Schools for children of military achieve results rarely seen in public education

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/us/schools-pandemic-defense-department.html

by LastNevadan • 3 years ago

194 273 3 years ago

nytimes.com

dannyphantom• 3 years ago

https://archive.ph/PHFQ1

Jtsummers• 3 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20231010091419/https://www.nytim...

This one worked better for me.

ericfrazier2• 3 years ago

If that's the case then we really are up the creek as a nation.

jjtheblunt• 3 years ago

One counterexample:

my grad school linguistics professor, an internationally recognized scholar across several languages, credited the DoD Language school at Monterrey CA as having been just amazing, and who went back to teach for decades in a top five ranked US university, not only linguists but engineering kids like me.

He was the same age as my dad so had the avuncular thing going, was personable, but most of all inspiring to decades of students to look outside their curricula.

Sometimes what sounds like up a creek turns out to be an unpredictable kick ass river, I guess.

ericfrazier2• 3 years ago

I'm talking about K-12 DoD education abroad.

Afforess• 3 years ago

clickbait headline, the real answer is in the article:

For starters, families have access to housing and health care through the military, and at least one parent has a job.
"Having as many of those basic needs met does help set the scene for learning to occur,” said Jessica Thorne, the principal at E.A. White Elementary, a school of about 350 students

Providing a stable home environment with access to at least one parent, proper nutrition, and safety - all commonly missing in the worst performing school districts.

jowea• 3 years ago

That may be a bit simplistic since the article does mentions other possible explanations for the better results beyond the fact that essentially all students are above an economic floor.

And I didn't get it from the article, but are those schools better than the schools in wealthy districts?

WillPostForFood• 3 years ago

What's unfortunate about the article is that it is so light on data, and heavy on assumptions. So whatever your agenda is, there is something to latch onto, but ultimately nothing to support it.

e.g. Prefer more rigour? "Defense officials attribute recent growth in test scores partly to the overhaul, which was meant to raise the level of rigor expected of students."

Prefer more money? "the Defense Department estimates that it spends about $25,000 per student, on par with the highest-spending states"

For all we can tell from the article, it is just self selection.

joshhart2• 3 years ago

The article suggests several causes: 1. Bias in population - these students all have families where at least one parent has a stable job, which isn't true elsewhere. There could also be other factors, for instance maybe people who enter the military are more motivated on average and that genetically or through parenting is passed on to their kids. 2. Better funding 3. Frequent feedback to teachers and more methodical planning 4. Excellent racial & socioeconomic integration

Is there a way to tease out the contribution in each area through controlling for variables. I suspect #1 is the largest by far, but I think this could be statistically controlled for partially by looking at children of parents who attend non-military schools. Curious for thoughts from HN.

aynyc• 3 years ago

No. #1 is your CO will chew your ass out in front of everyone (which is a big no-no in leadership, yet it's accepted regarding your children). I saw first hand my E6 got called to battalion CO to answer why his son was bullying other kids (I think some civilians from DoD). I still remember CO said, if you don't fix this, I march the whole damn battalion to your house and make you do push ups while your son watch.

When your parents care, you will do.

pram• 3 years ago

This is also the best reason to NOT use stuff on base! The day I got pulled into my squadron commanders office because my dorm “was a mess” was the same day I applied for BAH.

zeroCalories2• 3 years ago

All of those have multiplicative effects. Good home/parents make students more motivated, good teachers are able to work well with motivated students, capable classrooms are able to handle more demanding classes. I don't suspect socioeconomic integration matters here though if everyone is getting the same treatment. Standardization is also good when we see wildly different results in different classrooms. Harder to do in more fragmented and less well funded school districts.

But these are all well known factors. Not much to learn drom here, but it's nice to see it confirm the theory.

ethbr17• 3 years ago

This. Mother and family spent careers in early childhood education.

- In order for learning to happen, kids have to be non-disruptive.

- In order for kids to be non-disruptive, they have to have their basic needs met: safety, food, stability, etc.

- In order for a kid's basic needs to be met, there has to be a source of income and time to care for them.

Absent that chain of dependencies, young children are in no state to learn anything, and distract the kids around them. And every minute of every week spent papering over deficiencies there is one less minute devoted to learning.

F.ex. in Title I schools, it's not uncommon to have families where the only book in the house might be one a child is sent home with.

If teachers received tabula rasa children, results would be much more even.

But they don't, which results in kids at bad schools being unable to focus, which means they don't learn basic material, which perpetuates income disparities later in life, which continues the cycle through lack of time and money.

The military has many bad aspects, but a parent with a steady job, housing, and benefits is a solid foundation for childhood academic success.

joshhart2• 3 years ago

I think these are good points, I am hugely in favor of expanding food stamps and child tax credits for this reason. One estimate is that every $1 spend on food stamps expands GDP by $1.50, so this is really good for the overall economy. I have heard of much higher estimates, but cannot easily find the source. We definitely need to help poor families break the poverty cycle. Schools should have free breakfast, lunch, dinner, and after school programs as well to deal with lack of food at home and 2 parents working full-time.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2019/july/quantifying-t...

rawgabbit2• 3 years ago

I spent time in the US military many years ago. From my sample size of one:

1) This is population bias and self-selection. Everyone I met in the service was extremely patriotic and wanted to succeed in everything. Many came from desperately poor backgrounds and saw the service as their way to the middle class. Those who joined for other reasons were quickly forced out. At the time, when people asked me what my job was in the military, I joked that I was a "bullet stopper". I was joking but I honestly believed everyone in my team would take a bullet for each other.

2) Funding is questionable. Military pay is a joke. Many of the enlisted I knew received food stamps and WIC (women infant children supplement monies to feed themselves). The housing is old, probably contain asbestos and lead, mold etc. But at least its warm. Probably most important there was almost zero theft, burglaries, or crime you see in troubled cities. Healthcare is almost free.

3) Teaching. The military does things by the book. Many books. Thousands of pages. Most of which is bull shit. The military makes up for it through sheer determination.

4) Racial integration. Hmmmm. The US military at least has a huge problem with racism, sexism, all kinds of isms. Sexual assault is a taboo subject that happens under the surface and commanders at all levels are at their wit's end. If my daughter wanted to join the US military, I would actively encourage her and secretly worry that she would be sexually assaulted. I would try to warn her indirectly and tell her things like don't go to private parties. Drink only in a public setting with a designated person looking out for trouble. The service is an honor but also has its own problems.

throwaway2037• 3 years ago

    Sexual assault is a taboo subject that happens under the surface and commanders at all levels are at their wit's end.

First, I assume that here, "sexual assault" is perpetrated by men against women. (Yes, I know there are other forms.)

In your opinion, what do you think is the root cause of this problem? And, is the rate of sexual assault higher for women in the military vs civilians? (I assume yes due to self-selection for more aggressive men.)

goles• 3 years ago

"If you find a way to be happy in the US military they will find a way to fix that problem for you." - My Mom, USAF.

TMWNN• 3 years ago

3) Teaching. The military does things by the book. Many books. Thousands of pages. Most of which is bull shit. The military makes up for it through sheer determination.
4) Racial integration. Hmmmm. The US military at least has a huge problem with racism, sexism, all kinds of isms.

There is something to be said for applying 3 to help fix 4 through, as you said, "sheer determination". Frank da Cruz, the creator of Columbia Kermit, tells in his autobiography online of how when he was in the Army in Germany in the 1960s he saw white sergeants lecturing soldiers in deep Southern accents on the evils of race prejudice.

canucker2016• 3 years ago

The parental bias is two-pronged - officers, many are college-educated, esp. from the various armed forces academies - West Point, Annapolis, et al., and those recruited into the armed forces have to overcome various hurdles, from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/every-branch-us-milita...:

"The pool of those eligible to join the military continues to shrink, with more young men and women than ever disqualified for obesity, drug use or criminal records. Last month, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville testified before Congress that only 23% of Americans ages 17-24 are qualified to serve without a waiver to join, down from 29% in recent years.

An internal Defense Department survey obtained by NBC News found that only 9% of those young Americans eligible to serve in the military had any inclination to do so, the lowest number since 2007. "

So out of the possible Americans aged 17-24, less than 2.3% would serve in the military. The partner/spouse may not have to pass those hurdles, but having at least one parent with those attributes and employed would help the family wellbeing.

Spinnaker_3• 3 years ago

I think this can be misleading in the same way some charter school results are. The easiest way to improve a school's results isn't to improve the education provided, it's to get rid of the worst performing kids.

Charter schools do this by various selection effects, and artificial barriers, like ending at noon on a Wednesday. So the only kids who go there have two parents, one who probably is stay at home and can pick the kid up.

The same type of thing is in play in military schools. There will be few-to-no kids of poor single moms. All the kids will be well fed and groomed and socialized. Is the education better, or have they just selected better performing kids? The article touches on this. But I don't think takes it nearly seriously enough.

eYrKEC22• 3 years ago

Another factor is that the military parents have cleared a bar of pre-enlistment testing (ASVAB?) that has strong correlations with IQ testing.

stonogo2• 3 years ago

The minimum ASVAB to enlist is 31, and there are waiver programs for that. This is not a good showing. I feel like people don't appreciate how little lower-enlisted people are paid, what terrible financial literacy abounds in the ranks, and how many kids live on base but are still very firmly living in poverty.

There are a lot of advantages to living on base, but this thread is pretending that the military has its shit together in ways that it absolutely does not. "All the kids will be well-fed and socialized" is bizarrely out of touch, specifically. There are functioning gangs on some larger military installations. Troops PCS every few years, making it difficult for kids to establish social groups. Most bases have a unit of MPs basically acting as child services.

I'd think a better place to look for filters would be entire schools -- BRAC has caused the closure of many schools, but I don't know how they select which schools to target for closure. I know of at least two larger bases which have no schools (students are bused to local civilian schools) but I know others who have kept their schools despite a lower overall population of families.

red-iron-pine7• 3 years ago

maybe on the officer level, but you don't need a particularly high ASVAB score to drive a truck or be a cook.

mynameishere• 3 years ago

This is the correct answer. When you drop off the bottom 30 percent of the population via the AFQT requirement (the part of the ASVAB that correlates well with IQ) you are getting rid of 100,000,000 nitwits. Further to those, you also get rid of the criminals, and psychos, and junkies. This makes the military a kind of modest elite. Their children reflect that and do reasonably well in school.

Are people with 125+ IQs enlisting? Not for the most part, but almost none of the 75 IQ people are enlisting, and they cause a wild disproportion of the problems in society.

HDThoreaun18• 3 years ago

Education is mostly about your peers. It's obviously true for prestigious universities but it's just as true for elementary schools. Charter schools kicking out problematic students isn't some loophole, it's the main point, and it absolutely can improve the education for those that remain.

My district has a quarter of high schoolers in charter schools. Almost all of them under the poverty line. It's not like they're only accepting kids with two parents, in fact they're doing a much better job of helping poor families in my district than the public school system, which forces all the poor students into the same schools with literal murderers attending. Allowing poor students from families that value education to go to schools with like minded students is an unequivocally good thing compared to what the public schools currently do.

colechristensen2• 3 years ago

The question is: what do you do about children with discipline problems whose parents don't care?

By all accounts, there are many of these kids. A portion of them are special needs and they at least have a path for what people want to do with them, even if special education doesn't have all the resources they need... there's at least an answer to "what should we do?".

But what should we do with the rest?

seanmcdirmid5• 3 years ago

Charter schools kicking out problematic students isn't some loophole, it's the main point, and it absolutely can improve the education for those that remain.

If you kick out the problematic students, the only students you have left are easy to teach non-problematic students.

and it absolutely can improve the education for those that remain.

It isn't mysterious: you selected the best students, so your results will be the best. It is a direct application of selection bias. Public schools will be left with whatever students are not accepted into charter schools...those "problematic students", and will...again...due to selection bias have worse results.

It's not like they're only accepting kids with two parents, in fact they're doing a much better job of helping poor families in my district than the public school system

That's great for your district, but parent pointed out ending school at noon on Wednesday are going to apply selection bias. Perhaps your district does it better.

pharmakom2• 3 years ago

Education is mostly about your peers. It's obviously true for prestigious universities but it's just as true for elementary schools.

This is going to require some backing.

jimhefferon• 3 years ago

Serious question: you don't see a dilemma in kicking out those who seem problematic? I absolutely hear you that a parent wants the best for their kid. But historically declaring that some students are an issue has been a frought road.

amalcon• 3 years ago

Charter schools kicking out problematic students isn't some loophole, it's the main point, and it absolutely can improve the education for those that remain.

I'm provisionally accepting this as true, partly because there's some truth in it and partly because I think it leads to an interesting discussion. This is great for the remaining students at the charter school.

That problem student goes somewhere, though. That problematic student still exist. They are now in another class, with other students. Some of those students are problematic and some are not, but per your premise -- that other class is now worse than it was. You haven't improved anything, you've just taken a disadvantage from one place and given it to another.

One might consider a scenario where this happens repeatedly, and you just get a class full of problematic kids. Those kids don't learn anything, but at least the non-problematic kids do.

There are several problems with that scenario, but one such problem is independent of ethical concerns: You just aren't going to find the people to run that school or teach that class for the amount society is willing to pay. Schools for behaviorally problematic students exist. They tend to be private, expensive, and full. They also tend to focus on students who e.g. assault other students in the middle of class, rather than on students who e.g. won't stop talking in class even if repeatedly removed from class, or even students with out-of-school criminal records.

wolverine8762• 3 years ago

Do those charter schools get better results? IIRC, research shows no difference, but maybe that is only in specific locales.

moate• 3 years ago

“Allowing poor students from families that value education to go to schools with like minded students is an unequivocally good thing compared to what the public schools currently do.“

If this were unequivocal, people like me wouldn’t fundamentally hate the concept of charter schools. You think “one bad apple spoils the bunch” and that’s an observed effect not a law of nature.

You can like charter schools, but don’t pretend that privatization of public resources for means tested approved individuals is an absolute virtue. The world is complicated.

diogenes4• 3 years ago

It's obviously true for prestigious universities

This is a hard argument to make when the use of the gentleman's c is more widespread the more prestigious the school is. Driven students certainly attend prestigious institutions, but overall the prestige of the school a person attended is a very poor signal for the abilities of the person. I transferred from a prestigious private university to a large public university and didn't notice any major difference in the quality of students. The quality of the classes? yes—class size was a major difference. But the students seemed just as sharp in both settings, especially in upper-level classes.

Frankly, the major obvious difference was just money. Prestigious, private universities have rich kids in spades. I didn't notice any correlation between the money and the abilities of the person, though. At the end of the day the connections with those kids are where the university you attend really pays off.

ZeroGravitas2• 3 years ago

It is both a loophole and the main point.

It's the main point for people who want their children to succeed at the expense of the rest of society and it's a loophole when they try to sell that concept to the rest of society as "we can teach better for cheaper so give us your tax money and let us replace universal public education" rather than "we have thrown some of your children on the scrapheap for you to expensively support for the rest of their lives and either don't understand or don't care that this is of net negative value".

tiahura• 3 years ago

Education is mostly about your parents.

xbmcuser• 3 years ago

The peers part is badly overlooked a lot is talked about how asian countries seem to have a better education system. But overlook the most important part of the education system in asia. The filtering that happens first by school where the top student go to particular schools then even in each grade the students are divided in class by how how good they are.

2devnull• 3 years ago

“ Allowing poor students from families that value education to go to schools with like minded students is an unequivocally good thing compared to what the public schools currently do.”

But it is sort of what schools currently do. The filter public schools use is housing. You have to buy a home in the school district. That is the reason real estate values are driven by school test scores. Because the opposite is also true: school test scores are a function of who own homes near the school. At the end of the day, maybe that operates better at sorting good apples from bad. I’m probably more in agreement with your line of thinking that making choice easier for poor folks could be best for society, but the selection effect is weaker if you loosen the filter.

r00fus• 3 years ago

Removing special needs kids from your population is the quickest way to increase test scores and reduce budget. As a parent of a child with special needs, I've studied the financials of schools in my district to find out how special needs services are supported.

1) The federal government has never lived up to its promise of matching 40% of the special needs funding (in my state they cover a mere 8%).

2) Usually the shortfall ends up at the district level. Some districts get more funding from an increased special needs population while others don't (community funding model).

3) Often the district moves programs around so special needs child cohorts (and in some cases teachers) can remain intact while not focusing the lowered scores in one school.

4) Charter schools throw a wrench into this as they typically don't support special needs kids, but still get district funding. This causes other schools in the district to look "worse" because their test scores aren't as balanced as before.

dragonwriter3• 3 years ago

Education is mostly about your peers.

Nah, its mostly about your socio-economic status, home environment, and similar personal (not peer) factors.

dragonwriter3• 3 years ago

Charter schools do this by various selection effects, and artificial barriers, like ending at noon on a Wednesday. So the only kids who go there have two parents, one who probably is stay at home and can pick the kid up

This would be a more effective filtering technique if inconvenient minimum days weren't common in regular public schools.

The most effective filtering technique used by charter schools is... being a charter school.

Because it isn't the default option public school based on residency and requires an active choice, it automatically filters for active parents.

And because for most of the potential student base its farther from their default public school, it selects for logistical flexibility (loosely correlating to wealth and/or having a parent at home) as well.

ethbr17• 3 years ago

From the article,

> But there are key differences. For starters, families have access to housing and health care through the military, and at least one parent has a job.
> “Having as many of those basic needs met does help set the scene for learning to occur,” said Jessica Thorne, the principal at E.A. White Elementary, a school of about 350 students.

Spinnaker_3• 3 years ago

From my comment,

> don't take it seriously enough.

A serious comparison would be to schools in fairly well off neighbourhoods in the suburbs. But they don't do that.

red-iron-pine7• 3 years ago

so is it because military folks are better, or that society is skewing to unemployed single parents?

willcipriano• 3 years ago

Military households and the dependas that inhabit them aren't the stable footing you are imagining. The worst marriage stories I've heard happen under those circumstances.

Spinnaker_3• 3 years ago

There are many schools where over 70% of kids live in single parents households. I'm sure you have bad stories, but it's not comparable overall.

abtinf• 3 years ago

Charter schools do this by various selection effects, and artificial barriers, like ending at noon on a Wednesday.

You clearly have not had the pleasure of experiencing typical public schools in Washington state.

The schedules seemed designed to maximize hostility toward working parents. Inconsistent start and end times through the week, weird half days every week or every other week, and numerous random non-holiday off days throughout the year.

exabrial• 3 years ago

Your point is spot on, except here:

There will be few-to-no kids of poor single moms

Plenty of poor single moms with well behaved kids. The eternal problem is the lack of discipline at home. Successful kids grow up with structure, not being told yes all the time, are held accountable, and have a soft place to land when they make mistakes.

That is certainly harder to do with a single parent home, but it happens all the time in multi-parent homes as well.

oatmeal1• 3 years ago

Even if that is the case, it's better to have charter schools than none. Then at least the disruptive and/or violent kids that are unmotivated cannot disrupt the learning of kids that are motivated.

That being said, the existence of competition will raise the performance of all schools.

sandworm101• 3 years ago

> the Pentagon’s schools for children of military members and civilian employees.
> There will be few-to-no kids of poor single moms. All the kids will be well fed and groomed and socialized.

Have you looked at what US Army privates are actually paid? And I can tell you that there will be LOTS of single-parent households too. Lots of drug addicted parents/kids. The army isn't what it seen in the recruiting posters. it is a large community of young people with basically the same problems as any other group. There are some differences, parents are generally "employed", but there are also specific difficulties like absent mother/fathers and near-constant movements to new schools as young parents bounce between postings.

nitwit005• 3 years ago

Even a very basic filter has an extreme effect.

I used to take both public transport and a work shuttle. The difference was night and day. The filter of being able to hold a job eliminated all the problems you saw on the public transportation, excepting listening to music too loud.

ryan932• 3 years ago

You are purposefully avoiding the well known fact the military only draws from the top 70% of the intelligence distribution according to the AFQT.

sokoloff6• 3 years ago

Related, USAA was originally formed to offer insurance and later banking to military officers and their families. (They since expanded some offerings to enlisted and to civilians.)

It turns out that selecting for military officers has a beneficial impact on auto losses, putting USAA in a good position to offer competitive rates and outstanding service.

stonogo2• 3 years ago

USAA also isn't a typical insurance underwriter. It's essentially a giant self-insurance co-op, and for decades they would just terminate service if they decided you were outside their risk window, whether you otherwise qualified or not.

red-iron-pine7• 3 years ago

not impressive pay, but decent, and regularly on the 1st and 15th. also adjusted for inflation, and has some other unique market facets, like having younger folks being generally fit and healthy, and older, retired military folks getting pensions.

compare that with your average career bartender or construction worker

gustavus• 3 years ago

The same type of thing is in play in military schools. There will be few-to-no kids of poor single moms. All the kids will be well fed and groomed and socialized.

I grew up near a military base, and that describes very very few people.

no kids of poor single moms

I'd suggest taking a look at what the military pays before you make the claim no poor. As for single moms it turns out that divorce is a big problem and if your dad is stationed overseas for months at a time it's a lot like being a single parent, except with the constant wondering if you are going to get a letter saying your spouse has died.

All the kids will be well fed

I'll give you that can be the case, if the MLM and the 30% interest on the new Dodge Charger didn't take all the money.

groomed and socialized

It turns out that sending parents out of a child's life for long periods of time can cause lots of behavior issues, beyond often times people that make their way to the military come with a lot of baggage usually and although the military can be good at reforming people's lives into productive members of society it doesn't always translate to being a great parent.

It sounds like the kind of thing postulated by someone who didn't spend a lot of time around the military culture.

red-iron-pine7• 3 years ago

I'd suggest taking a look at what the military pays before you make the claim no poor....All the kids will be well fed

to this point, there are a lot of military families on food stamps.

plenty of hillbillys and hoodrats. plenty of bad areas near military bases, too.

but living on base or around base leads to a pretty strong monoculture. you also have a motivated cadre of military spouses -- who are often nurses and teachers -- and who often have to work hard to get jobs at a local school or hospital. you often get qualified teachers and nurses far exceeding the level you'd normally find in the rural areas near bases.

relaxing3• 3 years ago

Now do the same for the underperforming kids in an underperforming school.

I'd suggest taking a look at what the military pays before you make the claim no poor.

Less than public assistance?

As for single moms it turns out that divorce is a big problem

At least your divorced military ex-wife has a better chance of actually collecting alimony and child support.

I'll give you that can be the case, if the MLM and the 30% interest on the new Dodge Charger didn't take all the money.

Think predatory finance and scams doesn't exist off-base?

It turns out that sending parents out of a child's life for long periods of time can cause lots of behavior issues

More than experiencing housing insecurity, food insecurity, and never having that second parental figure in the first place?

lizardking• 3 years ago

I'll give you that can be the case, if the MLM and the 30% interest on the new Dodge Charger didn't take all the money.

As prior service army, the Dodge Charger bit is painfully true.

HonestOp001• 3 years ago

Most schools have one day a week with early release. That is not a feature of charter schools.

Additionally, kid’s are only as good as their parents can enable. Some parents see the schools as a babysitting service. Others see it as a reprieve from having their kids in the house.

If you have never been to a school to volunteer, go do it. You will see quite quickly that there are students who disrupt the classroom beyond teaching. The teacher must devolve the class to the lowest common denominator and thus the group suffers

wolverine8762• 3 years ago

The experts interviewed in the article agree with you.

ubermonkey• 3 years ago

Yeah, came here to say this. My BIL is an educator who started with TFA and then stood up a charter school with KIPP before going into independent schools.

Obviously and predictably, his startup charter succeeded -- wildly! -- but, to hear him tell it, a charter dropped into a struggling district absolutely will. It just does so at the expense of the district, because it pulls away the kids with motivated, supportive, engaged parents.

Turns out: motivated, supportive, engaged parenting is one of the absolutely best predictors of student educational achievement. Who knew?

So, sure, charters hurt districts, but the takeaway isn't just educational policy. It notes how intersectional these problems inevitably are. Poverty is going to make it super hard, for example, for a parent to be as involved and engaged as they might be with more of a safety net.

m463• 3 years ago

This is so true.

There is a school district in silicon valley, the cupertino schools, that have consistent high scores. This makes cupertino real estate valuable, because people can move into a good school district instead of sending their kids to a private school.

But I found out how they do it. If you try to enroll a kid with bad language skills, say spanish is their primary language, the school district sends the kids to an "appropriate" school (which happens to be in neighboring sunnyvale)

lol

fooker• 3 years ago

You are missing the second order effect.

get rid of the worst performing kids.

The threat of this consequence is often enough to motivate kids to study.

dventimi• 3 years ago

From the article:

"For starters, families have access to housing and health care through the military, and at least one parent has a job."

"Prudence Carter, a Brown University sociologist who studies educational inequality, said the Defense Department’s results showed what could happen when all students were given the resources of a typical middle-class child: housing, health care, food, quality teachers."

The article author argues that multiple factors contribute to this outcome, without identifying a dominant factor. Are you arguing that the selection effects you describe are the dominant factor?

AtlasBarfed• 3 years ago

It's almost like it advocates for a fundamentally better support/welfare system in America.

Because... that's what is basically happening in the military.

jeffbee• 3 years ago

If your kid is absent at a DoD school your CO will hound you. This makes a difference. There's also the slight difference that the military has socialized health care. When your kid is sick you take them to the doctor and that's that, while in civilian life small medical and especially dental issues go untreated and snowball into chronic absenteeism. Base life is really civilized in so many various ways. People violating the speed limit (20 MPH in housing areas) will be apprehended by armed MPs, so your kid can walk to school. Housing is often provided, even if it sucks, or subsidized, even if the allowance is below local market prices, so homelessness among active-duty families with children is practically nonexistent.

Kon-Peki• 3 years ago

There's also the slight difference that the military has socialized health care. When your kid is sick you take them to the doctor and that's that

Reminds me of a past vacation. Had a friend that was a pediatrician in the Army, based in Hawaii. We were all hanging out at the beach, and a kid cuts his hand on something. The friend walks over, says he's a doctor, asks if he can help out. The kid has a very apprehensive look on his face, so the friend smiles and says "I know, you're not sure I'm a doctor because I haven't asked your parents for their insurance"

OrvalWintermute3• 3 years ago

so homelessness among active-duty families with children is practically nonexistent

A Commanding Officer will make sure the kids get food & housing for sure even if they have to force through allotments adversarially.

Scubabear682• 3 years ago

It's not a high bar to beat, at least here in New Jersey. Nearly all of our school boards are non-professional, non-compensated elected officials, and a large percentage of Superintendents started their career as gym teachers.

The net result is schools that hire hoards of consultants to try to meet professional standards, but fail anyway, while spending vast sums of tax payer dollars. Covid funds earmarked towards bridging the learning gap from closed schools during the pandemic are spent on fancy laptops, new athletic facilities, sound systems for auditoriums. Absenteeism is skyrocketing, and teachers are not only not encouraged to enforce discipline, they're actively told to let out of control students slide. Social promotion is on the rise, and standardized test scores are tanking.

We finally gave up in my local district and ended up paying a fortune to send both our kids to private schools. After an initial many-months-long struggle to catch up with their new private school classmates (because of the public school deficits), they are both doing much better. Money well spent, but I still send taxes to an ineffective district that spends money like water, and where educational value is dead last in their priorities.

They even introduced a course in Graphic Novels at the high school this year, while 75% of kids fail standardized science testing, and 60% fail in math.

ecshafer2• 3 years ago

New Jersey also has the system of Magnet schools at the county level, which have some of the best high schools in the country (high technology highschool, middlesex academy for math and science, union county magnet school, etc). They reasonably require tests and maintaining of discipline. Discipline is key to having effective schools, and if either students or parents are undermining it, schools can't be effective.

nameless912• 3 years ago

It remains extremely strange to me that we have our school boards be largely totally non-professional laypeople in the US. Obviously there's no absolute requirement that you be a "professional" for almost any elected position in the US, but school boards are one of those situations, like judges and comptrollers, where it seems like there should be some basic qualifications for running. Especially because many of the folks elected to school boards are either 1) crazies with a bone to pick with a specific teacher/administrator/school or 2) moderately ambitious ladder climbers hoping to launch their political careers without having to work too hard.

mrguyorama• 3 years ago

Are you voting out the bad and ineffective actors in your local school system?

Scubabear682• 3 years ago

We are trying. It is very difficult though, the most effective people don’t want the job, and the Board pushes “feel good” politics on everyone, and they do the best they can to hide bad news (although sunshine laws thwarts that if you know how to dig and where to look).

Use of software like Board docks makes finding info 10x harder as well, what a steaming pile of crap that is.

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 3 years ago

My feeling is that school performance is denominated by the students and parents.

If for example, you took the best performing school district and the worst performing school district and swapped just the parents and students keeping the school staff, administration, and facilities the same, the previously best school district would end up near the bottom and the previously worst school district would end up near the top.

OrvalWintermute3• 3 years ago

“The military isn’t perfect — there is still racism in the military,” said Leslie Hinkson, a former Georgetown University sociologist who studied integration in Defense Department schools. But what is distinctive, she said, “is this access to resources in a way that isn’t racialized.”

Racism in the military is a career ender for officers and enlisted kind of like getting a DUI but worse. What is more in the system is a "good ole buddy system", where high performers often do favors for each other across racial, preference, and gender lines.

My parents both taught in California and I've been friends with many from DoDEA and here is a TLDR;

Please hold the downvoting for political reasons

-Engaged parents, most are NCOs, officers and civil servants

-Well Funded, like, $1M+ housing area school districts

-Low ratios of teachers to students

-All students are US citizens or foreign nationals from partner nations

-Great teachers, some overseas location have insane competition for teacher slots, some professors jump to DoDEA slots

-bilingual students that are smart seems the norm

-no problems with illegal aliens, or ESL brand new to English swamping 20% of the class particularly at higher grades like what happens in some parts of CA

-Some locations have DoDEA are the very choicest in the US military, so they attract the creme de la creme of overachievers competing for very limited slots

I'd describe the DoDEA schools as similar to the very best public schools in the US, but you can find other government schools that run similar programs to DoDEA

You can find eligibility for DoDEA at https://dodea.widen.net/content/rlhgfasqfx/original/ai-1344-...

ryan932• 3 years ago

Are you purposefully not mentioning the IQ cutoffs the military uses for soldiers. it has been as high as the 50th percentile for the air force.

OrvalWintermute3• 3 years ago

I’m not mentioning military selectivity because it is highly variable based on the strength of the US economy.

In the Army for example, the highest ASVAB averages are held by infantry & special forces (which is ironic given the low ASVAB requirements for infantry). Many people join the infantry for 4 years only, as a part of a “See action, travel, shoot guns” post highschool before college mindset.

Eumenes• 3 years ago

The NYT is an apparatus of the intelligence agencies, and coincidentally military recruitment is down ... this is subliminal advertisement for recruitment. Coupled with war in Ukraine and incoming war in the Middle east, in addition to new recruiting tactics (https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/10/03/army-unveils-...), expect to see alot more praise of the DoD/Military in MSM outlets like the NYT.

ethbr17• 3 years ago

It wouldn't be subliminal. It would be a blatant advertisement.

Are you suggesting the NYT and/or military school system are fabricating achievement results?

morkalork• 3 years ago

When I think of 18 kids looking at their options in life and weighing how tf they're going to pay for college and is considering the military, I'm not imagining someone who casually reads the New York Times.

genghisjahn• 3 years ago

Seems like maybe the US Department of Defense is better at socialism than the rest of the country.

0823498723498722• 3 years ago

red-iron-pine7• 3 years ago

easy to be good at it when you literally own the servicemembers, can dictate every facet of their life, and have a never-ending cashflow

i had a decent time in the service, given when i joined (2003), but i did my 5 years and have 0 interest in living like that again

anarticle2• 3 years ago

DoD schools person here, a major point left out of this article is that if you do something bad enough in school your parent's CO will be notified and this can have real career results. In a foreign country you can get deported if you do something stupid enough to warrant it.

I went to several DoD and civilian schools, NC (dod), NJ (civ), Erie PA (civ), Okinawa (dod), NJ (civ). I would say the standards are higher in DoD, mostly because of standardized curriculum. In civilian world, the variance is very high. In South NJ things were more rigid, in Erie more lax.

As for "not having social groups" this can be a plus, looking at my civilian counterparts in high school. It has pluses and minuses, but being an outgroup in high school let me leave that stuff behind much easier on my way to college. It makes me an alien to most of civilian world, but many benefits.

Housing is provided in the military.

AMA. I am anecdotal, but I have seen both sides at all three levels split down the middle.

Edit: I definitely received an education way above my parents earning level, I am first to go to college in my family. I went to a very good engineering school.

ethbr17• 3 years ago

Do you feel you faced any detrimental challenges your non-military family peers didn't, as you made the transition from high school to college? If so, what?

Have a child soon to be in a similar situation, so any thoughts helpful.

anarticle2• 3 years ago

The major benefit/challenge of being a military kid that moved every 2-3y is that you make friends really fast and resocialize very easily. This also means you don't have any roots. My example is often that my friends in high school were friends since kindergarten, something I have no frame of reference for. It probably only hurt in high school for sports and clique based activities.

For going from highschool to college there is almost zero negative, since it's the nth time you've moved and had to rebuild a social structure.

Consider the number of total school changes for an average domestic student is 3. K-5, 6-8, 9-12, and in those cases they keep their friend groups.

alistairSH2• 3 years ago

According to the article, the Dod educates 66k students. That's less than half the size of my county. Yet, the comparison is DoD vs states, not the more useful DoD vs counties (or some unit closer in size).

I'd love to see how DoD schools compare against top-notch school systems. And average school systems (in case the quality of country school districts isn't a bell curve for some reason).

red-iron-pine7• 3 years ago

The #1 public school in the US is Thomas Jefferson in Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS). FCPS is a suburb of DC, and a fantastic amount of the kids there are children of military servicemembers and FedGov civilians.

A lot of those well paid contractors are former military as well.

jmoss207• 3 years ago

Yeah, this is along the lines of my comment. (Am a military brat, attended some DoD schools, also attended a school in FCPS.)

The educational rigor across different districts is massive. Many military kids get to sample from it a lot of times (possibly even with a bias for FCPS in particular!); other kids get to sample it ~once. There is probably some huge reversion to the mean at play here.

alistairSH2• 3 years ago

Yup. I grew up and live in Fairfax County. The wealthy DC suburbs have schools that are so far better than the rest of the states (MD and VA). The massive differences between systems makes a state-level comparison far less useful.

loughnane• 3 years ago

I spent Kindergarten to 4th grade on Hanscom A.F.B. near Lexington, MA. I didn't appreciate it at the time, but it hindsight it had lots going for it:

- No such thing as unemployment

- A strong community (Hanscom was also a small, walk-to-school) neighborhood

- The schools were indeed good (had several computers in the 2nd grade classroom in 1992).

There is a self-selecting element to it though; if you lose your job you're out of the community. The line between personal problems and professional problems---I came to find out later---is much blurrier than in the "real world". Also health care is crazy cheap.

I don't know if it could, or should, scale society wide. The social benefits are nice, but the authoritarian bent isn't.

Neat article though, gets you thinking.

nosequel3• 3 years ago

This got touched on by a few replies, happy to see there are some others here with actual military experience chiming in.

I grew up on military bases, and went to schools both on and off base for 18 years. All continental US bases typically have elementary-level (K-5) school, but you typically go to an off-base school for middle and high school. When you are overseas, this isn't the case, you would most likely go to school on base K-12.

I think the article gets right a lot of things, but as some other's mentioned there are also things it doesn't catch. There are still bad kids on base, who do tons of drugs, commit crimes, cheat, steal, whatever. These kids are in every population. One huge difference between on base schools and off, is if you got in trouble at school, your sponsor's (Mom/Dad whoever is the active duty in the family) CO (commanding officer) gets informed. This can lead to a tongue lashing at the least, and at the most your sponsor can get passed up on the next promotion list or demoted. Kids would get caught selling drugs, they would get suspended and then their Dad or Mom would usually make their life a living hell for a while. It would turn most kids around pretty quickly.

The worst one I know about first hand was a group of kids on base in California (a very remote base btw) had a little theft ring of the base exchange (BX, like target/walmart on base). The MP's found out about it, watched them work for a while, then arrested all of the kids. They were high schoolers, probably 15-17. I think 4 got caught. The result was each of their families were kicked off base, no longer able to live in free base housing. As stated elsewhere, military families aren't paid well at all, so now these families had to move off base and rent a house. Once again, this was a super remote base, and it was easily a 35 min drive from main base to the nearest housing off base. I will tell you the rest of our school suddenly got really well behaved for the rest of the year.

Once again, I think the NYT touched on most of the reasons schools were generally better, but to me discipline was a huge factor. You typically didn't have that one shithead in your class ruining it for everyone else.

jmoss207• 3 years ago

This sounds familiar -- I wonder if we were there at the same time.

nosequel3• 3 years ago

I was there '94->'98

rascul• 3 years ago

The result was each of their families were kicked off base, no longer able to live in free base housing. As stated elsewhere, military families aren't paid well at all, so now these families had to move off base and rent a house.

The service member generally receives a housing allowance if they live off base. I don't know if they receive it after being kicked out of base housing, though.

jjeaff• 3 years ago

Did you ever see any statistics to back up your perception that all the kids were extra well behaved for the rest of the year? The reason I ask is that we've all heard the whole "tough on crime" schtick and I feel like it has never really been proven out to be all that effective. especially on kids. plenty of kids receive penalties far more severe for the parents than having to move off base (like expulsion with no other schools around). And yet school discipline problems continue after each expulsion.

nosequel3• 3 years ago

I mean, there weren't "statistics". We had a school of 300 kids and I could nearly name every one of them. After shit went down, everyone calmed the hell down. I don't know how to prove it or anything, but when people really needed to fight or something, they took it WAAAY off base.

0823498723498722• 3 years ago

The DoD is progressive in more than one way: unlike much of the rest of the country they also started desegregating during the 1948-1954 time period...

ForOldHack• 3 years ago

Most very unfortunately, I have to reluctantly agree, but for reasons that are completely hidden: My CS program design teacher, would do three things: He would write the subjects he would cover on the board, and then cover them, and secondly he would check them off. When ever a question would come up from a past lecture, he would ask if someone else had the notes to answer the question, well. Guess who kept the best notes? I also ran the study hall after class. Aced all classes. I finally got up the nerve to ask him directly: "Where did you learn those three things?" "Oh! The Military." Turns out that those three exact things are used to 1) Write English essays, 2) Critique plays, 3) and organize client therapeutic meetings. etc. etc. etc. 4) organize code walk throughs and 5) multi team debugging sessions.

Yes, Jeff Withe. Diablo Valley College.

relaxing3• 3 years ago

It would be great if you wrote some more on that 3 step process and how it worked - sounds really interesting.

jmoss207• 3 years ago

I grew up on military installations and attended some DoD schools. Some things unmentioned/underemphasized:

Families PCS (move) extremely often -- sometimes every school year, frequently every few years. Some places have DoD schools "on base", some do not, with students instead attend the local public schools. Some of those public schools are majority military kids, some are not.

DoD schools may have a consistent curriculum (not sure), but public schools across states/countries certainly do not. Constant moves mean students get a fractured, redundant curriculum. (Comically, I recall learning about the "Explorer" in History class no less than three times.)

Some bases are located in well-off areas with great public education, many others are not. Students might find themselves one year learning algebra, the next back to basic multiplication. Schools tend to be stubbornly inflexible and will not make accommodations on their own. Extremely attentive and pushy parents may get weak accommodations (e.g., letting students moving full grade levels up/down; something difficult to explain later), but it's rare.

Added to this is impact of constant social upheaval + stress of parents deployment, lack of lasting friendships, etc.

This is all to say -- you would not expect this population of kids to do well academically! The fact that they seem to (as measured in these tests at DoD schools) should be really surprising, and probably has little to do with the DoD schools themselves. They're after all only responsible for part (often a small part) of these kids' education.

---

My main guesses at the real drivers here are:

1. (As mentioned in the article) It's a different world on base. Parents have a massive stake in their children's behavior -- and the students know this. No one wants their parent to get an earful from their CO, and it does happen. (This is most pronounced at DoD schools, but also extends off base.)

Drug and alcohol use is exceedingly rare, due to the above + how serious an offense it is on base.

It's true also that there's a modest baseline of economic + social support. Maybe not as much as the article suggests, but it's not nothing.

2. Simple reversion to the mean. The DoD schools are full of kids with a really diverse set of educational experience. Maybe some of the good experiences are even a bit "sticky" -- habits and skill learned transferring over to new environments, maybe even bad ones. Maybe it's not surprising that that population wins vs. the baseline (where kids only get a homogenous, mostly-good or mostly-bad experience). - If the good skills and habits are "contagious", maybe DoD schools even help spread them across this population.

3. The tests are mostly measuring the lower portion of the distribution. Well-off schools will have most students clipping the top end of the measurement. Many DoD students attend those schools! (At least for a time.)

This is going to seriously amplify (2), but also (1) and other things to the extent that they improve (or remove from the sample) the worst-off students.

Simulacra• 3 years ago

I went to school at Fort Gordon for two years, and the impression I got was that if I got in trouble, my parents got in trouble, and that would have been way worse. In public schools however, it never crossed my mind that my parents could get in trouble for something I did in school.

With the military schools, there is a huge element of parental responsibility and that's why I think it made them great.

eimrine• 3 years ago

What are smartphone/ipad policy in these schools?

JoeAltmaier• 3 years ago

Discipline has to be a factor. Big issue in military families.

fwungy• 3 years ago

1) Military has minimum intelligence standards for entry and intelligence is a heritable trait.

2) Military members are required to show discipline and are held accountable.

Both of these factors make military schools different from public schools.

Smart children will learn with bad teachers. Dumb children will not learn no matter how much you spend on them.

stainablesteel• 3 years ago

that's great, although the article doesn't spill much information other than saying they're insulated from bureaucratic institutions (a pretty good start)

i don't see beating public school performance as a high bar, public schools are terrible

acton academy is the gold standard imo, i love hearing about other education paradigms though.

WillAdams• 3 years ago

The best school system I ever attended was a DOD-funded public school in rural Mississippi --- there were less than a dozen students from the local community, the balance were all from the Air Force Base.

Every teacher had at least a Master's Degree (pay was very good, and it was a very desirable school system to work at), and they had a system in place which firmly divided classes between academic and social --- for academic classes, one worked at one's ability level (up to four grades ahead until 8th grade when that was lifted), while social classes were at one's grade level. After 8th grade, one could begin taking college classes (some of the teachers were accredited as as faculty at a nearby college) --- if there wasn't a teacher available for a given class, then arrangements were made for a professor to come to the school, or for the student to travel to the college.

Many students would graduate high school and simultaneously receive a college degree.

The Mississippi State Supreme Court decided that the school was inherently unfair since it provided a notable benefit to students who studied hard and learned well without a corresponding benefit to those who would not do so.

paulpauper• 3 years ago

Military recruits typically are of the top 50% of IQ via the AFQT test, so the lower half is truncated, and IQ is largely hereditary, so children's scores reflect parent's scores. This could explain some of it.

throwaway893472• 3 years ago

Public school teacher here. Public schools have been in a downward slide for decades. If you want to know what's wrong, just brace yourself and ask a teacher. Alas, many people want to believe it's the teachers' fault, and so rarely bother to ask the teachers. Or, failing that, people think it's just that teachers aren't paid enough and think more money will fix the problems (more money would be nice, but that's not the problem).

It's very straightforward to fix public schools, but, in my view:

* few people actually want to know what the problems are,

* only a fraction of those people will speak up and say something about addressing the problems, and

* only a small fraction of those people would have the wherewithal to actually push for the solutions to be implemented.

Fact is, good teachers are constantly being driven out of the profession. It's just too arduous and heartbreaking, and every year it gets worse.

chii• 3 years ago

So what is the real problem, pray tell?

throwaway893472• 3 years ago

Sorry. I typed out a reply, but it's like 5 pages. There's a lot wrong. Here's something extremely boiled down:

Too many administrators. Students having their phones in school. Out of control administrators who waste teachers' time. Students roaming halls. Phones. No consequences for skipping class, roaming halls, or cheating (administrators not enforcing discipline). Administrators desperate to get everyone to pass and graduate. Phones. Administrators pressuring teachers to pass students. No dress code. Endless accommodations for students. Endless meetings soaking up valuable teacher time. Administrators disallowing midterms and finals because that would cause too many students to fail their classes (now, many teachers are required to have projects and presentations, or similar as midterms and as finals). Valuable instruction time lost due to standardized testing. Rampant cheating. Zero consequences for students' behavior (extremely rare to see an out-of-school suspension, and expulsion is unheard of these days). Block scheduling (4 long periods per day) because students won't do homework (or will just cheat/copy/paste). Administrators constantly pushing group work, projects, posters (rather than real focused work).

There's more but I'm trying to stop typing now.

nunez2• 3 years ago

Budget two hours. Go on /r/teachers. Sort by top, all year. Read most of the posts and the comments.

Whats happened to public schools is a god damn travesty.

subpixel• 3 years ago

I went to a DoDDDS middle school in Germany. Why was it so great?

It’s the military, stupid. Things work as well as they do because discipline.

7e• 3 years ago

Here, you have kids whose parents are employed (that is, not on welfare, can do their job) and the kids are strongly motivated to do well in school so they don’t have to join the military, like their parents did.

oldbbsnickname• 3 years ago

Probably an obsolete datapoint: My parents were both children of US military and educated domestically and internationally between 1955 - 1966. Although my mom became an accountant and dad was a mechanic, they were well-educated compared to the average American. They grew up in a time where college was for about 40% of high school graduates.

It's also obsolete but worth mentioning my grandfather, child of blue-collar people, still had to take Latin and French in a 1930's Stamford, Connecticut public school. Although he was a mechanic, electronics hobbyist, and home-improver, he owned Jeopardy almost to Ken Jennings'-level. He grew up in a time where not everyone went past 7th grade education (12.5 yrs old on average).

I think there are 4 positive traits of military culture that civilian culture doesn't appreciate:

- Excellence - doing more, striving, mastery, competitiveness

- Discipline - self-restraint, following through, doing hard things, completing a task

- Collectivism - other people are important, a team can accomplish more than one person

- Egalitarianism - treat everyone equally, respect the office not the individual

mleo• 3 years ago

I spent the entirety of my elementary through high school life on a military base and schools on it.

1. On our base, school involvement was “easier” for the enlisted parent. They usually worked consistent hours and were available for after school involvement. They weren’t generally working late and night shifts allowing time to be involved with sports and other school activities.

2. Healthcare was provided and for regular services it was consistent and available. While we didn’t have to pay for it, we would often spend several hours at urgent care waiting to get seen when one of kids was not feeling well. It was a little strange that when I went to college, I had little understanding about how to go about seeing a doctor.

3. We had a small school which allowed everyone to know each other by name, even if we weren’t friends on day to day basis. We knew who was enlisted kids and who were officer kids and who were staff kids. This didn’t generally color attitudes, just part of who we were. It was a good community.

4. We had access to technology early and part of what led me to career in tech.

5. It was a very diverse environment of kids. It was just the way it was and I never gave any thought to race growing up.

6. We had a decent house on base (1950s brick) with each kid having their own room. If there was issues, like ceiling falling in on kitchen, base housing fixed the issues.

All of this took burdens off of my parents and us kids. I try to provide my kids with opportunities I had or even more than I had, but it certainly is a much different environment to do so.

wiskinator• 3 years ago

An important thing to take from this is that if you pay your teachers well, and also make sure that all the kids in school have a house (since military folk get housing for their families), and at least one parent is paid well, then the kids do well (and don’t write run on sentences like me).

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK• 3 years ago

How the results are measured? I imagine teachers acting as drill sergeants, perfect discipline in the class and children who forgot their homework doing push ups. The results of standardized tests such as PISA can be pretty high this way. But how many high achieving creatives, scientists, disruptors come out of these schools?

RecycledEle• 3 years ago

Get rid of the misbehavers and you get better results for everyone.

When the military can discipline parents for misbehaving kids, the kids do not misbehave.

woldemariam• 3 years ago

dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37830605

Schools for children of military achieve results rarely seen in public education

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