Middle 20th century to 21st century

The following table illustrates some notable developments from this period:

• 1950  -   The Child's Bill of Rights in Music  -   A student-centered philosophy was formally espoused by MENC.
• 1953 -    The American School Band Directors Association formed -    The band movement becomes organized.
• 1957 -    Launch of Sputnik   -    Increased curricular focus on science, math, technology with less emphasis on music education.
• 1959 -    Contemporary Music Project -  The purpose of the project was to make contemporary music relevant in children by placing quality composers and performers in the learning environment. Leads to the Comprehensive Musicianship movement.
• 1961 -    American Choral Directors Association formed -  The choral movement becomes organized.
• 1963 -    Yale Seminar -  Federally supported development of arts education focusing on quality music classroom literature. Juilliard Project leads to the compilation and publication of musical works from major historical eras for elementary and secondary schools.
• 1965 -    National Endowment for the Arts -  Federal financial support and recognition of the value music has in society.
• 1967 -    Tanglewood symposium -  Establishment of a unified and ecletic philosophy of music education. Specific emphasis on youth music, special education music, urban music, and electronic music.
• 1969 -    GO Project -  35 Objectives listed by MENC for quality music education programs in public schools. Published and recommended for music educators to follow.
• 1978 -    The Ann Arbor Symposium -  Emphasized the impact of learning theory in music education in the areas of: auditory perception, motor learning, child development, cognitive skills, memory processing, affect, and motivatio.
• 1984 -    Becoming Human Through Music symposium -  "The Wesleyan Symposium on the Perspectives of Social Anthropology in the Teaching and Learning of Music" (Middletown, Connecticut, August 6–10, 1984). Emphasized the importance of cultural context in music education and the cultural implications of rapidly changing demographics in the United States.
• 1990 -    Multicultural Symposium in Music Education - Growing out of the awareness of the increasing diversity of the American School population, the three-day Symposium for music teachers was co-sponsored by MENC, the Society for Ethnomusicology, and the Smithsonian Institution, in order to provide models, materials, and methods for teaching music of the world's cultures to school children and youth.
• 1994 -    National Standards for Music Education -  For much of the 1980s, there was a call for educational reform and accountability in all curricular subjects. This led to the National Standards for Music Education introduced by MENC. The MENC standards were adopted by some states, while other states have produced their own standards or largely eschewed the standards movement.
• 1999 -    The Housewright Symposium / Vision 2020 -  Examined changing philosophies and practices and predicted how American music education will (or should) look in the year 2020.

• 2007 -    Tanglewood II: Charting the Future  -  Reflected on the 40 years of change in music education since the first Tanglewood Symposium of 1967, developing a declaration regarding priorities for the next forty years.

        Music course offerings and even entire degree programs in online music education developed in the first decade of the 21st century at various institutions, and the fields of world music pedagogy and popular music pedagogy have also seen notable expansion.