Who Runs the Best US Schools? It May Be the Defense Department (nytimes.com) 94
Schools for children of military members achieve results rarely seen in public education. From a report: Amy Dilmar, a middle-school principal in Georgia, is well aware of the many crises threatening American education. The lost learning that piled up during the coronavirus pandemic. The gaping inequalities by race and family income that have only gotten worse. A widening achievement gap between the highest- and lowest-performing students. But she sees little of that at her school in Fort Moore, Ga. The students who solve algebra equations and hone essays at Faith Middle School attend one of the highest-performing school systems in the country. It is run not by a local school board or charter network, but by the Defense Department. With about 66,000 students -- more than the public school enrollment in Boston or Seattle -- the Pentagon's schools for children of military members and civilian employees quietly achieve results most educators can only dream of.
On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal exam that is considered the gold standard for comparing states and large districts, the Defense Department's schools outscored every jurisdiction in math and reading last year and managed to avoid widespread pandemic losses. Their schools had the highest outcomes in the country for Black and Hispanic students, whose eighth-grade reading scores outpaced national averages for white students. Eighth graders whose parents only graduated from high school -- suggesting lower family incomes, on average -- performed as well in reading as students nationally whose parents were college graduates. The schools reopened relatively quickly during the pandemic, but last year's results were no fluke. While the achievement of U.S. students overall has stagnated over the last decade, the military's schools have made gains on the national test since 2013. And even as the country's lowest-performing students -- in the bottom 25th percentile -- have slipped further behind, the Defense Department's lowest-performing students have improved in fourth-grade math and eighth-grade reading.
On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal exam that is considered the gold standard for comparing states and large districts, the Defense Department's schools outscored every jurisdiction in math and reading last year and managed to avoid widespread pandemic losses. Their schools had the highest outcomes in the country for Black and Hispanic students, whose eighth-grade reading scores outpaced national averages for white students. Eighth graders whose parents only graduated from high school -- suggesting lower family incomes, on average -- performed as well in reading as students nationally whose parents were college graduates. The schools reopened relatively quickly during the pandemic, but last year's results were no fluke. While the achievement of U.S. students overall has stagnated over the last decade, the military's schools have made gains on the national test since 2013. And even as the country's lowest-performing students -- in the bottom 25th percentile -- have slipped further behind, the Defense Department's lowest-performing students have improved in fourth-grade math and eighth-grade reading.
easy reasons why (Score:5, Insightful)
The schools don't have to tolerate bad behavior (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the third reason. It's not enough to hold the parents responsible, you have to be able to hold the kids accountable.
You'll never see a DoD school tolerate the sort of garbage behavior that is normal from students in the inner cities. Even the minority kids whose parents left those places will be held to a real standard.
Try that in an inner city and you'll have no shortage of people crying "dat racissss" at you, including a bunch of well off people who want to virtue signal.
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It isn't just the inner cities. Those fine upstanding Americans in the Heartland think Johnny can do no wrong and doesn't need science or math.
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It isn't just the inner cities. Those fine upstanding Americans in the Heartland think Johnny can do no wrong and doesn't need science or math.
I can tell you don't have kids. Go to a PTA conference, have the teacher lie to your face and then tell me that. Then look on the administrator's face in that meeting, you won't see surprise or disappointment, what you will see is the, "oh no, not again" look. Because its the same 2 or 3 teachers that always have this happen to them again and again. That happens because that person is a terrible teacher and shouldn't be working in this job. But they are in the union and the administration can't fire th
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Re:The schools don't have to tolerate bad behavior (Score:5, Interesting)
But they are in the union and the administration can't fire them.
Unqualified teachers working on an emergency teaching license aren't eligible to join the union because they're not actually teachers. That's who's teaching in Oklahoma, where emergency teachers make barely more than minimum wage and an actually qualified teacher with a masters degree and a teaching license is better off quitting to manage a QuikTrip. Or move to Brooklyn to help run the New York Public Library. We've seen both in recent history.
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But they are in the union and the administration can't fire them.
DoD just assigns them to Fallujah Elementary.
Re:The schools don't have to tolerate bad behavior (Score:4, Interesting)
That happens because that person is a terrible teacher and shouldn't be working in this job.
You get what you pay for. You pay low wages and you get low quality work. Maybe ask the administrators how many new applicants they have received. The answer is going to be zero.
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It isn't just the inner cities. Those fine upstanding Americans in the Heartland think Johnny can do no wrong and doesn't need science or math.
Many folks in the US Heartland only think Johnny needs football [that's American Football to the rest of the world]
Re: The schools don't have to tolerate bad behavio (Score:5, Insightful)
Inner city nothing. Try someplace where mom's a lawyer and dad's a surgeon. Those little shits get away with anybdamn thing because the districts are tired of fighting them.
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We had to test to get into the school, lots of people couldn't qualify. Students who misbehaved too much or failed classes just suddenly weren't there anymore.
Mostly everyone paid a boatload of tuition, with a few students skating by on need scholarships. Those kids, however, were brilliant.
Re: The schools don't have to tolerate bad behavio (Score:5, Insightful)
Best one I ever saw was the very bright kid who was the son of two lawyers. Half-way through sophomore year he goes from straight As to Cs. Parents lose their shit, want the teachers investigated, want the school to fix the problem, threaten administrators, etc. "What are you doing to our child!!!"
The band teacher opens his instrument locker and a bag of weed falls out. Mandatory 1 week suspension, drug counseling, and a possible expulsion for that. So his responsible parents threaten to sue the school out of existence, because they couldn't prove it was their kid's weed. Anyone could have put it in his locker! And their kid doesn't have a fuckton of disposable income and zero fear of consequences, so he can't be smoking weed!
Week after the school backs down from any sort of punishment they buy him a red convertible mustang for his 16th birthday.
And we wonder sometimes why there are absolutely raging assholes in the world with zero regard for anyone around them.
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Best one I ever saw was the very bright kid who was the son of two lawyers. [...] Week after the school backs down from any sort of punishment [his parents] buy him a red convertible mustang for his 16th birthday.
very bright and chooses a red mustang? pick one.
Re: The schools don't have to tolerate bad behavi (Score:1)
I've long stressed holding people accountable for themselves, but by and large progressives, democrats, the left, or whatever you want to call it, place a huge emphasis on collectivism, "everyone belongs to everyone", "it takes a village to raise a child", etc, and fundamentally seem to believe that personal responsibility is immoral.
I remember how hard high school was for me, but college was so easy in comparison. Everybody said it would be harder but my experience was the exact opposite. I think the reaso
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Where I'm sitting in a rich white suburb, the cry isn't "dat racisss" we're all white, it's parents running in to defend their kids idiotic behavior and blaming teachers, or explaining why subject x,y,z is unnecessary, being taught wrong, ungodly, pornographic, not interesting, wahtever, and thus their kids are "bored" and (real example) breaking toilets in half.
Holding parents responsible is important, but difficult to do in the wild, particularly in the south where "parents rights" seems to be in vogue. S
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Dear ignorant racist:
You're full of it. Black parents would *love* to have better schools and teaching.
Meanwhile, Aryan, sorry, white supremecists like you are doing their best to kill public education (and libraries) in states where your buddies are in control.
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You'll never see a DoD school tolerate the sort of garbage behavior that is normal from students in the inner cities
Schools in the "inner cities" don't tolerate it, either. But then the students just drop out.
The biggest issue is this: All students in DoD schools have:
-Parents who are employed and have stable housing.
-Health insurance and access to health care and preventive care.
-Access to sufficient food.
If those three things were provided for all students in the "inner cities" (that's an outdated term), then you would see huge jumps in school achievement.
Re: The schools don't have to tolerate bad behavio (Score:2)
Honestly this sounds like nothing more than typical Bernie bro talking points based on absolutely nothing. Particularly considering these schools seem to outperform even schools in wealthy neighborhoods where presumably they have even better access to all of the above.
Re:easy reasons why (Score:4, Informative)
Well funded schools and the parents can be held responsible for their kids = great school systems
Oh you sweet summer child. These schools are not better funded. There are several reasons they perform better. First is that more money gets to the classroom. Many school districts in the US use 50% of their funding for administration and maintenance. This is an astronomic figure compared to other organizations who often spend more like 10-15% on administration even in inefficient organizations. Second is the lack of unionized teachers in this system. The ability of administration to get rid of bad teachers improves both the quality of the teachers in the classroom and improves their moral. Third is discipline, not letting one or a few students destroy the classroom for all. Fourth is parent involvement, the parents involved are on average more responsible and focused on their children's education than in the rest of society. You can dislike these reasons all you want, but this is reality. Its ideology that is destroying our education system (at all levels including the university system). The evidence is growing and showing up everywhere you look. This isn't surprising, zealots and ideologues of any stripe usually fail when they have to put their theories into practice.
Re:easy reasons why (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh you sweet summer child. These schools are not better funded.
He didn't say "better funded"; he said "well funded". And they are. I can understand why you may not have read the paywalled NYT article, but if you'd did a few seconds of seaching you'd have found this one [axios.com] and you'd have seen this:
They are well-funded, with well-stocked classrooms, including books and art supplies. Many public school teachers have to pay out-of-pocket for supplies.
Their teachers are well paid. The Pentagon's budget allows schools to spend more money per student and pay teachers more, which helps retain teachers.
Many school districts in the US use 50% of their funding for administration and maintenance.
Really? Can you supply a citiation for that number? The US national average for school district admin overhead is 4.8%; California is an outlier with some districts spending as much as 20%. This is according to "Argument in Favor of Proposition 223" in this ballot proposal. [uclawsf.edu]
Maybe the schools can afford more supplies and higher teacher salaries because of lower administrative overhead, but that's more of an assumption than an established fact, especially since the administrative overhead in the DoD schools isn't cited.
"adminstration" just means "everything else" (Score:1)
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Really? Can you supply a citiation for that number?
Here is a summary. [educationnext.org] And this is a rollup of the raw data. [ed.gov] Also I said many school districts, smaller districts in rural areas ironically often have less overhead. It is the big districts in the urban cores that often have the highest overhead. The national average is 40% overhead.
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It should be pointed out that it's not automatic that government funded services are the best. They are however the least constrained by "for profit" schools, because many private schools are straight up grifts or "Diploma mills".
- The Art Institute (Heavily marketed in North America as the only way to get into Film or Games)
- Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) (Heavily marketed to art students as THE ONLY way to get an animation job)
- ITT Technical Institute (Heavily marketed in north America)
- The
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>- ITT Technical Institute (Heavily marketed in north America)
They have been gone since 2016
>- PragerU (probably the worst example of a fake University)
They have *never* claimed to be an actual university
weird (Score:5, Insightful)
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My first thought on reading the summary was: how much of the superior achievement is due to the schools, and how much is due to parenting? You could hypothesize that parents in the active military might be more likely to emphasize values like discipline, routine, "grit" (perseverance in the face of difficulty), respecting one's elders, etc. (Granted, not all the parents are active military-- some are civilian contractors-- but the percentage of military would be much higher than at other schools).
One way
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I read the sentence you referenced in the article a few times, and I could not figure out what you are complaining about. There is a strong correlation between parents' education level and household income. Further, household income is strongly correlated with success in school. I think it's pretty well established to be true, at least in the U.S., so what makes it "ill-informed"? It seems you also have a typo in your comment, which makes it hard to figure out what you are trying to state. Statisticall
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Re: Unity (Score:1)
"It's almost as if a widespread cultural commitment to rigor, discipline, results, and accountability that is shared by parents, teachers, and administrators translates into more effective outcomes for students."
Exactly this. Unity. It's probably more important than any of the other advantages. The military is quite good at taking an input stream of highly diverse enlistees and molding them to a strong shared culture of hierarchy, discipline, and dedication to mission. It doesn't completely grind down all d
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It's almost as if a widespread cultural commitment to rigor, discipline, results, and accountability that is shared by parents, teachers, and administrators translates into more effective outcomes for students.
Indeed; however, good luck getting people who are constantly stressed from month to month and are just one catastrophe from being pushed out of society altogether to have ANY rigor, discipline, our accountability.
Why the FUCK is our society structured like that?
It's not about the parents (Score:3, Insightful)
People always credit parental involvement for kids' school performance.
While it's important, it's also true that at the high end of the income scale parents are just as absent as parents at the low end.
The fact is that their school performance is better because they actually measure performance...unlike most union-driven public schools, where measuring performance leads to the slippery slope of judging teachers by student performance.
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Also known as value-added modeling, [wikipedia.org] where teachers are judged not by how high their students score but by how much their test scores improve.
Re:It's not about the parents (Score:4, Interesting)
People always credit parental involvement for kids' school performance.
And this is another example of that, I expect.
Especially telling is the minority students' performance. To understand why this is meaningful, you have to look at what kind of Black and Hispanic people join the military. Although backgrounds obviously vary, the large majority of them are from very low-income, difficult backgrounds. They're the kids who fought their way through school to get a diploma or a GED (it's pretty tough to join the military without one of those) and joined the military to get out of their previous life. They are the ones who found a way to lift themselves up by their bootstraps, taking advantage of the best opportunity available to them, and they then benefit from the discipline instilled by military training and life.
And they pass all of that along to their kids. I'm not at all surprised that their kids do well.
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No surprise to me (Score:5, Interesting)
The military does make mistakes and let in unsuitable people, but it’s rarer than you think.
So, on average, the people in the US military are WWWAAAYY healthier, more energetic, more motivated, and more intelligent than the average citizen. Is it any surprise that the kids from this group are well above average?
Re:No surprise to me (Score:5, Interesting)
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As hdyoung said, that the parents are going to be all career military only raises the point that we're looking at a very different group of parents than those of children going to public school systems in general even more.
So, it's been said many times that "parental involvement" is the single biggest indicator of student success. This encompasses everything from rich people hiring tutors to guide their kids through any troubles, to middle class parents helping their kids with their homework, to the poor f
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Then everything from your performance evaluations, the two tests, your physical fitness scores, time in service, time in grade, etc... All are weighted, tallied up, and you find out whether you were promoted or not.
You brought up a good point that acted to help maintain a suitable learning environment when I was in school - if your kid was an ongoing discipline problem at school, your CO was going to hear about it at some point, and he'd "strongly encourage" you to get the kid whatever help he needed, and
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Excellent comment.
One thing about military life that most people don't think about, though it's pretty obvious if you do: The peacetime job of the military is training, i.e. education.
Depending on your job the kind of education can vary, but there is no specialty in which it doesn't include plenty of book learning, even for enlisted. For officers, getting to the top ranks almost requires one or more master's degrees (PhDs are unusual but not rare) and that's just the formal education. On top of that the
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We saw that in Abu Ghraib. Real geniuses, right?
It's the **families** (Score:5, Insightful)
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What do you know... some structure, some discipline, and some expectations, and the children do better. I wonder if the US should share these findings with the rest of the world.
Not funded by property taxes (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember moving to a middle class neighborhood and noticing my kid's school was much better. Buddy of mine moved to the rich kid's district and he said it saved him a bunch of money because the school just had things like pencils and paper & crayons that in his old (dirt poor) district he had to buy out of pocket.
As usual it's expensive to be poor.
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Baltimore spends over 10% more per student than the national average,
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I suspect that the Cato report is drawing some "lying with statistics" type of arguments.
One of the issues was that the district got a lot of money and hired a bunch of administrators (some needed, some not) but there is nothing in the report to suggest that the amount of money that went into the classrooms actually increased.
If you just blindly raise money and give it to the schools, a bunch of opportunists will come to provide services to the school for a fee and most of those will not be things that impr
Excuse me did you just link to the Cato institute? (Score:3, Informative)
Charter schools do *not* outperform public schools [texastribune.org].
And that's with cheating. The dirty little secret of charter schools I learned when my neighbor sent their kids to one is that if you don't keep your grades up they kick you out. Meaning the only kids allowed in them are the ones that learn on their own and need minimal attention. Meanwhile the public schools have to actually *teach*.
Yes, unlimited money i
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Spending per student is meaningless. The question is, "What are they getting for that spending?"
Let's pick the top 3 and bottom 3 from this map [educationdata.org] and look at their numbers.
1. NY
- Spending per Student: $25,139 (#1)
- Teacher Salary: $90,222 (#1)
- Graduation rate: 84% (#30)
Spending the most per student AND on teacher salary, slightly below average in graduation.
2. DC
- Spending per Student: $22,856 (#2)
- Teacher Salary: $82,523 (#4)
- Graduation rate: 75% (#51)
- Math scores: #50
- Reading com
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Nothing wrong with property taxes funding schools but I don't know of any state that does it correctly. The state should take ALL the money into a single pool and equally distribute it to the schools based on attendance. No more rich or poor districts. Each student gets exactly the same amount of money allocated to them. It's pretty fucking simple but like a lot of our "problems" we don't actually want to fix any of them.
This won't happen though because rich people won't allow it to. Not even a party issue,
All equal funding (Score:2)
You'd probably still want to make COLA (Cost Of Living Allowance) changes because running a school in the inner city or out in the boonies can be more expensive.
For example, what happens if you make all funding equal, but an inner city school has 100 times the security expenses than the rich school? If the low class school needs more tutoring? Etc...
This won't happen though because rich people won't allow it to. Not even a party issue, though it is a bit surprising (not really) that California, run by Democrats and there greater good ethos, doesn't do just that.
This is because, surprisingly enough, the Democrats are pretty much just as infested with racists, classist, NIMBY type people as the Republicans, especially
Let's stop abandoning our inner cities (Score:2)
And no, the Dems aren't at all like that. Racism doesn't last long in the party. There's some NIMBYism, but it's more than countered by massive infrastructure spending Dems like to
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Well, I agree with you on principle - don't abandon ANY area, especially our inner cities. However, due to the racist policies and practices of the sadly not so distant past, the "ghetto" areas are messed up enough that they need major corrective actions - and I have no easy answers as to what corrective actions would work.
Sending "everybody" to prison doesn't work, obviously, and is bad. But by the same token, just funding schools better doesn't seem to work either.
I'm with you on the security thing, by
That wouldn't fly (Score:2)
Also fun fact, they're a wealth tax, since most Americans have all their wealth, such as it is, tied up in a house.
Property taxes are dishonestly applied (Score:3)
They're often also a tax on unrealized (and/or non-existent) gains. Your house can even be deteriorating and they can (and often do) "re-evaluate" its unrealized value as higher and raise the property taxes. The only way you could realize the gain they imagine is if (a) you sell your house and (b) you get that price. The former may never happen, and the latter is purely speculative
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Not all states fund schools with property taxes. It differs by state. NM for example is state funding with some federal dollars sprinkled in.
https://www.nmlegis.gov/entity... [nmlegis.gov]
It's a poor state, so the schools still struggle. And there are good schools and bad schools, which often mirror parental expectations. But there isn't a huge disparity between schools you might see in other states.
Public Schools need to get back into academics (Score:4, Interesting)
Public schools have slowly taken on the role of "parent" and need to get out of that and back into just teaching academics. Everything else is a slippery slope.
If people want a school for "teaching things parents should teach" then perhaps there should be a separate one just for that. Go to academics school in the AM, and "your parent's aren't teaching you how to adult, so we will" in the afternoon.
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Actually, they have taken on LESS of a parent role because parents want more and more control over public schools and what they do. More and more of this "I know my kids better than you" bullshit, when in reality most parents essentially know next to nothing about their children - even the good ones with close relationships. The other part of the problem is that people have differing opinions on what "parenting" means. Should parents control their children's outfit? No, but plenty think they can and do. Sho
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There was a newspaper editor in town whose story preference was missing children, specifically 15 year-old females. In all cases, the teenager would reappear a month or two later, unharmed. It was lesson on how many parents pretend their daughter will remain an 11 year-old for the next 6 or 7 years: That parents can't control how quickly a girl grows-up.
Over the last 20 years, the demand for censorship has actually increased. This censorship is aimed at obviously, nudity and strangely, educational mater
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I taught for a short time in Canada.
Yes, there are kids from decent parents. I won't even say good parents. You really and truly don't need much from the education system and teachers when you have decent parents. You basically just teach the lesson and grade. It is what it is. There's no magic sauce and you can pretty much leave the education system alone at that point.
The question becomes what do you do with those with troubled upbringing. I literally had a few kids whose parents wouldn't even answer the
Stats tell a good story ... any story you wish (Score:2, Interesting)
Many academic studies as well as intuition establish the correlation between school spending and student outcomes. The "Defense Department estimates that it spends about $25,000 per student, on par with the highest-spending states like New York." So, it's not a surprise that student outcomes for DoD schools would match that high level of spending.
The cited NY Times article shows numbers for test score improvement over a ten-year period, but it's less clear if the absolute numbers show the same ordering.
Why? (Score:3)
>" But she sees little of that at her school in Fort Moore, Ga"
And if I had to guess it is probably because:
1) They treat all the students the same- they don't pander
2) They probably have more strict discipline and structure
3) They probably inform the parents more
4) The parents probably ARE more involved
5) They probably don't pander to parent excuses
6) They probably make sure the teachers are held to standards
7) They probably hold the students to actual academic standards
Funding probably plays only a minor role. Many localities have thrown TONS of money at the problem to see little to no improvements. Accountability is the key. Get, keep, support, and promote good teachers and administrative staff. Identify, retrain, demote, and fire bad teachers and administrative staff.
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I'd add... the local church doesn't get a say in the curriculum. Nor does the local Republican political association. Racism isn't tolerated, and there is likely less income inequality - after all, all the kids have at least one parent employed in the military, right? Nobody's desperately poor and not eating properly. I doubt it's perfect, but I'd bet it's better than the average school environment in a low-income area by almost any measure.
A school that does not disseminate nor tolerate bullshit, with
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there is likely less income inequality
There's definitely less income inequality, but it's not totally absent. When I went to high school at Fort Campbell, the general environment was quite good overall, but there were still the cliques of officers' kids that liked to show off their new clothes and often new cars that the enlisted kids' folks couldn't afford (with a few exceptions, most of us NCO kids walked or took the bus), and there was some definite social stratification as a result. Plus, officer hous
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
True.
E-5 with 6 years in, about the minimum to have a kid in school: $3,424/month. $41k/year
O-7 with 20 years in, a bit old to have a 1st grader: 14,738/month. $177k/year.
Note: O-7 is a 1 star general, what you'd expect to see commanding the base. Short of places like the Pentagon, you don't expect to see higher on a regular basis.
This is about 4 times the income.
A more realistic one might be an E-6 with 8 years: $4042, vs an O-5 with 10: $8701, knocking it down to a factor of 2. Still can be noticable, but not that bit of a deal. The artificial divide between officers and enlisted would probably be a bigger factor at that point. After all, we occasionally have problems with wives of officers thinking that they have the authority of their husband's rank.
Meanwhile, in public school, you can have kids who have a single mother making less than $12k/year rubbing elbows with, say, the kids of doctors(medical), owners of the local car dealerships, and such making a quarter million to over half a million.
A factor of 40 or so. Which is epic compared to the "worst case" in the military.
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Note: O-7 is a 1 star general, what you'd expect to see commanding the base.
No sir. It is an O-6 that is a base commander. In the Navy, we called them Captain. In the other services, we called them Colonel.
In the Navy, if an O-5 or below were to command a base or ship, they would be called Captain when referring to their job duties. I do not know if other branches do this.
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No sir. It is an O-6 that is a base commander. In the Navy, we called them Captain. In the other services, we called them Colonel.
Eielson had a general commanding the base while I was there(I retired from there). Though yes, most of my other bases had a Colonel commanding the base. I should have probably mentioned that O-7 General is the maximum you'd expect to see commanding a base.
I was deliberately going for what I'd consider the maximum you could realistically expect to see. A 1 star general is pushing it, but if you're at the Majcom...
Knocking the maximum down a rank just makes the differential smaller, increasing the point.
In
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More economically compatible, for sure.
But don't forget...
More culturally compatible. Every child has a parent (or two) thats been trained in millitary life. They have, to a degree, so trained their children in that life.
More male involvement. I have seen a number of DODEA schools, and all of them have more males in a single school than most districts have in total. This is a huge cultural difference.
DODEA schools are not cause driven. From what I have seen, you have far fewer causes competing for time
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More economically compatible, for sure.
But don't forget...
More culturally compatible. Every child has a parent (or two) thats been trained in millitary life. They have, to a degree, so trained their children in that life.
More male involvement. I have seen a number of DODEA schools, and all of them have more males in a single school than most districts have in total. This is a huge cultural difference.
This! After virtually eliminating males in the public school system, things got a tad weird. In order to pacify the young males - a rather rowdy group, and no doubt - with strong and damaging drugs - the now female dominated teaching force naturally tended toward "empowering" the female students. It's even worse now, as with the ascendence of the single parent household led by a woman, there are boys that have absolutely no father figure in their lives.
And it's a pity. Women are generally pretty good
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They've been on the front lines of racial integration. They've also largely stopped caring who puts what thing where, even when politicians have projected their issues on them. They have struggled a bit with the differences between male and female physiology, and some innate behavioral traits of males, but have adapted with more success than some might have expected.
Hella true. I remember back in the day, when I first enlisted, and gays were still banned. All my coworkers, when asked, gave zero shits about people's sexual orientation so long as they could be professional in the workplace. IE sexual harassment was not to be tolerated. Turns out that I was in one of the better units, I think. Also, for whatever reason, the officers had more problems with that shit than the enlisted. I saw 10X the drama with 1/10th the people with the officers. Officers: Improper
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Yeah, I went into that more in a different part of the thread [slashdot.org].
The military member of the family (and it might be both parents), regularly has tests upon which their career progression depends upon, has dress standards(do they ever!), expectations of performance, has cultural conformity with all the other military parents in many respects, etc...
This isn't the military that exists only in the minds of the media, and in movies. The US Military consists almost entirely of highly trained professionals. I mean
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I'd add... the local church doesn't get a say in the curriculum. Nor does the local Republican political association. Racism isn't tolerated, and there is likely less income inequality - after all, all the kids have at least one parent employed in the military, right? Nobody's desperately poor and not eating properly. I doubt it's perfect, but I'd bet it's better than the average school environment in a low-income area by almost any measure.
A school that does not disseminate nor tolerate bullshit, with students receiving a decent minimum standard of living... you put those two things together, you're going to get some results.
More over, if the parent kick up a fuss, they can be told to go do one and all they can say is "yes sir".
The biggest problem with public and private schools aren't so much the shithead kids, it's the shithead parents who complain when their student fails (because they didn't do the work) or when they finally get a call because their precious little shitbag has done something bad enough to be suspended.
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"...they can be told to go do one and all they can say is 'yes sir'". Slightly different in the Navy: "Yes sir" is one of the three answers to a *question* (the other two being "No sir" and "I do not know sir, but I will find out sir"). The answer to an order is "Aye-aye sir!"
But yes to your point.
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Funding plus responsible parents (Score:2)
Not to put too fine a point on it (Score:2)
But if you're in the military AND have kids, you might have your shit together moreso than the average bear served by many large school districts around the country.
And therefore your kids are more likely to have their shit together more. And their classroom performance will be higher and the school will look better.
Same with suburbs vs city schools. By and large it isn't the teachers or the money. City schools usually end up having higher per-student budgets than suburbs. It's just that in the suburbs, the
School (Score:1)