Over the last forty years, popular music in America has consistently shown great variety, originality, and evolution. While American music has clearly flourished and evolved over the last several decades, it is difficult to say the same for American music education. Although there are important reasons to preserve long-standing traditions of school music, music educators seem to exclude popular music from their curriculum. Music teachers only use popular music as a motivational hook for activities that ultimately focus on classical or traditional school music. In this article, the author discusses why popular music deserves a greater place in school music. The author also discusses how teachers may teach popular music in an authentic manner. (Contains 7 resources and 11 notes.)