To become a competent adjudicator takes time and experience. After examining a long tradition of choral festivals in Michigan, Sandra Frey Stegman in the June 2009 Music Educators Journal (MEJ) shares ideas about

• why teachers and their students participate in festivals,
   
• what musical, educational, and other goals can be achieved through festivals, and
   
• how evaluations are done.
   

Improved learning is the overriding goal throughout all events described in the article, and this is the prime goal of most music teachers and aministrators who participate.

Adjudication training can help judges do their job better and more confidently. Stegman adds, “In doing this research, I found that some state adjudication systems emphasized ratings rather than learning outcomes. The adjudication process in Michigan strives for balance between the two.”

To read the entire article, “Michigan State Adjudicated Choral Festivals” by Sandra Frey Stegman in the June 2009 MEJ (vol. 95, no. 4, pp. 62-65), have your MENC member ID ready and go to MENC Periodicals.

MENC member Sandra Frey Stegman is an associate professor of music at Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio.

--Ella Wilcox, August 26, 2009, © MENC: The National Association for Music Education (www.menc.org)