Compulsory education and school laws were enacted in the British colonies of North America beginning from the 1640s. Compulsory school laws were gradually enacted in all states of the United States of America between 1852 and 1918, with enforcement of the laws following gradually and but unevenly in the various states. Today, most states require attendance up to age 16. Music was gradually introduced to the elementary school curriculum from the 1830s. Today, music is mandatory for all (general) students in Grades 1-6 in most schools and in some schools in Grades 7-8, and is an elective subject in most schools in Grades 7-12. General music classes in the U.S. are similar to compulsory music classes in many other countries. Approximately 25 percent of American public secondary school students participate in elective music performing ensembles, which are a distinctive and positive feature of American music education.

Agassiz’s desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) is a long-lived species native to the Mojave Desert and is listed as threatened under the US Endangered Species Act. To aid conservation efforts for preserving the genetic diversity of this species, we generated a whole genome reference sequence with an annotation based on deep transcriptome sequences of adult skeletal muscle, lung, brain, and blood. The draft genome assembly for G. agassizii has a scaffold N50 length of 252 kbp and a total length of 2.4 Gbp. Genome annotation reveals 20,172 protein-coding genes in the G. agassizii assembly, and that gene structure is more similar to chicken than other turtles. We provide a series of comparative analyses demonstrating (1) that turtles are among the slowest-evolving genome-enabled reptiles, (2) amino acid changes in genes controlling desert tortoise traits such as shell development, longevity and osmoregulation, and (3) fixed variants across the Gopherus species complex in genes related to desert adaptations, including circadian rhythm and innate immune response. This G. agassizii genome reference and annotation is the first such resource for any tortoise, and will serve as a foundation for future analysis of the genetic basis of adaptations to the desert environment, allow for investigation into genomic factors affecting tortoise health, disease and longevity, and serve as a valuable resource for additional studies in this species complex.

Data Availability: All genomic and transcriptomic sequence files are available from the NIH-NCBI BioProject database (accession numbers PRJNA352725, PRJNA352726, and PRJNA281763). All genome assembly, transcriptome assembly, predicted protein, transcript, genome annotation, repeatmasker, phylogenetic trees, .vcf and GO enrichment files are available on Harvard Dataverse (doi:10.7910/DVN/EH2S9K).

Europeans took their musical traditions with them when they moved to North America. Eventually, however, the United States became so large and diverse, with such deep democratic roots, that different ethnic musical strands emerged and then combined to form important new forms of popular music. By then electronic playback technology had arisen and the United States had become the most influential country in the world, both of which helped propel one of these new popular musics, rock and roll, throughout much of the world, much like Europe and its music dominated and proliferated during what musicians call the common practice period. Today, music teachers in the United States continue to be trained in the European-based art music tradition, but most of their work consists of teaching an array of musical styles to students of every imaginable ethnicity and background. These music educators tend to have dual professional identities: as classical musicians and as teachers of multiple styles of music.

||При преместването си в Северна Америка европейците взели със себе си и музикалните си традиции. В крайна сметка, обаче, Съединените щати дотолкова се разраснали и били различни – с дълбоки демократични корени, - че се появили различни музикални течения, а впоследствие се съчетали така, че да образуват нови форми на популярна музика. Към него момент технологията за електронен плейбек вече била развита и САЩ стават най-влиятелната страна в света, като тези два фактора помогнали за напредъка на един от тези нови популярни музикални жанрове – рокендролът – из по-големия дял на музикалния свят, до голяма степен по начина, по който Европа и нейната музика доминира и процъфтява по време на т.нар. от музикантите период на общата практика (common practice period). Днес учителите по музика в САЩ продължават да бъдат обучавани според базираната в Европа традиция на художествената музика, но в по-голямата си част работата им се състои от преподаване на студентите на спектър от музикални стилове от всяка етничност и произход, които можем да си представим. Тези музикални педагози обикновено имат двойствена професионална идентичност: те са класически музиканти и учители по множество музикални стилове.

Text of paper presented at the first conference of the Greek Society for Music Education, held in Thessaloniki, Greece on June 26-28, 1998. It was one of a pair of papers presented as the Honor Guest Lecturer Addresses (the other being "Music Education in the U.S.A.: An Overview"). This item includes the English and Greek translations of the work. 

This paper describes the evolution of music in American public schools and universities. Included are some statistics on the number of elementary, middle, and high schools that offer each type of music instruction, including band, choir, orchestra, and music for general students. Also included are some discussions on the evolution of university music programs. The paper concludes with a description of the new national voluntary standards for music education, and some assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of American music education programs. 

This was part of a pair of papers presented as the Honor Guest Lecturer Addresses (the other being "Music Education Research in the U.S.A.: An Overview"). This item includes the English and Greek translations of the work. 

Readability formulas are used widely in education, and increasingly in business and government. Over 30 years of research on more than 200 readability formulas has demonstrated moderate to strong predictive correlations with reading comprehension. In this study, five well-known readability formulas correlated highly with each other when applied to selected recent historical articles (N = 22) from two music education research journals. The mean level of difficulty (readability) for all 22 articles was grade 14.04, near the beginning of the second year of college. Since research shows that most people read below their highest completed school grade and also prefer easier materials, this is probably an appropriate level of difficulty for the presumptive readers of these two journals (i.e., holders of undergraduate and graduate degrees). Professors, librarians, and others responsible for guiding students toward reading material at appropriate levels of readability could benefit from these results.