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

nytimes.com

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

#21

Post by zeroCalories »

joshhart wrote: post #7

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…

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.

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

#22

Post by colechristensen »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #17
Spinnaker_ wrote: post #8

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 pic…

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…

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?

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

#23

Post by OrvalWintermute »

jeffbee wrote: post #10

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 viola…

> 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.

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

#24

Post by ethbr1 »

Spinnaker_ wrote: post #8

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 pic…

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.

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

#25

Post by stonogo »

eYrKEC2 wrote: post #13
Spinnaker_ wrote: post #8

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 pic…

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

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.

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

#26

Post by parineum »

colechristensen wrote: post #22
HDThoreaun wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

> But what should we do with the rest?

The answer to that question is _something_ but I think the real question is "who is 'we'?"

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

#28

Post by Eumenes »

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.

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

#29

Post by HDThoreaun »

colechristensen wrote: post #22
HDThoreaun wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

It's a very important question. I don't have the answer. What I do know is that forcing underprivileged students to attend schools that cause them to fear for their safety or even life is inhumane. Charter schools are solving that in my district.

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

#30

Post by ethbr1 »

zeroCalories wrote: post #21
joshhart wrote: post #7

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…

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 d…

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.

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