Hey Texas, Have We Dismantled the Marching Band to Judge It?
When the adjudication sheet begins to dictate the musical score, perhaps it's time to reconsider what we're actually evaluating.
For decades, we have worked to develop marching bands that perform as cohesive musical ensembles. We teach students to listen across the field, balance their individual contributions, blend their sounds, and understand how their instruments fit into the larger musical picture. We spend countless hours developing characteristic tone, ensemble resonance, phrasing, timing, and musical expression.
And then we decided the best way to evaluate all of that was to take the ensemble apart.
The University Interscholastic League's Area and State Marching Band Contest music adjudication sheets have changed how we evaluate marching band performance in Texas. By dividing musical performance into separate woodwind, brass, and percussion categories, we've created a system that may be doing considerably more than evaluating what happens on the field.
It may be changing what happens on the field in the first place.
I'm not convinced that's a good thing.
The Sum of the Parts
A marching band is not three separate ensembles that happen to perform at the same time.
It is a single musical organization in which woodwinds, brass, and percussion serve different but complementary roles. Sometimes percussion should be featured. Sometimes woodwinds carry the musical conversation. Sometimes brass delivers the primary statement. And often, the greatest musical achievement is the integration of all three.
That's called orchestration.
Yet the UIL Area and State music adjudication sheet assigns 200 points each to woodwind, brass, and percussion performance, 250 to ensemble performance, and 150 to content.
The three instrumental-family categories account for 600 of the 1,000 available points. Ensemble performance accounts for 250.
Now, a capable adjudicator can certainly evaluate an instrumental section within the context of the entire ensemble. Separate categories don't automatically require independent performances.
But they can create incentives.
Anyone who has designed competitive marching band productions understands that adjudication systems influence design decisions. Directors and designers study the sheets, consider what adjudicators expect, and make choices about orchestration, staging, and exposure accordingly.
A reasonable defense of the current system is that the percussion caption evaluates the quality of what percussionists perform, not the quantity. A supporting role, performed exceptionally well, should be evaluated just as favorably as a featured passage.
In principle, I agree.
But design decisions aren't made in principle. They're made by directors and designers weighing competitive risk.
When an instrumental family receives its own evaluation category, designers understandably wonder whether they've provided enough opportunities for that section to demonstrate its capabilities.
Exposure becomes insurance.
And once successful programs incorporate extended features, others take notice.
The sheet doesn't require a percussion feature. But its structure may encourage designers to create one anyway.
A musical decision that should originate with the composition becomes a competitive calculation.
We begin asking not what the music needs, but what the adjudicator needs to hear.
Back to 1988. Really?
Perhaps one of the more ironic consequences is that we seem to have rediscovered the percussion feature of 1988.
Remember those?
The percussion section moves to the front, the winds become secondary or disappear, and we spend the next minute or two demonstrating everything the battery and front ensemble can do.
Then, somehow, we have to put the band back together.
I thought we had moved beyond that.
There is nothing inherently wrong with a percussion feature. When it serves the musical composition, it can be tremendously effective.
But when we design features primarily because we believe the adjudication system expects them, we introduce problems that may have little to do with the music.
Every time we dismantle the ensemble for an isolated feature, we potentially complicate timing, listening environments, staging, and musical transitions. The winds move away from established ensemble relationships. The battery moves into positions that may be visually effective but acoustically problematic. And then everyone has to come back together.
Anyone who has taught marching band understands the challenges of ensemble timing across a football field. We work relentlessly to establish listening responsibilities, visual timing relationships, and ensemble cohesion.
Why deliberately create additional problems?
In just about every ensemble I've observed or worked with, I've encountered timing and cohesiveness issues made unnecessarily difficult by the design itself.
Not because the students couldn't perform or the directors weren't teaching, but because the production created problems that never needed to exist.
These are unforced errors.
And I find myself spending considerable time helping directors and students solve problems that could have been avoided through more thoughtful orchestration and staging.
Of course, the most sophisticated programs can navigate these challenges with exceptional designers, experienced instructional teams, and substantial rehearsal resources.
But not everybody has a top-ten design team.
What about the very good high school band with capable directors, committed students, and a thoughtfully constructed musical program?
Should those students be competitively disadvantaged because their directors chose to prioritize a cohesive musical experience rather than engineer a series of sectional exhibitions?
UIL serves schools with dramatically different resources, staffing structures, and student populations. An adjudication system that encourages increasingly complicated design solutions risks rewarding access to resources rather than the quality of musical instruction.
A great marching band show should not require a great marching band to spend half its rehearsal time overcoming problems created by the show itself.
Our Greatest Strength Is as an Ensemble
I learned a long time ago that the greatest strength of a marching band is not found in any one section.
It is found in the ensemble.
During my years at L.D. Bell, we made deliberate decisions about the competitive experiences we wanted for our students.
We stopped attending local marching contests that emphasized individual caption placements and awards.
Best brass. Best woodwinds. Best percussion. Best color guard. Best this. Best that.
There was nothing inherently wrong with recognizing sectional excellence. But we began questioning what we were teaching our students to value.
We weren't trying to build the best percussion section that happened to perform with a marching band. Or the best brass section. Or the best color guard.
We were trying to build the best marching band we could.
We chose to compete exclusively in Bands of America events because the adjudication philosophy aligned with what we believed.
Everything mattered. And how those elements worked together mattered most.
We also stopped participating in individual percussion competitions. Not because we didn't value percussion. Quite the opposite. We had outstanding percussion students and educators, and we wanted them contributing to something larger than their individual section.
We didn't want the tail wagging the dog.
Those decisions reflected a broader philosophy of building a comprehensive band program. Individual excellence mattered because of what it contributed to collective achievement.
And here's what makes this discussion particularly interesting.
For years, we were extraordinarily successful competitively in both UIL and Bands of America.
We didn't have to compromise our philosophy to succeed. We could develop cohesive, musically sophisticated productions, emphasize ensemble balance and blend, and achieve at the highest competitive levels.
But I look at those same productions today, and I have serious doubts they would be rewarded in the same way under the current UIL Area and State music adjudication sheets.
Not because the students couldn't perform or the musical arrangements lacked sophistication.
But because those shows weren't designed around isolated instrumental evaluation categories.
They were designed to be marching band shows.
I'm not suggesting that the activity should return to the way we designed shows twenty years ago. Marching band should continue to evolve, and today's extraordinary students deserve recognition.
But musical excellence doesn't have an expiration date.
Characteristic tone, intonation, balance, blend, phrasing, ensemble timing, and artistic expression are no less important today than they were then.
We demonstrated for years that a comprehensive musical philosophy and competitive success could coexist. I'm no longer convinced the same approach would be rewarded by the system we've created.
And that ought to concern all of us.
Are We Becoming Something Else?
For years, Texas marching band has maintained an educational identity distinct from the drum corps activity.
Both have contributed enormously to marching performance. But school marching bands exist within comprehensive educational programs, with responsibilities extending well beyond competitive achievement.
Yet our evaluation philosophy increasingly resembles a caption-driven model.
Drum Corps International has long evaluated brass and percussion through specialized performance captions alongside broader musical evaluation. Our Area and State music sheet now separates woodwinds, brass, and percussion into individual categories.
Are we adopting a competitive design philosophy that encourages the very sectional isolation we've spent decades trying to overcome?
And what about the adjudicators?
Specialized instrumental knowledge is valuable. But expertise in one instrumental family is not necessarily the same as expertise in evaluating a complete marching band.
Our three-person music panels should prioritize adjudicators capable of evaluating characteristic sound, balance, blend, phrasing, timing, and musical expression across the entire ensemble.
If we establish expectations for particular instrumental specialties, we should carefully examine whether those expectations produce the strongest possible panels.
The most important qualification for a marching band music adjudicator should be the ability to evaluate the musical performance of the complete ensemble.
Not simply excellence within one section.
The Committee Did It
I can already anticipate one response: UIL didn't create the adjudication sheets. A committee did.
Fair enough.
But that reminds me of one of the frustrations many of us have experienced with site-based decision management in public education.
In theory, it distributes decision-making and gives stakeholders a voice. In practice, it can also distribute responsibility so broadly that nobody is ultimately accountable.
The committee recommended it. The organization approved it. The directors supported it.
And when unintended consequences appear, everyone can point somewhere else.
That doesn't work for me.
I've served on enough committees and worked within enough educational organizations to understand how good people with good intentions can make decisions that produce outcomes nobody anticipated.
But good intentions don't eliminate consequences.
In this instance, the responsibility belongs to all of us.
The committee members who developed the recommendations. The UIL leadership that adopted and implemented them. The directors who supported the changes. And those of us who have watched the consequences develop without speaking loudly enough.
We all have a stake in this.
And we all have a responsibility to fix it.
Quickly.
Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing. Again.
None of this requires abandoning accountability or eliminating the evaluation of individual instrumental families.
We should absolutely expect woodwinds, brass, and percussion to demonstrate technical proficiency, characteristic tone, musical expression, and appropriate performance responsibilities.
But those expectations should exist within the context of the complete ensemble.
Perhaps ensemble performance should receive greater emphasis in the overall music evaluation. Perhaps sectional criteria should more explicitly recognize the quality of each section's contribution to the musical whole. And perhaps adjudicator training should make unmistakably clear that sectional features are neither required nor inherently more valuable than appropriately orchestrated supporting roles.
These are reasonable questions for an educational organization to examine.
In a recent article, I raised concerns about the increasing influence of amplification, sound design, and production technology on the acoustic identity of the marching band.
This discussion is closely related.
In both cases, the question is whether the tools we've developed to enhance the activity have begun to change its fundamental purpose.
Technology should support the musical ensemble.
Visual design should support the musical ensemble.
And adjudication should evaluate the musical ensemble.
Not the other way around.
I'm not advocating a return to some imaginary golden age of marching band. I've spent far too many years encouraging innovation, supporting creative design, and celebrating extraordinary student achievement to suggest that our activity should stop evolving.
But evolution should be guided by sound educational and musical principles.
We shouldn't need an extraordinary design team to create a cohesive marching band show. We shouldn't need to manufacture sectional features to demonstrate musical achievement. And we shouldn't spend valuable instructional time repairing ensemble problems created primarily to satisfy perceived competitive expectations.
Our greatest strength has always been what we accomplish together.
That was the philosophy behind the comprehensive band program we worked to build at L.D. Bell. It was the reason we made the competitive choices we made. And it remains the philosophy I believe should guide our activity today.
We didn't spend decades building comprehensive band programs just to have an adjudication system take them apart.
The marching band is not a woodwind ensemble, a brass ensemble, and a percussion ensemble sharing a football field.
It is a band.
And perhaps it's time we started judging it that way.
∗ ∗ ∗
Jeremy L. Earnhart, Ed.D.
Founder & Principal
School Music & Fine Arts, LLC
Former President & CEO, Music for All
Former Director of Fine Arts, Arlington ISD & Irving ISD
Research at the intersection of educational strategy, organizational design, and school finance. Helping school leaders uncover hidden capacity, strengthen student opportunity, and improve organizational performance through strategic fine arts design.
His work has been covered by The New York Times, NPR/KERA, Marketplace, CBS 11, NBC 5, and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The New York Times highlighted Arlington ISD's decision to eliminate instrument rental fees, noting that band participation at the middle and high school levels "jumped" (Rich, 2015).
That work continues in The Cost of Not Playing (2026), Dr. Earnhart’s ongoing research on the systems-level impact of music participation in public schools.
His doctoral research centered around the competencies of the central office music administrator:
Earnhart, J. L. (2017). Competencies of the public school music administrator: Texas music administrator perspectives. Journal for K-12 Educational Leadership, 1(1), 55–63.
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