she participated in the re-authorization of national education legislation, the establishment of statewide educational assessment programs, ground-breaking work on single-sex education and numerous articles on education through music.
To start us off, could you share the common thread that connects your musical roots to your executive leadership, and give our audience a bird’s-eye view of how Education Through Music (ETM) is currently transforming the landscape for thousands of students in New York City?
Dr. Janice Weinman: I started my musical interest when I was seven years old, attending the Juilliard School of Music’s preparatory division. I learned there the importance of establishing clear thoughts that can transform into the way in which one presents oneself, the way in which one performs, and the way in which one understands how others are hearing oneself. So, that was one of the ways in which I learned from my musical background, training, and experience about the characteristics and features that are important in terms of leadership.
As far as Education Through Music is concerned, we are currently transforming the landscape of thousands of students by providing music as a core subject to students who otherwise would never receive exposure to music. We are providing this to underserved students in 51 schools throughout New York City. These are under-resourced schools, Title I schools, that serve students who come from backgrounds below the poverty level.
Most of our students are Black or Brown students, and they have the opportunity to really understand how music can help them in terms of their own development. Music has really provided these children with a sense of confidence, a sense of focus, and an interest in coming to school. It is even transforming the landscape of thousands of students academically. We have evaluations that show that students who are enrolled in the ETM program do better than their peers in similar schools, and from the same kind of backgrounds, in mathematics and in language arts.
What was the most significant leadership shift you had to make when moving from a massive international organization like Hadassah to a more focused, high-impact mission like Education Through Music?
Dr. Janice Weinman: There are two aspects of that shift. One is that you are working directly with the people who you are impacting. By being in a smaller organization, you get to see those who you are trying to help and really develop. That personal interaction is something that motivates you, makes you feel good about the impact of the program, and makes you understand the needs of those who you are trying to serve. That is very important in terms of the way in which you structure the program that you offer them.
The second very big difference is organizational rather than mission-focused: the infrastructure is far, far smaller. Understandably, in a smaller organization, it means that the work of the CEO involves administrative matters, organizational matters, and personnel matters, things that, in a large organization, you rely on others to do for you.
Whether that’s good or not certainly has its pros and its cons. Getting “in the weeds” again makes you understand the needs of the people that you’re serving better; however, it does bring with it the additional work of having to do a lot that is more administrative than in a large organization.
Congratulations on your election to the New York State Board of Regents. How will your ‘boots-on-the-ground’ experience as CEO of ETM inform your decisions on the Board regarding the general supervision of all NY educational activities?
Dr. Janice Weinman: I think it’s critical that anybody who’s involved in policy, having to do with education or anything else, has an understanding of what is actually going on on the ground. This means understanding the needs, the conditions, and the impacts that policies can have on the daily basis of the actual running of educational activities.
I have found that by being on the ground, you’re not just talking in theory; you’re talking in practice. You’re not just talking in policy; you’re also talking in terms of the lives of the people that you are affecting. I think it’s integral and critical for determining policy to be able to really get into the actual institutions that are delivering education, so that there’s a much more realistic perspective regarding what should be included in policy.
You’ve been a vocal advocate for the idea that music is a core subject, not an extracurricular luxury. What is your ‘CEO pitch’ to legislators and school boards who view the arts as the first thing to cut during a budget crisis?
Dr. Janice Weinman: Having music as a core subject is transformative. When you bring people in just after school or once in a while into the classroom, it is just a “one-off.” It’s not something that is truly integrated into the actual development of a student or the development of a school.
By having music education as a core subject, you are able to relate to other subjects and thereby reinforce how mathematics and music are similar, or how language arts and the words of a song relate to one another. That is critical. By cutting the arts from a budget, you are cutting some of the most important transferable skills that a student can have: discipline, focus, self-confidence, and an interest in learning. That really is something that can make a difference in terms of the development of a student and the life of a school.
ETM’s data shows that students in your programs outperform peers in ELA and Math. How are you using these business-level metrics to drive systemic changes in how under-resourced schools are funded?
Dr. Janice Weinman: One of the most important points that we make to legislators, foundations, corporations in particular, and to individuals is that, because music education does have an influence on language arts and mathematics performance, it is critical to the way in which the school operates.
We have tried to show the statistics that we have, to present the metrics, to schools as well as to funders. We actually have a waiting list of schools that want the Education Through Music program; the only thing that holds us back is the fact that we can only do so much with the funds that we have. Expansion will require additional teachers and supervisors, with the supervisors being very important because one of the features of Education Through Music is that we have a very robust process of oversight of our teachers to make sure that they are high quality.
You’ve recently focused on ‘Building the Arts Education Workforce.’ From a talent management perspective, how is ETM solving the shortage of qualified music teachers while ensuring they are trained to handle the unique challenges of under-resourced schools?
Dr. Janice Weinman: This is one of the most important new initiatives that we have. We received a $3,000,000 grant to do workforce development. This is critical because we have a progression of experiences that we know provide the instruction and the experiences to develop qualified music teachers.
We have an internship program and a residency with the Bank Street College of Education. We also have mentors and coaches who are constantly working with teachers to make sure that they are qualified—and not only qualified, but that they feel comfortable in the classroom and in the school.
What we feel is critical to dealing with the shortage of teachers is, number one, proper retention, which we work on in this program. Number two is providing one-on-one as well as group instruction and training. Number three is working to ensure that teacher retention remains high. Part of this shortage has to do with teachers dropping out, so we work very hard to balance both the creative and the pedagogical aspects of the job. We do so through our partnership with Bank Street and through continued interaction between the supervisor and the teacher to make them feel comfortable and to make them feel as if they are truly making a difference.
For a CEO at the helm of a nonprofit with such high stakes, how do you personally define success at the end of a fiscal year? Is it the number of students served, or is there a specific story of impact that stays with you?
Dr. Janice Weinman: We believe very strongly in evaluation. We conduct evaluations to make sure we understand, number one, the outcomes of our program. We also examine teacher behavior and teacher progress so that we are sure that they, too, are growing in their experience.
It’s not just a matter of the number of students served; it’s much more a matter of whether we are making an impact. We use our metrics to ensure they can substantiate whether or not we are meeting our goals.
I would also say that, unfortunately, due to funding cuts and the difficulty in receiving funds, one of the things we consider to be a success is the money that we raise. That’s an unfortunate reality because it doesn’t really speak to who we serve, but it speaks to how we can serve them. So, we see it as a success if we are increasing our revenues so that we can serve more students. We believe that by expanding our footprint to more students, many more of them will be able to benefit from the services we offer. If we were able to increase the number of schools and the number of students served, we feel that would be a significant gain. Of course, part of that depends entirely on the funds we have available to implement it.
Looking ahead to the ‘Making Minds Sing!’ Gala in May, what is the ‘North Star’ goal for Education Through Music over the next three years? Where do you want to see the organization’s influence by 2030?
Dr. Janice Weinman: I would say we have two goals. One is to ensure that more students receive our services so that they have the benefit of the program that we offer. Related to that, we want to maintain our quality and upgrade our programs as we see changes happening, whether in AI or in other forms of instruction.
The second goal we have is very much to provide a viable pipeline for teachers. By 2030, we want to ensure that there are more music teachers who, through our program, are highly qualified and feel that they are making an impact on their students.
So, it is a two-pronged goal that we hope to see realized. We also hope, and while this isn’t the primary goal, it is a significant one, that the public understands the value of music education so that they, too, will see this as a resource that can be truly expanded throughout different parts of the city, the state, and the country.
