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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
>> 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.
> 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
"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?
> 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.
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)
>> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
> “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
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?
[+] [-] dannyphantom|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spinnaker_|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] HDThoreaun|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] gustavus|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] sokoloff|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] eYrKEC2|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ethbr1|2 years ago|reply
>> 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.
[+] [-] exabrial|2 years ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] HonestOp001|2 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] willcipriano|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ubermonkey|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] oatmeal1|2 years ago|reply
That being said, the existence of competition will raise the performance of all schools.
[+] [-] dventimi|2 years ago|reply
"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?
[+] [-] abtinf|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] m463|2 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] AtlasBarfed|2 years ago|reply
Because... that's what is basically happening in the military.
[+] [-] wolverine876|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fooker|2 years ago|reply
> get rid of the worst performing kids.
The threat of this consequence is often enough to motivate kids to study.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] sandworm101|2 years ago|reply
>> 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.
[+] [-] idontpost|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ryan93|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nosequel|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Scubabear68|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] nameless912|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ecshafer|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrguyorama|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeffbee|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anarticle|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ethbr1|2 years ago|reply
Have a child soon to be in a similar situation, so any thoughts helpful.
[+] [-] loughnane|2 years ago|reply
- 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.
[+] [-] joshhart|2 years ago|reply
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|2 years ago|reply
When your parents care, you will do.
[+] [-] rawgabbit|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] zeroCalories|2 years ago|reply
But these are all well known factors. Not much to learn drom here, but it's nice to see it confirm the theory.
[+] [-] canucker2016|2 years ago|reply
"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.
[+] [-] oldbbsnickname|2 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] WillPostForFood|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mleo|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] WillAdams|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ForOldHack|2 years ago|reply
Yes, Jeff Withe. Diablo Valley College.
[+] [-] alistairSH|2 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] RcouF1uZ4gsC|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Simulacra|2 years ago|reply
With the military schools, there is a huge element of parental responsibility and that's why I think it made them great.
[+] [-] throwaway89347|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] OrvalWintermute|2 years ago|reply
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-...
[+] [-] EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] subpixel|2 years ago|reply
It’s the military, stupid. Things work as well as they do because discipline.