Data | Scoredatara

The Case For Data

At this point I've attended more than a thousand hours of professional learning. Kind of crazy. It's a lot of the same stuff right? Repackaged, renamed, rebooted. But certain educational quotes and factoids have stuck with me, and help form a framework for my approach to music education.

"It is your responsibility to change society if you think of yourself as an educated person." - James Baldwin

"Music can change the world because it can change people." - Paul Hewson

"India has more honors kids than America has kids." - Karl Fisch

"We have students that can pass the STAAR test on the first day of school, so what do we do with them?" - Professional Learning Comment

"You Can't Pour From An Empty Cup." - mug quote

"You choose your rating when you choose your program." - Legendary Director

This last one is famously advised to young directors by a highly respected educator and they're welcome to take credit for it if they so wish. Or maybe they got it from someone else and liked it. But it got me thinking, it's good advice, but is this actually true? If we're being honest, some groups can play anything written for orchestra and have the track record to prove it. But also true: Every program has a bubble orchestra. Maybe the bubble group careens between a 1-2-2 and a 1-1-2 from year to year. Maybe they don't go to UIL. Maybe they don't exist yet. Some of your ensembles don't need data, but every program can benefit from it.

The Dataset

All of the UIL data is on texasmusicforms.com. The folks running the site were kind enough to send me what they identified as the entire dataset of UIL Orchestra history when I started this project. But one of the foundational phases of Data Analysis is working with clean data to ensure accurate results. The master file was missing too much data, had too many typos, and maybe the some people changed their names once or twice. So for Scoredatara we started over. Manually downloaded every Orchestra UIL contest since 2009. All 1,238 of them. And then we got to cleaning. What's resulted is the largest and most accurate database of secondary adjudicated orchestra performances.

Great musicians will make great music, and three hundred years of practicing has got us where we are without data. But all of us have missed notes. It's an essential part of learning. What if we could keep more of those in the practice room, and put our best possible performances on stage? Tap into the power of Data Analysis and enjoy the statistical confidence to lead your orchestra program.

The Dataset:

Every recorded UIL Contest (1,238) between 2009 and 2026

28,000 UIL Entries

84,000 Repertoire Choices

~168,000 Judges Scores

987,260 data points

Every school manually cross-referenced with Texas Education Agency data

"Championships are won in the off-season."

- coaching axiom