What does it actually look like when a music program works? And how do you prove it to funders, administrators, and communities without reducing something deeply human to a spreadsheet?

This project developed evaluation frameworks for arts education and community music settings, built around the belief that impact in music is real, measurable, and worth documenting, but that the tools we use to capture it have to reflect what we are actually trying to do. The frameworks move beyond attendance numbers and test scores to ask better questions: Who grew? What changed? What would have been lost without this program?

This work is practical. It is designed to be used by real programs with real constraints, not just cited in a dissertation.