Page 72 - CJFeb24

y Vo
r
ve
i
Lift Every Voice
Lift E
ce
To center equity, let’s privilege the vocal quality por- • If a sight-reading exam is truly a quality determinant
tion of the all-state exam. Until we can account for the of success in the all-state experience, how so? And to
gap in resources and access to additional, out-of-school what end, if music is already learned?
support that exist across this country and within states,
we must remove barriers to access. In this particular • Is sight-reading a proxy? If so, what skills are we really
case, sight-reading persists as an inequitable barrier. attempting to measure?

• Is the sight-reading exam possibly a filtering tool to
Closing Thoughts make final decisions easier for examiners? If so, are
If you are finding yourself disagreeing with the rec- there other ways to make final decisions 1) more eq-
ommendation to remove the sight-reading portion of uitable for the student experience and 2) easier for
the all-state exam, I pose a few reflection questions: examiners?

A question you might ask is, “If we do remove the
sight-reading exam, won’t this endanger the quality of
the all-state performance?” Well, the current skills-first
research shows that when we focus on required skills that
are connected to on-the-job performance, not only do
we provide more opportunities to those who have been
historically excluded, we tend to make better, more ef-
ficient “hiring” decisions, leading to stronger perfor-
mance. 3

Marshaun R. Hymon, DMA, is the co-founder and
managing partner of True Change Alliance, LLC.
marshaunrhymon@gmail.com

NOTES

1 Donald Winford, “The Origins of African American Ver-
nacular English: Beginnings,” in The Oxford Handbook of
African American Language (Oxford University Press, 2015).
2 Joseph Fuller, Christina Langer, and Matt Sigelman, “Skills-
Based Hiring Is on the Rise,” Harvard Business Review
(February 2022).
3 Ryan Roslansky, “You Need a Skills-Based Approach to Hir-
ing and Developing Talent,” Harvard Business Review (June
2021); Economic Graph, “Skills-First: Reimagining the
Labor Market and Breaking Down Barriers,” LinkedIn
(2023); Sue Cantrell, et. al., “The skills-based organi-
zation: A new operating model for work and the work-
force,” Deloitte (September 2022).

70 CHORAL JOURNAL February 2024 Volume 64 Number 6