This study aims at exploring whether English Language Learners (ELL) who are enrolled in a music education program have higher standardized test scores compared to those who are not engaged in a music education program. A West Phoenix, inner city school was studied were the majority of students are Hispanic and qualify for free and reduced lunch. The main purpose of this dissertation was to analyze the effects of instrumental music courses on the AZmerit assessment scores. AZMerit is a standardized assessment used to measure student growth during the given timeframe of one school year (AIMS A Science, n.d.). In this study, I compared a cohort of instrumental music students who studied performance against a cohort of comparable students who did not volunteer to participate in an instrumental music program. Many of these students are bilingual in English and Spanish. As such, students were divided into subcategories based on their level of language acquisition in sixth grade. The secondary purpose of this study was to determine if being a part of an instrumental music program affected students at different languages levels in different manners. Over a two-year period, the English Language Learners (ELL) students were examined to determine the effects of music education by focusing a large part of this research on ELL students’ success within music education programs and academic content areas.