Music in Education

I was in band for 8 years throughout school. I played the flute and was in marching band for 6 years. Every year my band director would tell us how the school district is thinking about getting rid of the arts (choir and band) because they are not as important as all the other subjects such as reading and math. She would make us write pretend letters to the board saying why we think music should be kept in schools. I was researching what music does to the brain and these are some things I found that maybe shoud be taken into consideration...

• Music improves spatial-temporal reasoning (See the M.I.N.D. Institute research), a neurological process needed to understand mathematics. The best way to enhance your child's learning with music is to encourage listening to and learning music throughout the child's developmental years. (http://childparenting.about.com/cs/k6education/a/mozarteffect.htm)

• Music training imposes a high working-memory load. That can be a good thing, in that it helps you expand your working memory capacity, and thus reduces the impairing effects on memory of working memory overload. Increasing working memory capacity also improves the ability to think, as manifest in IQ scores.
• Music show improvements in auditory verbal memory and auditory attention
• She(Nina Kraus, a prominent brain researcher at Northwestern University) believes music training may benefit academic achievement by improving learning skills and listening ability, especially in challenging listening environments (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/memory-medic/201007/music-training-helps-learning-memory)

• It is a proven fact that music has helped to educate students. For example some kindergarten teachers use musical rhymes to teach their children how to write, and how to learn the alphabet. The reason behind this is because it helps the child to retain the information better than without the rhymes or music. (http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/58241/can_music_help_enhance_learning_ability.html)

I 100% believe that music has a positive effect when it comes to education. A major debate is whether or not to keep funding the music program. I wish everyone understood what a great expreience music provides for a person. Even if it wasnt a proven fact that music helps when it comes to memory, I still think music should be kept in schools.
I understand that english, math, and reading are more important when it comes to getting an educaion, but when I child learns to play an instrument or learns to sing, they are becoming wello rounded individuals.
Once I am a teacher I am going to incorporate music into my lessons, not every single lesson but into at least once a week or  maybe even once a day, I will have music in my classroom.
If music works to help with tests, why not use it?