Black students at the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) have consistently scored at the top or near the top in math and reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) when compared to their peers attending non-military schools. The chart below shows how black students at DoDEA measure up to their peers on the NAEP assessment. Besides 4th grade math, black students at DoDEA have the highest scores in 8th grade math, 4th grade reading, and 8th grade reading.
The DoDEA's success is not an isolated event. The system serves over 84,000 students in 12 foreign countries, seven states, Guam, and Puerto Rico. According to a 2007 Education World article DoDEA schools share many characteristics of typically found in low-performing public schools. Forty percent of students are minorities, 50 percent of the students eligible for free lunches, and a 35 percent annual mobility rate. "Yet, the schools have a 97 percent high school graduation rate, and the majority of students go on to higher education," Education World finds. DoDEA's success is attributed to factors inside and outside of the classroom.Within the school, DoDEA has high academic expectations of students and regularly assess students’ progress. All schools use the same curriculum and have standardized classroom procedures to make students’ transition process less stressful. External factors might play an even more important role. Behavioral problems are not an issue due to the values students are taught at home. This in turn allow teachers to spend more time on teaching.
Militarizing all public schools is not a practical approach to school reform. This view might be one of the reasons there has been a lack of collaboration between military and civilian schools. However, this is changing. The latest round of base realignments and closures in 2005 has forced some military personnel to send their children to civilian schools. These changes prompted the Defense Department to create an Education Partnership Directorate in 2007 to work with local school districts to adopt aspects of DoDEA's curriculum to ease students' transition from military to public schools. "I feel there’s a real spirit of cooperation now," and "they [defense education officials] don’t want to be a hollow force," says John Deegan, superintendent of the Bellevue Public Schools near Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, and executive director of the Military Impacted Schools Association in the Army Times.
With a healthy budget and support from the Department of Defense, the Department of Education, and state education departments to form partnerships with local school districts, the DoDEA's Directorate has the arsenal it needs to help improve civilian schools that need it the most. Hopefully, the DoDEA does not limit itself to partnering to schools that are already high-performers. By showing that it can turn around low-performing schools with large minority populations, the DoDEA will make the military a more attractive place to raise families, produce a successful school model that can be implemented throughout the country, and perhaps help more states close the achievement gap.
-- Tim Harwood
9 comments:
This article doesn't surprise me at all. I have always thought that schools need more uniformity. They all need to have similar curriculum and behavior standards. The more that is similar within each classroom the less change students have to go through. Many students have anxiety when they have to start over and struggle with new curriculum and behavior. If we could adopt the military's uniformity and structure I definitely agree that our students would perform better.
I'd complement your account with Gordon MacInnes' take on the military's way of addressing high mobility. He acknowelges that the military doesn't have as much of a problem with the "truly disadvantaged" or the poorest, most traumatized students that are served by neighborhood schools. But they stress reading comprehension.
While I strongly agree with the emphasis on behavior, we have to admit that the military has a lot of advantages that neighborhood schools don't have in dealing with parents and not having to deal with the worst critical masses of kids acting out their pain.
But I wouldn't go overboard on the standardization of curricula. Standardization within the diversity of schools tends to degenerate into skin-deep test prep, which does no good when you more from one school to another.
But if you can read for comprehension (and if you can control your behavior and make responsible choices) you can always bring those abilities with you throughout school and life.
MacInnes also compares the military to Catholic schools. That's another reminder of the importance of school cultures. That should be our goal, creating a learning culture where all kids can read for comprehension and meet behavioral standards. Accomplish that and secondary issues like curricula and standardization (not to mention accountability) will find their own levels within our diverse system
I'd like to see the DoD figures adjusted for the fact that a significant part of the black population is not eligible for military service for failure to meet educational standards, and those parents' children, who are likely also low-performing, are therefore not in DoD schools.
I hate to burst everyones bubble, but Linda is the only person to get it.
I am in the Air Force and my kids were raised in DoD schools overseas.
First of all the schools have no relation to the military at all except that they serve us.
They are exactly like every other school in America, maybe even a little bit more relaxed. The teachers are probably a bit better than average, but not spectacularly.
To prove it, just look at the test scores for the three local schools that serve Elmendorf AFB here in Alaska. They are Anchorage school districts with Anchorage school district curriculum's, rules, and teachers, yet the African American and Hispanic students do much better than their civilian counterparts. (the schools are located on base and only serve the on-base population)
http://www.asdk12.org/depts/assess_eval/POP/0708/schools/Aurora.pdf
http://www.asdk12.org/depts/assess_eval/POP/0708/schools/MtSpurr.pdf
http://www.asdk12.org/depts/assess_eval/POP/0708/schools/Orion.pdf
All you are going to learn from DoD schools is that excluding the kids of poor minorities improves performance... then again you just have to got to any suburban town in America to learn that.
If you really want to see success try a school district like Gehring School District in Nebraska.
I thought Colleen and I also said what Linda said. So I'll just continue with my wimpy summaries of research to say the same thing as Parentalcation.
Robert Balfanz's recent study of middle school in Philly adds more evidence to support the trust of this thread. When students enter high school with 7th and 8th grade skills, many of the rofrm efforts of recent years have shown results. When, as in so many neighborhood high schools and my high school, students enter with 5th and 6th grade skills, we don't know how to turnaround those schools.
Only the top graduates from my high school could meet the entrance qualifications of the military.
Colleen appears to contribute the success to the DoD schools "military's uniformity and structure", which is simply not the case.
John, sorry if I missed the thrust of your first comment... though I am not sure about the school culture bit, since the school culture in DoD schools is more a reflection of the culture of the parents than something that the school consciously or actively tried to develop.
I actually love DoD schools because of their diversity, safety, and the usually great parent/school relations that they develop, I am just not naive enough to think that it's the schools that deserve the credit, at least not nearly as much as the selective parent population.
In DoD schools you rarely see things like the "black table" at lunch.
It seems that some are saying that the military schools don't have the same outside influences as regular public schools, but in the article its says: "According to a 2007 Education World article DoDEA schools share many characteristics of typically found in low-performing public schools. Forty percent of students are minorities, 50 percent of the students eligible for free lunches, and a 35 percent annual mobility rate. "Yet, the schools have a 97 percent high school graduation rate, and the majority of students go on to higher education," Education World finds. DoDEA's success is attributed to factors inside and outside of the classroom." It seems as though they do have some of the same outside influences as our public schools. Yes I agree some of your parental involvement is different in military schools as it would be in civilian schools. I feel like people just make excuses for not reaching the poor minorities which isn't fair to them. Why can't we try a system that is obviously working with a 97% graduation rate in our schools. Yes we'd have to make some adjustments but something has to be done differently in military schools that have the same make up of low performing schools to have such high statistics.
Never mind. If Colleen thinks of public schools that "Yes we'd have to make some adjustments ..." then we are worlds apart.
Its one thing to look to DoD, or Catholic Schools or charters or whatever to seek answers. Its another thing to use those apples to oranges comparisons to attack public schools.
Colleen says:
"Why can't we try a system that is obviously working with a 97% graduation rate in our schools."
grrrrr... my last word.
DoDEA schools are not any different. There is no system. The results are entirely a result of the students and their parents.
I agree with you John. Public schools are a different animal than Charters, Catholic, and Military schools. Not that lessons can't be learned, but I also think that many charter/catholic/other schools could learn lessons from the best of the public schools.
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