The MMEA Board voted unanimously to move to recorded All-State auditions beginning March 2014. We will spend the 2012-13 school year connecting with you to get input on how best to manage this new process.

What has been decided so far?

• Beginning 2014, teachers will manage the recording process for All-State auditions.
• Teachers will then upload the recording to a web system, along with entering certain information about the student.

What hasn't been decided yet? Everything else!

• WE WANT YOUR INPUT!
  
• You can send email input to auditions@mmea.org. 
• Watch for articles in Interval and attend the Open Forums at the MMEA Midwinter Clinic.
• Visit this webpage throughout the school year.
• Contact an MMEA Board member with input for the Task Force.
  
• The Recorded Auditions Task Force is led by MMEA Board members Stephanie Trump, Robbinsdale Armstrong, and Michael Scott, Bloomington Kennedy, with All-State VPs and selected regional representatives will gather input.

Why are we making this change?

The Executive and All-State Committees have been studying the All-State audition process for the last years. There are three primary reasons for this change.

• Inclusiveness and Equity - Students more than 60 miles away from an audition site are much less likely to participate in All-State. Should we be limiting participation in All-State based on where a student attends school? An article in the Fall Interval describes this more fully, including a map of participation.
• Multiple Judges and Scoring Reliability - Just a few points can be the difference between a student being selected, being an alternate, and not being selected. With live auditions, we must have multiple judges traveling the state, and there will always be some differences in median scores between judges. Many approaches to resolve this have been taken and are described in the upcoming journal. 
• Cost - The live audition process costs almost twice as much as we collect through audition fees. This extra cost has been managed by increasing the cost of camp. The Board, though uncomfortable with this decision, wanted to keep the audition cost reasonable.

We look forward to the dialogue as we continue the great Minnesota tradition of All-State.