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In the past, the music education profession has forwarded federal policy recommendations somewhat uncritically, without evidence of having been informed by the literature in policy formation or analysis or having undertaken a systematic review of its process of policy formation and analysis. The purpose of this study was to understand the decision-making process of the Music Educators’ National Conference (MENC) about its response to the National Standards for Music Education, the Arts as a Core Subject in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and the legislative recommendation of the Arts Report Card. An author-devised policy recommendation analysis model, based on a series of questions to help frame the investigation and foster an understanding of the policy process, was utilized. While the model entails a full analysis of the policy process, from inception to evaluation, the analysis for this study focused only on the policy formulation process and purposefully excluded the discussion of implementation and evaluation regarding these federal statutes and policy recommendations. The questions from the model used in the analysis were: (1) What was the problem that you were trying to solve? (2) Who was the target population of the policy? (How did you communicate with the target population? What was the response of the target population? What was the response of other professionals in the field?) (3) Did the responses change the way that you saw the problem? (4) What alternative solutions were considered? (5) What were the likely outcomes of the solution? Findings of this study for all three examples of federal policy include the perceived marginalization of music in the public school curriculum by the participants, the federal government as the target population for MENC’s responses, and that these federal policies have only helped maintain the status quo for music and its place in the curriculum. This study is significant to music education because it considers the federal policies related to music and serves as an example on how to think about and analyze policy in music education, to examine proposals for policy, and to build capacity for policy development in the field.
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