So I am preparing a handout for a clinic I am doing in a couple of weeks about judging for marching contests and am realizing that many groups all have the exact same problems, especially when it comes to percussion. I believe a lot of this has to do with the tendency for schools not to be able to hire percussion teachers, or at the least they hire inexperienced percussion teachers. Also a lot has to do with different circuits minimizing the role of percussion in the scoring, which I believe leads to it being less of a focus for directors (for example, BOA long ago got rid of percussion as a separate caption in the judging). Also, a lot has to do with how percussion methods classes are taught. I know that due to No Child Left Behind a lot of music programs are having to reduce the amount of class time devoted to methods classes, basically making the most important classes for most teachers the ones they are in the least. For example, I have 1 class a week for 50 minutes over 1 semester to teach them everything they need to know about percussion! Obviously, some things will get left out. This often leads to teachers who don't really know what to do with the percussion section. I hope that outreach like our clinics and concerts will help, but what I find is that MANY directors don't attend such things. So the question is, if they don't know it, and they don't go to the resources that are provided for free, where are they learning it?