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Why The Pentagon run the best schools and the safest nuclear program

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Re: Why The Pentagon run the best schools and the safest nuclear program

#11

Post by thaumasiotes »

whimsicalism wrote: post #7

> This same institution operates America’s highest-performing school system. DoDEA students scored 234 in fourth-grade reading on the 2024 NAEP, outperforming the national average of 214. That’s roughly two grade levels ahead. In eighth-grade math, DoDEA scored 291 versus 272 nationally. When 2024 NAEP results showed national reading scores declining, DoDEA was the only jurisdiction where scores increased. How again…

The military imposes strict IQ thresholds on those seeking to join.

That's the point of the Armed Forces Qualifying Test.

Re: Why The Pentagon run the best schools and the safest nuclear program

#12

Post by terminalshort »

austin-cheney wrote: post #2

> If DoDEA demonstrates sustained K-12 excellence, the military’s technical training programs showcase something even more striking: the ability to take 18-year-old high school graduates and transform them into operators of extraordinarily complex systems, safely and at scale. What I found most striking is that last word: scale . Most people employed to write software cannot write original applications of any size. T…

The military training programs have exactly one goal and that is to train. They have the ability to set their standards and enforce them ruthlessly. Public schools have many goals besides education, have to keep their students (and more importantly the parents of those students) happy, and have no ability to select their students and very little ability to fail them out and remove them, and can be sued for anything at any time. It's pretty clear why military training is superior.

As for software, I have never heard the military or government accused of being good at building it, so I don't really see your point there.

Re: Why The Pentagon run the best schools and the safest nuclear program

#13

Post by duskwuff »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #11
whimsicalism wrote: post #7

> This same institution operates America’s highest-performing school system. DoDEA students scored 234 in fourth-grade reading on the 2024 NAEP, outperforming the national average of 214. That’s roughly two grade levels ahead. In eighth-grade math, DoDEA scored 291 versus 272 nationally. When 2024 NAEP results showed national reading scores declining, DoDEA was the only jurisdiction where scores increased. How again…

The military imposes strict IQ thresholds on those seeking to join. That's the point of the Armed Forces Qualifying Test.

DoDEA teaches the children of military families, not the enlisted themselves.

Re: Why The Pentagon run the best schools and the safest nuclear program

#14

Post by terminalshort »

The article addresses selection bias, but it doesn't do justice to just how strong that bias is. The military tests all enlistees, and the cutoff is an IQ of around 92 (https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/37491/is-it-truly-il...). If a public school could immediately exclude its dumbest 30%, things would look quite a bit different.

Re: Why The Pentagon run the best schools and the safest nuclear program

#15

Post by RetiredRichard »

somenameforme wrote: post #9

This seems like a clear selection bias. One of the reasons, and probably the main one, that public schools are awful is because a very small number of highly disruptive kids can completely ruin the education of an entire class of other kids. Public schools generally have no way to get rid of these children and their parents also generally don't care. These are also of course the kids that are going to score abysmally…

"This creates a “bit” of challenge. We can observe that the military implements systematically and produces superior results, but we cannot cleanly separate method effects from selection effects without experiments that will never happen."

The article keeps bring up selection effects

Re: Why The Pentagon run the best schools and the safest nuclear program

#16

Post by sailfast »

ADM Rickover was no small part of the success of the nuclear program if I recall it right. Rigorous standards and a culture of safety.

I also wonder if culturally DODEA is cut from a similar cloth and had a similarly strong founding impetus / strategy. The pentagon / DoD contains multitudes, and the culture of each branch, agency, etc are all different in different ways. Some for the better… some worse.

Re: Why The Pentagon run the best schools and the safest nuclear program

#17

Post by rtpg »

terminalshort wrote: post #12
austin-cheney wrote: post #2

> If DoDEA demonstrates sustained K-12 excellence, the military’s technical training programs showcase something even more striking: the ability to take 18-year-old high school graduates and transform them into operators of extraordinarily complex systems, safely and at scale. What I found most striking is that last word: scale . Most people employed to write software cannot write original applications of any size. T…

The military training programs have exactly one goal and that is to train. They have the ability to set their standards and enforce them ruthlessly. Public schools have many goals besides education, have to keep their students (and more importantly the parents of those students) happy, and have no ability to select their students and very little ability to fail them out and remove them, and can be sued for anything a…

Do military K-12 schools not face similar dynamics? It's not like the kids are who are in the military, right?

Obviously there are still different dynamics between an arbitrary public school and a school on a military base in Kanagawa for many reasons, but I have to imagine that there are similar diversity of goals and lack of "throwing out" the kids in these schools.

Just seems like the flavor of challenges that public schools face and k-12 mil schools face are a bit similar, except for a huge one: the kids in the mil schools are much more likely to have three square meals a day(etc etc).

Re: Why The Pentagon run the best schools and the safest nuclear program

#18

Post by [deleted] »

austin-cheney wrote: post #2

> If DoDEA demonstrates sustained K-12 excellence, the military’s technical training programs showcase something even more striking: the ability to take 18-year-old high school graduates and transform them into operators of extraordinarily complex systems, safely and at scale. What I found most striking is that last word: scale . Most people employed to write software cannot write original applications of any size. T…

[deleted]

Re: Why The Pentagon run the best schools and the safest nuclear program

#19

Post by lmm »

duskwuff wrote: post #13
thaumasiotes wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The military imposes strict IQ thresholds on those seeking to join. That's the point of the Armed Forces Qualifying Test.

DoDEA teaches the children of military families, not the enlisted themselves.

While it's fashionable to pretend otherwise, the best available evidence is that inheritance is highly heritable.

Re: Why The Pentagon run the best schools and the safest nuclear program

#20

Post by lovich »

somenameforme wrote: post #9

This seems like a clear selection bias. One of the reasons, and probably the main one, that public schools are awful is because a very small number of highly disruptive kids can completely ruin the education of an entire class of other kids. Public schools generally have no way to get rid of these children and their parents also generally don't care. These are also of course the kids that are going to score abysmally…

In what world is the US military suddenly known for having higher IQ than average in the enlisted ranks?
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