41 ms·

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

194 points by LastNevadan 3y ago

paulpauper 3y ago
Military recruits typically are of the top 50% of IQ via the AFQT test, so the lower half is truncated, and IQ is largely hereditary, so children's scores reflect parent's scores. This could explain some of it.
dannyphantom 3y ago
https://archive.ph/PHFQ1 https://archive.ph/PHFQ1
- Jtsummers 3y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20231010091419/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/us/schools-pandemic-defense-department.html https://web.archive.org/web/20231010091419/https://www.nytim... This one worked better for me.
edumakated 3y ago
[flagged]
ericfrazier 3y ago
If that's the case then we really are up the creek as a nation.
- jjtheblunt 3y ago
  One counterexample: my grad school linguistics professor, an internationally recognized scholar across several languages, credited the DoD Language school at Monterrey CA as having been just amazing, and who went back to teach for decades in a top five ranked US university, not only linguists but engineering kids like me. He was the same age as my dad so had the avuncular thing going, was personable, but most of all inspiring to decades of students to look outside their curricula. Sometimes what sounds like up a creek turns out to be an unpredictable kick ass river, I guess.
  - ericfrazier 3y ago
    I'm talking about K-12 DoD education abroad.
Afforess 3y ago
clickbait headline, the real answer is in the article: > For starters, families have access to housing and health care through the military, and at least one parent has a job. >"Having as many of those basic needs met does help set the scene for learning to occur,” said Jessica Thorne, the principal at E.A. White Elementary, a school of about 350 students Providing a stable home environment with access to at least one parent, proper nutrition, and safety - all commonly missing in the worst performing school districts.
- jowea 3y ago
  That may be a bit simplistic since the article does mentions other possible explanations for the better results beyond the fact that essentially all students are above an economic floor. And I didn't get it from the article, but are those schools better than the schools in wealthy districts?
WillPostForFood 3y ago
What's unfortunate about the article is that it is so light on data, and heavy on assumptions. So whatever your agenda is, there is something to latch onto, but ultimately nothing to support it. e.g. Prefer more rigour? "Defense officials attribute recent growth in test scores partly to the overhaul, which was meant to raise the level of rigor expected of students." Prefer more money? "the Defense Department estimates that it spends about $25,000 per student, on par with the highest-spending states" For all we can tell from the article, it is just self selection.
joshhart 3y ago
The article suggests several causes: 1. Bias in population - these students all have families where at least one parent has a stable job, which isn't true elsewhere. There could also be other factors, for instance maybe people who enter the military are more motivated on average and that genetically or through parenting is passed on to their kids. 2. Better funding 3. Frequent feedback to teachers and more methodical planning 4. Excellent racial & socioeconomic integration Is there a way to tease out the contribution in each area through controlling for variables. I suspect #1 is the largest by far, but I think this could be statistically controlled for partially by looking at children of parents who attend non-military schools. Curious for thoughts from HN.
- aynyc 3y ago
  No. #1 is your CO will chew your ass out in front of everyone (which is a big no-no in leadership, yet it's accepted regarding your children). I saw first hand my E6 got called to battalion CO to answer why his son was bullying other kids (I think some civilians from DoD). I still remember CO said, if you don't fix this, I march the whole damn battalion to your house and make you do push ups while your son watch. When your parents care, you will do.
  - pram 3y ago
    This is also the best reason to NOT use stuff on base! The day I got pulled into my squadron commanders office because my dorm “was a mess” was the same day I applied for BAH.
- zeroCalories 3y ago
  All of those have multiplicative effects. Good home/parents make students more motivated, good teachers are able to work well with motivated students, capable classrooms are able to handle more demanding classes. I don't suspect socioeconomic integration matters here though if everyone is getting the same treatment. Standardization is also good when we see wildly different results in different classrooms. Harder to do in more fragmented and less well funded school districts. But these are all well known factors. Not much to learn drom here, but it's nice to see it confirm the theory.
Spinnaker_ 3y ago
I think this can be misleading in the same way some charter school results are. The easiest way to improve a school's results isn't to improve the education provided, it's to get rid of the worst performing kids. Charter schools do this by various selection effects, and artificial barriers, like ending at noon on a Wednesday. So the only kids who go there have two parents, one who probably is stay at home and can pick the kid up. The same type of thing is in play in military schools. There will be few-to-no kids of poor single moms. All the kids will be well fed and groomed and socialized. Is the education better, or have they just selected better performing kids? The article touches on this. But I don't think takes it nearly seriously enough.
- eYrKEC2 3y ago
  Another factor is that the military parents have cleared a bar of pre-enlistment testing (ASVAB?) that has strong correlations with IQ testing.
  - AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
    [dead]
  - stonogo 3y ago
    The minimum ASVAB to enlist is 31, and there are waiver programs for that. This is not a good showing. I feel like people don't appreciate how little lower-enlisted people are paid, what terrible financial literacy abounds in the ranks, and how many kids live on base but are still very firmly living in poverty. There are a lot of advantages to living on base, but this thread is pretending that the military has its shit together in ways that it absolutely does not. "All the kids will be well-fed and socialized" is bizarrely out of touch, specifically. There are functioning gangs on some larger military installations. Troops PCS every few years, making it difficult for kids to establish social groups. Most bases have a unit of MPs basically acting as child services. I'd think a better place to look for filters would be entire schools -- BRAC has caused the closure of many schools, but I don't know how they select which schools to target for closure. I know of at least two larger bases which have no schools (students are bused to local civilian schools) but I know others who have kept their schools despite a lower overall population of families.
jeffbee 3y ago
If your kid is absent at a DoD school your CO will hound you. This makes a difference. There's also the slight difference that the military has socialized health care. When your kid is sick you take them to the doctor and that's that, while in civilian life small medical and especially dental issues go untreated and snowball into chronic absenteeism. Base life is really civilized in so many various ways. People violating the speed limit (20 MPH in housing areas) will be apprehended by armed MPs, so your kid can walk to school. Housing is often provided, even if it sucks, or subsidized, even if the allowance is below local market prices, so homelessness among active-duty families with children is practically nonexistent.
- Kon-Peki 3y ago
  > There's also the slight difference that the military has socialized health care. When your kid is sick you take them to the doctor and that's that Reminds me of a past vacation. Had a friend that was a pediatrician in the Army, based in Hawaii. We were all hanging out at the beach, and a kid cuts his hand on something. The friend walks over, says he's a doctor, asks if he can help out. The kid has a very apprehensive look on his face, so the friend smiles and says "I know, you're not sure I'm a doctor because I haven't asked your parents for their insurance"
- OrvalWintermute 3y ago
  > so homelessness among active-duty families with children is practically nonexistent A Commanding Officer will make sure the kids get food & housing for sure even if they have to force through allotments adversarially.
Scubabear68 3y ago
It's not a high bar to beat, at least here in New Jersey. Nearly all of our school boards are non-professional, non-compensated elected officials, and a large percentage of Superintendents started their career as gym teachers. The net result is schools that hire hoards of consultants to try to meet professional standards, but fail anyway, while spending vast sums of tax payer dollars. Covid funds earmarked towards bridging the learning gap from closed schools during the pandemic are spent on fancy laptops, new athletic facilities, sound systems for auditoriums. Absenteeism is skyrocketing, and teachers are not only not encouraged to enforce discipline, they're actively told to let out of control students slide. Social promotion is on the rise, and standardized test scores are tanking. We finally gave up in my local district and ended up paying a fortune to send both our kids to private schools. After an initial many-months-long struggle to catch up with their new private school classmates (because of the public school deficits), they are both doing much better. Money well spent, but I still send taxes to an ineffective district that spends money like water, and where educational value is dead last in their priorities. They even introduced a course in Graphic Novels at the high school this year, while 75% of kids fail standardized science testing, and 60% fail in math.
- ecshafer 3y ago
  New Jersey also has the system of Magnet schools at the county level, which have some of the best high schools in the country (high technology highschool, middlesex academy for math and science, union county magnet school, etc). They reasonably require tests and maintaining of discipline. Discipline is key to having effective schools, and if either students or parents are undermining it, schools can't be effective.
- nameless912 3y ago
  It remains extremely strange to me that we have our school boards be largely totally non-professional laypeople in the US. Obviously there's no absolute requirement that you be a "professional" for almost any elected position in the US, but school boards are one of those situations, like judges and comptrollers, where it seems like there should be some basic qualifications for running. Especially because many of the folks elected to school boards are either 1) crazies with a bone to pick with a specific teacher/administrator/school or 2) moderately ambitious ladder climbers hoping to launch their political careers without having to work too hard.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
My feeling is that school performance is denominated by the students and parents. If for example, you took the best performing school district and the worst performing school district and swapped just the parents and students keeping the school staff, administration, and facilities the same, the previously best school district would end up near the bottom and the previously worst school district would end up near the top.
OrvalWintermute 3y ago
> “The military isn’t perfect — there is still racism in the military,” said Leslie Hinkson, a former Georgetown University sociologist who studied integration in Defense Department schools. But what is distinctive, she said, “is this access to resources in a way that isn’t racialized.” Racism in the military is a career ender for officers and enlisted kind of like getting a DUI but worse. What is more in the system is a "good ole buddy system", where high performers often do favors for each other across racial, preference, and gender lines. My parents both taught in California and I've been friends with many from DoDEA and here is a TLDR; Please hold the downvoting for political reasons -Engaged parents, most are NCOs, officers and civil servants -Well Funded, like, $1M+ housing area school districts -Low ratios of teachers to students -All students are US citizens or foreign nationals from partner nations -Great teachers, some overseas location have insane competition for teacher slots, some professors jump to DoDEA slots -bilingual students that are smart seems the norm -no problems with illegal aliens, or ESL brand new to English swamping 20% of the class particularly at higher grades like what happens in some parts of CA -Some locations have DoDEA are the very choicest in the US military, so they attract the creme de la creme of overachievers competing for very limited slots I'd describe the DoDEA schools as similar to the very best public schools in the US, but you can find other government schools that run similar programs to DoDEA You can find eligibility for DoDEA at https://dodea.widen.net/content/rlhgfasqfx/original/ai-1344-01-eligibility-and-enrollment-requirements-final-19jan2023.pdf https://dodea.widen.net/content/rlhgfasqfx/original/ai-1344-...
- ryan93 3y ago
  Are you purposefully not mentioning the IQ cutoffs the military uses for soldiers. it has been as high as the 50th percentile for the air force.
  - OrvalWintermute 3y ago
    I’m not mentioning military selectivity because it is highly variable based on the strength of the US economy. In the Army for example, the highest ASVAB averages are held by infantry & special forces (which is ironic given the low ASVAB requirements for infantry). Many people join the infantry for 4 years only, as a part of a “See action, travel, shoot guns” post highschool before college mindset.
the_bookmaker 3y ago
[dead]
- rat87 3y ago
  Steve Sailer the white supremacist? Yeah, I wouldn't trust his claims on anything related to education especially on IQ.
  - crackercrews 3y ago
    Ad hominem. He's making a simple claim about the world that is easily verifiable. This site has information about the testing requirements and current cutoff. [1] 1: https://www.sbe.wa.gov/our-work/graduation-pathway-options/asvab#:~:text=Current%20minimum%20scores%20for%20each,on%20August%2028%2C%202023).&text=Service%20Specific%20websites%3A,Air%20Force https://www.sbe.wa.gov/our-work/graduation-pathway-options/a...
Eumenes 3y ago
The NYT is an apparatus of the intelligence agencies, and coincidentally military recruitment is down ... this is subliminal advertisement for recruitment. Coupled with war in Ukraine and incoming war in the Middle east, in addition to new recruiting tactics (https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/10/03/army-unveils-new-career-track-recruiters-major-overhaul-aimed-bringing-more-soldiers.html https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/10/03/army-unveils-...), expect to see alot more praise of the DoD/Military in MSM outlets like the NYT.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  It wouldn't be subliminal. It would be a blatant advertisement. Are you suggesting the NYT and/or military school system are fabricating achievement results?
- morkalork 3y ago
  When I think of 18 kids looking at their options in life and weighing how tf they're going to pay for college and is considering the military, I'm not imagining someone who casually reads the New York Times.
genghisjahn 3y ago
Seems like maybe the US Department of Defense is better at socialism than the rest of the country.
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  agreed; see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37860853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37860853
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  easy to be good at it when you literally own the servicemembers, can dictate every facet of their life, and have a never-ending cashflow i had a decent time in the service, given when i joined (2003), but i did my 5 years and have 0 interest in living like that again
anarticle 3y ago
DoD schools person here, a major point left out of this article is that if you do something bad enough in school your parent's CO will be notified and this can have real career results. In a foreign country you can get deported if you do something stupid enough to warrant it. I went to several DoD and civilian schools, NC (dod), NJ (civ), Erie PA (civ), Okinawa (dod), NJ (civ). I would say the standards are higher in DoD, mostly because of standardized curriculum. In civilian world, the variance is very high. In South NJ things were more rigid, in Erie more lax. As for "not having social groups" this can be a plus, looking at my civilian counterparts in high school. It has pluses and minuses, but being an outgroup in high school let me leave that stuff behind much easier on my way to college. It makes me an alien to most of civilian world, but many benefits. Housing is provided in the military. AMA. I am anecdotal, but I have seen both sides at all three levels split down the middle. Edit: I definitely received an education way above my parents earning level, I am first to go to college in my family. I went to a very good engineering school.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  Do you feel you faced any detrimental challenges your non-military family peers didn't, as you made the transition from high school to college? If so, what? Have a child soon to be in a similar situation, so any thoughts helpful.
  - anarticle 3y ago
    The major benefit/challenge of being a military kid that moved every 2-3y is that you make friends really fast and resocialize very easily. This also means you don't have any roots. My example is often that my friends in high school were friends since kindergarten, something I have no frame of reference for. It probably only hurt in high school for sports and clique based activities. For going from highschool to college there is almost zero negative, since it's the nth time you've moved and had to rebuild a social structure. Consider the number of total school changes for an average domestic student is 3. K-5, 6-8, 9-12, and in those cases they keep their friend groups.
    - 3y ago
alistairSH 3y ago
According to the article, the Dod educates 66k students. That's less than half the size of my county. Yet, the comparison is DoD vs states, not the more useful DoD vs counties (or some unit closer in size). I'd love to see how DoD schools compare against top-notch school systems. And average school systems (in case the quality of country school districts isn't a bell curve for some reason).
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  The #1 public school in the US is Thomas Jefferson in Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS). FCPS is a suburb of DC, and a fantastic amount of the kids there are children of military servicemembers and FedGov civilians. A lot of those well paid contractors are former military as well.
  - jmoss20 3y ago
    Yeah, this is along the lines of my comment. (Am a military brat, attended some DoD schools, also attended a school in FCPS.) The educational rigor across different districts is massive. Many military kids get to sample from it a lot of times (possibly even with a bias for FCPS in particular!); other kids get to sample it ~once. There is probably some huge reversion to the mean at play here.
  - alistairSH 3y ago
    Yup. I grew up and live in Fairfax County. The wealthy DC suburbs have schools that are so far better than the rest of the states (MD and VA). The massive differences between systems makes a state-level comparison far less useful.
loughnane 3y ago
I spent Kindergarten to 4th grade on Hanscom A.F.B. near Lexington, MA. I didn't appreciate it at the time, but it hindsight it had lots going for it: - No such thing as unemployment - A strong community (Hanscom was also a small, walk-to-school) neighborhood - The schools were indeed good (had several computers in the 2nd grade classroom in 1992). There is a self-selecting element to it though; if you lose your job you're out of the community. The line between personal problems and professional problems---I came to find out later---is much blurrier than in the "real world". Also health care is crazy cheap. I don't know if it could, or should, scale society wide. The social benefits are nice, but the authoritarian bent isn't. Neat article though, gets you thinking.
nosequel 3y ago
This got touched on by a few replies, happy to see there are some others here with actual military experience chiming in. I grew up on military bases, and went to schools both on and off base for 18 years. All continental US bases typically have elementary-level (K-5) school, but you typically go to an off-base school for middle and high school. When you are overseas, this isn't the case, you would most likely go to school on base K-12. I think the article gets right a lot of things, but as some other's mentioned there are also things it doesn't catch. There are still bad kids on base, who do tons of drugs, commit crimes, cheat, steal, whatever. These kids are in every population. One huge difference between on base schools and off, is if you got in trouble at school, your sponsor's (Mom/Dad whoever is the active duty in the family) CO (commanding officer) gets informed. This can lead to a tongue lashing at the least, and at the most your sponsor can get passed up on the next promotion list or demoted. Kids would get caught selling drugs, they would get suspended and then their Dad or Mom would usually make their life a living hell for a while. It would turn most kids around pretty quickly. The worst one I know about first hand was a group of kids on base in California (a very remote base btw) had a little theft ring of the base exchange (BX, like target/walmart on base). The MP's found out about it, watched them work for a while, then arrested all of the kids. They were high schoolers, probably 15-17. I think 4 got caught. The result was each of their families were kicked off base, no longer able to live in free base housing. As stated elsewhere, military families aren't paid well at all, so now these families had to move off base and rent a house. Once again, this was a super remote base, and it was easily a 35 min drive from main base to the nearest housing off base. I will tell you the rest of our school suddenly got really well behaved for the rest of the year. Once again, I think the NYT touched on most of the reasons schools were generally better, but to me discipline was a huge factor. You typically didn't have that one shithead in your class ruining it for everyone else.
- jmoss20 3y ago
  This sounds familiar -- I wonder if we were there at the same time.
  - nosequel 3y ago
    I was there '94->'98
082349872349872 3y ago
The DoD is progressive in more than one way: unlike much of the rest of the country they also started desegregating during the 1948-1954 time period...
ForOldHack 3y ago
Most very unfortunately, I have to reluctantly agree, but for reasons that are completely hidden: My CS program design teacher, would do three things: He would write the subjects he would cover on the board, and then cover them, and secondly he would check them off. When ever a question would come up from a past lecture, he would ask if someone else had the notes to answer the question, well. Guess who kept the best notes? I also ran the study hall after class. Aced all classes. I finally got up the nerve to ask him directly: "Where did you learn those three things?" "Oh! The Military." Turns out that those three exact things are used to 1) Write English essays, 2) Critique plays, 3) and organize client therapeutic meetings. etc. etc. etc. 4) organize code walk throughs and 5) multi team debugging sessions. Yes, Jeff Withe. Diablo Valley College.
- relaxing 3y ago
  It would be great if you wrote some more on that 3 step process and how it worked - sounds really interesting.
jmoss20 3y ago
I grew up on military installations and attended some DoD schools. Some things unmentioned/underemphasized: Families PCS (move) extremely often -- sometimes every school year, frequently every few years. Some places have DoD schools "on base", some do not, with students instead attend the local public schools. Some of those public schools are majority military kids, some are not. DoD schools may have a consistent curriculum (not sure), but public schools across states/countries certainly do not. Constant moves mean students get a fractured, redundant curriculum. (Comically, I recall learning about the "Explorer" in History class no less than three times.) Some bases are located in well-off areas with great public education, many others are not. Students might find themselves one year learning algebra, the next back to basic multiplication. Schools tend to be stubbornly inflexible and will not make accommodations on their own. Extremely attentive and pushy parents may get weak accommodations (e.g., letting students moving full grade levels up/down; something difficult to explain later), but it's rare. Added to this is impact of constant social upheaval + stress of parents deployment, lack of lasting friendships, etc. This is all to say -- you would not expect this population of kids to do well academically! The fact that they seem to (as measured in these tests at DoD schools) should be really surprising, and probably has little to do with the DoD schools themselves. They're after all only responsible for part (often a small part) of these kids' education. --- My main guesses at the real drivers here are: 1. (As mentioned in the article) It's a different world on base. Parents have a massive stake in their children's behavior -- and the students know this. No one wants their parent to get an earful from their CO, and it does happen. (This is most pronounced at DoD schools, but also extends off base.) Drug and alcohol use is exceedingly rare, due to the above + how serious an offense it is on base. It's true also that there's a modest baseline of economic + social support. Maybe not as much as the article suggests, but it's not nothing. 2. Simple reversion to the mean. The DoD schools are full of kids with a really diverse set of educational experience. Maybe some of the good experiences are even a bit "sticky" -- habits and skill learned transferring over to new environments, maybe even bad ones. Maybe it's not surprising that that population wins vs. the baseline (where kids only get a homogenous, mostly-good or mostly-bad experience). - If the good skills and habits are "contagious", maybe DoD schools even help spread them across this population. 3. The tests are mostly measuring the lower portion of the distribution. Well-off schools will have most students clipping the top end of the measurement. Many DoD students attend those schools! (At least for a time.) This is going to seriously amplify (2), but also (1) and other things to the extent that they improve (or remove from the sample) the worst-off students.
Simulacra 3y ago
I went to school at Fort Gordon for two years, and the impression I got was that if I got in trouble, my parents got in trouble, and that would have been way worse. In public schools however, it never crossed my mind that my parents could get in trouble for something I did in school. With the military schools, there is a huge element of parental responsibility and that's why I think it made them great.
eimrine 3y ago
What are smartphone/ipad policy in these schools?
JoeAltmaier 3y ago
Discipline has to be a factor. Big issue in military families.
fwungy 3y ago
1) Military has minimum intelligence standards for entry and intelligence is a heritable trait. 2) Military members are required to show discipline and are held accountable. Both of these factors make military schools different from public schools. Smart children will learn with bad teachers. Dumb children will not learn no matter how much you spend on them.
stainablesteel 3y ago
that's great, although the article doesn't spill much information other than saying they're insulated from bureaucratic institutions (a pretty good start) i don't see beating public school performance as a high bar, public schools are terrible acton academy is the gold standard imo, i love hearing about other education paradigms though.
WillAdams 3y ago
The best school system I ever attended was a DOD-funded public school in rural Mississippi --- there were less than a dozen students from the local community, the balance were all from the Air Force Base. Every teacher had at least a Master's Degree (pay was very good, and it was a very desirable school system to work at), and they had a system in place which firmly divided classes between academic and social --- for academic classes, one worked at one's ability level (up to four grades ahead until 8th grade when that was lifted), while social classes were at one's grade level. After 8th grade, one could begin taking college classes (some of the teachers were accredited as as faculty at a nearby college) --- if there wasn't a teacher available for a given class, then arrangements were made for a professor to come to the school, or for the student to travel to the college. Many students would graduate high school and simultaneously receive a college degree. The Mississippi State Supreme Court decided that the school was inherently unfair since it provided a notable benefit to students who studied hard and learned well without a corresponding benefit to those who would not do so.
throwaway89347 3y ago
Public school teacher here. Public schools have been in a downward slide for decades. If you want to know what's wrong, just brace yourself and ask a teacher. Alas, many people want to believe it's the teachers' fault, and so rarely bother to ask the teachers. Or, failing that, people think it's just that teachers aren't paid enough and think more money will fix the problems (more money would be nice, but that's not the problem). It's very straightforward to fix public schools, but, in my view: * few people actually want to know what the problems are, * only a fraction of those people will speak up and say something about addressing the problems, and * only a small fraction of those people would have the wherewithal to actually push for the solutions to be implemented. Fact is, good teachers are constantly being driven out of the profession. It's just too arduous and heartbreaking, and every year it gets worse.
- chii 3y ago
  So what is the real problem, pray tell?
  - throwaway89347 3y ago
    Sorry. I typed out a reply, but it's like 5 pages. There's a lot wrong. Here's something extremely boiled down: Too many administrators. Students having their phones in school. Out of control administrators who waste teachers' time. Students roaming halls. Phones. No consequences for skipping class, roaming halls, or cheating (administrators not enforcing discipline). Administrators desperate to get everyone to pass and graduate. Phones. Administrators pressuring teachers to pass students. No dress code. Endless accommodations for students. Endless meetings soaking up valuable teacher time. Administrators disallowing midterms and finals because that would cause too many students to fail their classes (now, many teachers are required to have projects and presentations, or similar as midterms and as finals). Valuable instruction time lost due to standardized testing. Rampant cheating. Zero consequences for students' behavior (extremely rare to see an out-of-school suspension, and expulsion is unheard of these days). Block scheduling (4 long periods per day) because students won't do homework (or will just cheat/copy/paste). Administrators constantly pushing group work, projects, posters (rather than real focused work). There's more but I'm trying to stop typing now.
subpixel 3y ago
I went to a DoDDDS middle school in Germany. Why was it so great? It’s the military, stupid. Things work as well as they do because discipline.
7e 3y ago
Here, you have kids whose parents are employed (that is, not on welfare, can do their job) and the kids are strongly motivated to do well in school so they don’t have to join the military, like their parents did.
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
oldbbsnickname 3y ago
Probably an obsolete datapoint: My parents were both children of US military and educated domestically and internationally between 1955 - 1966. Although my mom became an accountant and dad was a mechanic, they were well-educated compared to the average American. They grew up in a time where college was for about 40% of high school graduates. It's also obsolete but worth mentioning my grandfather, child of blue-collar people, still had to take Latin and French in a 1930's Stamford, Connecticut public school. Although he was a mechanic, electronics hobbyist, and home-improver, he owned Jeopardy almost to Ken Jennings'-level. He grew up in a time where not everyone went past 7th grade education (12.5 yrs old on average). I think there are 4 positive traits of military culture that civilian culture doesn't appreciate: - Excellence - doing more, striving, mastery, competitiveness - Discipline - self-restraint, following through, doing hard things, completing a task - Collectivism - other people are important, a team can accomplish more than one person - Egalitarianism - treat everyone equally, respect the office not the individual
mleo 3y ago
I spent the entirety of my elementary through high school life on a military base and schools on it. 1. On our base, school involvement was “easier” for the enlisted parent. They usually worked consistent hours and were available for after school involvement. They weren’t generally working late and night shifts allowing time to be involved with sports and other school activities. 2. Healthcare was provided and for regular services it was consistent and available. While we didn’t have to pay for it, we would often spend several hours at urgent care waiting to get seen when one of kids was not feeling well. It was a little strange that when I went to college, I had little understanding about how to go about seeing a doctor. 3. We had a small school which allowed everyone to know each other by name, even if we weren’t friends on day to day basis. We knew who was enlisted kids and who were officer kids and who were staff kids. This didn’t generally color attitudes, just part of who we were. It was a good community. 4. We had access to technology early and part of what led me to career in tech. 5. It was a very diverse environment of kids. It was just the way it was and I never gave any thought to race growing up. 6. We had a decent house on base (1950s brick) with each kid having their own room. If there was issues, like ceiling falling in on kitchen, base housing fixed the issues. All of this took burdens off of my parents and us kids. I try to provide my kids with opportunities I had or even more than I had, but it certainly is a much different environment to do so.
wiskinator 3y ago
An important thing to take from this is that if you pay your teachers well, and also make sure that all the kids in school have a house (since military folk get housing for their families), and at least one parent is paid well, then the kids do well (and don’t write run on sentences like me).
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
How the results are measured? I imagine teachers acting as drill sergeants, perfect discipline in the class and children who forgot their homework doing push ups. The results of standardized tests such as PISA can be pretty high this way. But how many high achieving creatives, scientists, disruptors come out of these schools?
RecycledEle 3y ago
Get rid of the misbehavers and you get better results for everyone. When the military can discipline parents for misbehaving kids, the kids do not misbehave.
woldemariam 3y ago
dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37830605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37830605

194 points by LastNevadan 3y ago

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

dannyphantom 3y ago

https://archive.ph/PHFQ1 https://archive.ph/PHFQ1

Jtsummers 3y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20231010091419/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/us/schools-pandemic-defense-department.html https://web.archive.org/web/20231010091419/https://www.nytim... This one worked better for me.

edumakated 3y ago

[flagged]

ericfrazier 3y ago

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

jjtheblunt 3y ago
One counterexample: my grad school linguistics professor, an internationally recognized scholar across several languages, credited the DoD Language school at Monterrey CA as having been just amazing, and who went back to teach for decades in a top five ranked US university, not only linguists but engineering kids like me. He was the same age as my dad so had the avuncular thing going, was personable, but most of all inspiring to decades of students to look outside their curricula. Sometimes what sounds like up a creek turns out to be an unpredictable kick ass river, I guess.
- ericfrazier 3y ago
  I'm talking about K-12 DoD education abroad.

Afforess 3y ago

clickbait headline, the real answer is in the article: > For starters, families have access to housing and health care through the military, and at least one parent has a job. >"Having as many of those basic needs met does help set the scene for learning to occur,” said Jessica Thorne, the principal at E.A. White Elementary, a school of about 350 students Providing a stable home environment with access to at least one parent, proper nutrition, and safety - all commonly missing in the worst performing school districts.

jowea 3y ago
That may be a bit simplistic since the article does mentions other possible explanations for the better results beyond the fact that essentially all students are above an economic floor. And I didn't get it from the article, but are those schools better than the schools in wealthy districts?

WillPostForFood 3y ago

What's unfortunate about the article is that it is so light on data, and heavy on assumptions. So whatever your agenda is, there is something to latch onto, but ultimately nothing to support it. e.g. Prefer more rigour? "Defense officials attribute recent growth in test scores partly to the overhaul, which was meant to raise the level of rigor expected of students." Prefer more money? "the Defense Department estimates that it spends about $25,000 per student, on par with the highest-spending states" For all we can tell from the article, it is just self selection.

joshhart 3y ago

The article suggests several causes: 1. Bias in population - these students all have families where at least one parent has a stable job, which isn't true elsewhere. There could also be other factors, for instance maybe people who enter the military are more motivated on average and that genetically or through parenting is passed on to their kids. 2. Better funding 3. Frequent feedback to teachers and more methodical planning 4. Excellent racial & socioeconomic integration Is there a way to tease out the contribution in each area through controlling for variables. I suspect #1 is the largest by far, but I think this could be statistically controlled for partially by looking at children of parents who attend non-military schools. Curious for thoughts from HN.

aynyc 3y ago
No. #1 is your CO will chew your ass out in front of everyone (which is a big no-no in leadership, yet it's accepted regarding your children). I saw first hand my E6 got called to battalion CO to answer why his son was bullying other kids (I think some civilians from DoD). I still remember CO said, if you don't fix this, I march the whole damn battalion to your house and make you do push ups while your son watch. When your parents care, you will do.
- pram 3y ago
  This is also the best reason to NOT use stuff on base! The day I got pulled into my squadron commanders office because my dorm “was a mess” was the same day I applied for BAH.
zeroCalories 3y ago
All of those have multiplicative effects. Good home/parents make students more motivated, good teachers are able to work well with motivated students, capable classrooms are able to handle more demanding classes. I don't suspect socioeconomic integration matters here though if everyone is getting the same treatment. Standardization is also good when we see wildly different results in different classrooms. Harder to do in more fragmented and less well funded school districts. But these are all well known factors. Not much to learn drom here, but it's nice to see it confirm the theory.

Spinnaker_ 3y ago

I think this can be misleading in the same way some charter school results are. The easiest way to improve a school's results isn't to improve the education provided, it's to get rid of the worst performing kids. Charter schools do this by various selection effects, and artificial barriers, like ending at noon on a Wednesday. So the only kids who go there have two parents, one who probably is stay at home and can pick the kid up. The same type of thing is in play in military schools. There will be few-to-no kids of poor single moms. All the kids will be well fed and groomed and socialized. Is the education better, or have they just selected better performing kids? The article touches on this. But I don't think takes it nearly seriously enough.

eYrKEC2 3y ago
Another factor is that the military parents have cleared a bar of pre-enlistment testing (ASVAB?) that has strong correlations with IQ testing.
- AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
  [dead]
- stonogo 3y ago
  The minimum ASVAB to enlist is 31, and there are waiver programs for that. This is not a good showing. I feel like people don't appreciate how little lower-enlisted people are paid, what terrible financial literacy abounds in the ranks, and how many kids live on base but are still very firmly living in poverty. There are a lot of advantages to living on base, but this thread is pretending that the military has its shit together in ways that it absolutely does not. "All the kids will be well-fed and socialized" is bizarrely out of touch, specifically. There are functioning gangs on some larger military installations. Troops PCS every few years, making it difficult for kids to establish social groups. Most bases have a unit of MPs basically acting as child services. I'd think a better place to look for filters would be entire schools -- BRAC has caused the closure of many schools, but I don't know how they select which schools to target for closure. I know of at least two larger bases which have no schools (students are bused to local civilian schools) but I know others who have kept their schools despite a lower overall population of families.

jeffbee 3y ago

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

Kon-Peki 3y ago
> There's also the slight difference that the military has socialized health care. When your kid is sick you take them to the doctor and that's that Reminds me of a past vacation. Had a friend that was a pediatrician in the Army, based in Hawaii. We were all hanging out at the beach, and a kid cuts his hand on something. The friend walks over, says he's a doctor, asks if he can help out. The kid has a very apprehensive look on his face, so the friend smiles and says "I know, you're not sure I'm a doctor because I haven't asked your parents for their insurance"
OrvalWintermute 3y ago
> so homelessness among active-duty families with children is practically nonexistent A Commanding Officer will make sure the kids get food & housing for sure even if they have to force through allotments adversarially.

Scubabear68 3y ago

It's not a high bar to beat, at least here in New Jersey. Nearly all of our school boards are non-professional, non-compensated elected officials, and a large percentage of Superintendents started their career as gym teachers. The net result is schools that hire hoards of consultants to try to meet professional standards, but fail anyway, while spending vast sums of tax payer dollars. Covid funds earmarked towards bridging the learning gap from closed schools during the pandemic are spent on fancy laptops, new athletic facilities, sound systems for auditoriums. Absenteeism is skyrocketing, and teachers are not only not encouraged to enforce discipline, they're actively told to let out of control students slide. Social promotion is on the rise, and standardized test scores are tanking. We finally gave up in my local district and ended up paying a fortune to send both our kids to private schools. After an initial many-months-long struggle to catch up with their new private school classmates (because of the public school deficits), they are both doing much better. Money well spent, but I still send taxes to an ineffective district that spends money like water, and where educational value is dead last in their priorities. They even introduced a course in Graphic Novels at the high school this year, while 75% of kids fail standardized science testing, and 60% fail in math.

ecshafer 3y ago
New Jersey also has the system of Magnet schools at the county level, which have some of the best high schools in the country (high technology highschool, middlesex academy for math and science, union county magnet school, etc). They reasonably require tests and maintaining of discipline. Discipline is key to having effective schools, and if either students or parents are undermining it, schools can't be effective.
nameless912 3y ago
It remains extremely strange to me that we have our school boards be largely totally non-professional laypeople in the US. Obviously there's no absolute requirement that you be a "professional" for almost any elected position in the US, but school boards are one of those situations, like judges and comptrollers, where it seems like there should be some basic qualifications for running. Especially because many of the folks elected to school boards are either 1) crazies with a bone to pick with a specific teacher/administrator/school or 2) moderately ambitious ladder climbers hoping to launch their political careers without having to work too hard.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

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

OrvalWintermute 3y ago

> “The military isn’t perfect — there is still racism in the military,” said Leslie Hinkson, a former Georgetown University sociologist who studied integration in Defense Department schools. But what is distinctive, she said, “is this access to resources in a way that isn’t racialized.” Racism in the military is a career ender for officers and enlisted kind of like getting a DUI but worse. What is more in the system is a "good ole buddy system", where high performers often do favors for each other across racial, preference, and gender lines. My parents both taught in California and I've been friends with many from DoDEA and here is a TLDR; Please hold the downvoting for political reasons -Engaged parents, most are NCOs, officers and civil servants -Well Funded, like, $1M+ housing area school districts -Low ratios of teachers to students -All students are US citizens or foreign nationals from partner nations -Great teachers, some overseas location have insane competition for teacher slots, some professors jump to DoDEA slots -bilingual students that are smart seems the norm -no problems with illegal aliens, or ESL brand new to English swamping 20% of the class particularly at higher grades like what happens in some parts of CA -Some locations have DoDEA are the very choicest in the US military, so they attract the creme de la creme of overachievers competing for very limited slots I'd describe the DoDEA schools as similar to the very best public schools in the US, but you can find other government schools that run similar programs to DoDEA You can find eligibility for DoDEA at https://dodea.widen.net/content/rlhgfasqfx/original/ai-1344-01-eligibility-and-enrollment-requirements-final-19jan2023.pdf https://dodea.widen.net/content/rlhgfasqfx/original/ai-1344-...

ryan93 3y ago
Are you purposefully not mentioning the IQ cutoffs the military uses for soldiers. it has been as high as the 50th percentile for the air force.
- OrvalWintermute 3y ago
  I’m not mentioning military selectivity because it is highly variable based on the strength of the US economy. In the Army for example, the highest ASVAB averages are held by infantry & special forces (which is ironic given the low ASVAB requirements for infantry). Many people join the infantry for 4 years only, as a part of a “See action, travel, shoot guns” post highschool before college mindset.

the_bookmaker 3y ago

[dead]

rat87 3y ago
Steve Sailer the white supremacist? Yeah, I wouldn't trust his claims on anything related to education especially on IQ.
- crackercrews 3y ago
  Ad hominem. He's making a simple claim about the world that is easily verifiable. This site has information about the testing requirements and current cutoff. [1] 1: https://www.sbe.wa.gov/our-work/graduation-pathway-options/asvab#:~:text=Current%20minimum%20scores%20for%20each,on%20August%2028%2C%202023).&text=Service%20Specific%20websites%3A,Air%20Force https://www.sbe.wa.gov/our-work/graduation-pathway-options/a...

Eumenes 3y ago

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

ethbr1 3y ago
It wouldn't be subliminal. It would be a blatant advertisement. Are you suggesting the NYT and/or military school system are fabricating achievement results?
morkalork 3y ago
When I think of 18 kids looking at their options in life and weighing how tf they're going to pay for college and is considering the military, I'm not imagining someone who casually reads the New York Times.

genghisjahn 3y ago

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

082349872349872 3y ago
agreed; see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37860853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37860853
red-iron-pine 3y ago
easy to be good at it when you literally own the servicemembers, can dictate every facet of their life, and have a never-ending cashflow i had a decent time in the service, given when i joined (2003), but i did my 5 years and have 0 interest in living like that again

anarticle 3y ago

DoD schools person here, a major point left out of this article is that if you do something bad enough in school your parent's CO will be notified and this can have real career results. In a foreign country you can get deported if you do something stupid enough to warrant it. I went to several DoD and civilian schools, NC (dod), NJ (civ), Erie PA (civ), Okinawa (dod), NJ (civ). I would say the standards are higher in DoD, mostly because of standardized curriculum. In civilian world, the variance is very high. In South NJ things were more rigid, in Erie more lax. As for "not having social groups" this can be a plus, looking at my civilian counterparts in high school. It has pluses and minuses, but being an outgroup in high school let me leave that stuff behind much easier on my way to college. It makes me an alien to most of civilian world, but many benefits. Housing is provided in the military. AMA. I am anecdotal, but I have seen both sides at all three levels split down the middle. Edit: I definitely received an education way above my parents earning level, I am first to go to college in my family. I went to a very good engineering school.

ethbr1 3y ago
Do you feel you faced any detrimental challenges your non-military family peers didn't, as you made the transition from high school to college? If so, what? Have a child soon to be in a similar situation, so any thoughts helpful.
- anarticle 3y ago
  The major benefit/challenge of being a military kid that moved every 2-3y is that you make friends really fast and resocialize very easily. This also means you don't have any roots. My example is often that my friends in high school were friends since kindergarten, something I have no frame of reference for. It probably only hurt in high school for sports and clique based activities. For going from highschool to college there is almost zero negative, since it's the nth time you've moved and had to rebuild a social structure. Consider the number of total school changes for an average domestic student is 3. K-5, 6-8, 9-12, and in those cases they keep their friend groups.
  - 3y ago

alistairSH 3y ago

According to the article, the Dod educates 66k students. That's less than half the size of my county. Yet, the comparison is DoD vs states, not the more useful DoD vs counties (or some unit closer in size). I'd love to see how DoD schools compare against top-notch school systems. And average school systems (in case the quality of country school districts isn't a bell curve for some reason).

red-iron-pine 3y ago
The #1 public school in the US is Thomas Jefferson in Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS). FCPS is a suburb of DC, and a fantastic amount of the kids there are children of military servicemembers and FedGov civilians. A lot of those well paid contractors are former military as well.
- jmoss20 3y ago
  Yeah, this is along the lines of my comment. (Am a military brat, attended some DoD schools, also attended a school in FCPS.) The educational rigor across different districts is massive. Many military kids get to sample from it a lot of times (possibly even with a bias for FCPS in particular!); other kids get to sample it ~once. There is probably some huge reversion to the mean at play here.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  Yup. I grew up and live in Fairfax County. The wealthy DC suburbs have schools that are so far better than the rest of the states (MD and VA). The massive differences between systems makes a state-level comparison far less useful.

loughnane 3y ago

I spent Kindergarten to 4th grade on Hanscom A.F.B. near Lexington, MA. I didn't appreciate it at the time, but it hindsight it had lots going for it: - No such thing as unemployment - A strong community (Hanscom was also a small, walk-to-school) neighborhood - The schools were indeed good (had several computers in the 2nd grade classroom in 1992). There is a self-selecting element to it though; if you lose your job you're out of the community. The line between personal problems and professional problems---I came to find out later---is much blurrier than in the "real world". Also health care is crazy cheap. I don't know if it could, or should, scale society wide. The social benefits are nice, but the authoritarian bent isn't. Neat article though, gets you thinking.

nosequel 3y ago

This got touched on by a few replies, happy to see there are some others here with actual military experience chiming in. I grew up on military bases, and went to schools both on and off base for 18 years. All continental US bases typically have elementary-level (K-5) school, but you typically go to an off-base school for middle and high school. When you are overseas, this isn't the case, you would most likely go to school on base K-12. I think the article gets right a lot of things, but as some other's mentioned there are also things it doesn't catch. There are still bad kids on base, who do tons of drugs, commit crimes, cheat, steal, whatever. These kids are in every population. One huge difference between on base schools and off, is if you got in trouble at school, your sponsor's (Mom/Dad whoever is the active duty in the family) CO (commanding officer) gets informed. This can lead to a tongue lashing at the least, and at the most your sponsor can get passed up on the next promotion list or demoted. Kids would get caught selling drugs, they would get suspended and then their Dad or Mom would usually make their life a living hell for a while. It would turn most kids around pretty quickly. The worst one I know about first hand was a group of kids on base in California (a very remote base btw) had a little theft ring of the base exchange (BX, like target/walmart on base). The MP's found out about it, watched them work for a while, then arrested all of the kids. They were high schoolers, probably 15-17. I think 4 got caught. The result was each of their families were kicked off base, no longer able to live in free base housing. As stated elsewhere, military families aren't paid well at all, so now these families had to move off base and rent a house. Once again, this was a super remote base, and it was easily a 35 min drive from main base to the nearest housing off base. I will tell you the rest of our school suddenly got really well behaved for the rest of the year. Once again, I think the NYT touched on most of the reasons schools were generally better, but to me discipline was a huge factor. You typically didn't have that one shithead in your class ruining it for everyone else.

jmoss20 3y ago
This sounds familiar -- I wonder if we were there at the same time.
- nosequel 3y ago
  I was there '94->'98

082349872349872 3y ago

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

ForOldHack 3y ago

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

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

jmoss20 3y ago

I grew up on military installations and attended some DoD schools. Some things unmentioned/underemphasized: Families PCS (move) extremely often -- sometimes every school year, frequently every few years. Some places have DoD schools "on base", some do not, with students instead attend the local public schools. Some of those public schools are majority military kids, some are not. DoD schools may have a consistent curriculum (not sure), but public schools across states/countries certainly do not. Constant moves mean students get a fractured, redundant curriculum. (Comically, I recall learning about the "Explorer" in History class no less than three times.) Some bases are located in well-off areas with great public education, many others are not. Students might find themselves one year learning algebra, the next back to basic multiplication. Schools tend to be stubbornly inflexible and will not make accommodations on their own. Extremely attentive and pushy parents may get weak accommodations (e.g., letting students moving full grade levels up/down; something difficult to explain later), but it's rare. Added to this is impact of constant social upheaval + stress of parents deployment, lack of lasting friendships, etc. This is all to say -- you would not expect this population of kids to do well academically! The fact that they seem to (as measured in these tests at DoD schools) should be really surprising, and probably has little to do with the DoD schools themselves. They're after all only responsible for part (often a small part) of these kids' education. --- My main guesses at the real drivers here are: 1. (As mentioned in the article) It's a different world on base. Parents have a massive stake in their children's behavior -- and the students know this. No one wants their parent to get an earful from their CO, and it does happen. (This is most pronounced at DoD schools, but also extends off base.) Drug and alcohol use is exceedingly rare, due to the above + how serious an offense it is on base. It's true also that there's a modest baseline of economic + social support. Maybe not as much as the article suggests, but it's not nothing. 2. Simple reversion to the mean. The DoD schools are full of kids with a really diverse set of educational experience. Maybe some of the good experiences are even a bit "sticky" -- habits and skill learned transferring over to new environments, maybe even bad ones. Maybe it's not surprising that that population wins vs. the baseline (where kids only get a homogenous, mostly-good or mostly-bad experience). - If the good skills and habits are "contagious", maybe DoD schools even help spread them across this population. 3. The tests are mostly measuring the lower portion of the distribution. Well-off schools will have most students clipping the top end of the measurement. Many DoD students attend those schools! (At least for a time.) This is going to seriously amplify (2), but also (1) and other things to the extent that they improve (or remove from the sample) the worst-off students.

Simulacra 3y ago

I went to school at Fort Gordon for two years, and the impression I got was that if I got in trouble, my parents got in trouble, and that would have been way worse. In public schools however, it never crossed my mind that my parents could get in trouble for something I did in school. With the military schools, there is a huge element of parental responsibility and that's why I think it made them great.

eimrine 3y ago

What are smartphone/ipad policy in these schools?

JoeAltmaier 3y ago

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

fwungy 3y ago

1) Military has minimum intelligence standards for entry and intelligence is a heritable trait. 2) Military members are required to show discipline and are held accountable. Both of these factors make military schools different from public schools. Smart children will learn with bad teachers. Dumb children will not learn no matter how much you spend on them.

stainablesteel 3y ago

that's great, although the article doesn't spill much information other than saying they're insulated from bureaucratic institutions (a pretty good start) i don't see beating public school performance as a high bar, public schools are terrible acton academy is the gold standard imo, i love hearing about other education paradigms though.

WillAdams 3y ago

The best school system I ever attended was a DOD-funded public school in rural Mississippi --- there were less than a dozen students from the local community, the balance were all from the Air Force Base. Every teacher had at least a Master's Degree (pay was very good, and it was a very desirable school system to work at), and they had a system in place which firmly divided classes between academic and social --- for academic classes, one worked at one's ability level (up to four grades ahead until 8th grade when that was lifted), while social classes were at one's grade level. After 8th grade, one could begin taking college classes (some of the teachers were accredited as as faculty at a nearby college) --- if there wasn't a teacher available for a given class, then arrangements were made for a professor to come to the school, or for the student to travel to the college. Many students would graduate high school and simultaneously receive a college degree. The Mississippi State Supreme Court decided that the school was inherently unfair since it provided a notable benefit to students who studied hard and learned well without a corresponding benefit to those who would not do so.

throwaway89347 3y ago

Public school teacher here. Public schools have been in a downward slide for decades. If you want to know what's wrong, just brace yourself and ask a teacher. Alas, many people want to believe it's the teachers' fault, and so rarely bother to ask the teachers. Or, failing that, people think it's just that teachers aren't paid enough and think more money will fix the problems (more money would be nice, but that's not the problem). It's very straightforward to fix public schools, but, in my view: * few people actually want to know what the problems are, * only a fraction of those people will speak up and say something about addressing the problems, and * only a small fraction of those people would have the wherewithal to actually push for the solutions to be implemented. Fact is, good teachers are constantly being driven out of the profession. It's just too arduous and heartbreaking, and every year it gets worse.

chii 3y ago
So what is the real problem, pray tell?
- throwaway89347 3y ago
  Sorry. I typed out a reply, but it's like 5 pages. There's a lot wrong. Here's something extremely boiled down: Too many administrators. Students having their phones in school. Out of control administrators who waste teachers' time. Students roaming halls. Phones. No consequences for skipping class, roaming halls, or cheating (administrators not enforcing discipline). Administrators desperate to get everyone to pass and graduate. Phones. Administrators pressuring teachers to pass students. No dress code. Endless accommodations for students. Endless meetings soaking up valuable teacher time. Administrators disallowing midterms and finals because that would cause too many students to fail their classes (now, many teachers are required to have projects and presentations, or similar as midterms and as finals). Valuable instruction time lost due to standardized testing. Rampant cheating. Zero consequences for students' behavior (extremely rare to see an out-of-school suspension, and expulsion is unheard of these days). Block scheduling (4 long periods per day) because students won't do homework (or will just cheat/copy/paste). Administrators constantly pushing group work, projects, posters (rather than real focused work). There's more but I'm trying to stop typing now.

subpixel 3y ago

I went to a DoDDDS middle school in Germany. Why was it so great? It’s the military, stupid. Things work as well as they do because discipline.

7e 3y ago

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

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

oldbbsnickname 3y ago

Probably an obsolete datapoint: My parents were both children of US military and educated domestically and internationally between 1955 - 1966. Although my mom became an accountant and dad was a mechanic, they were well-educated compared to the average American. They grew up in a time where college was for about 40% of high school graduates. It's also obsolete but worth mentioning my grandfather, child of blue-collar people, still had to take Latin and French in a 1930's Stamford, Connecticut public school. Although he was a mechanic, electronics hobbyist, and home-improver, he owned Jeopardy almost to Ken Jennings'-level. He grew up in a time where not everyone went past 7th grade education (12.5 yrs old on average). I think there are 4 positive traits of military culture that civilian culture doesn't appreciate: - Excellence - doing more, striving, mastery, competitiveness - Discipline - self-restraint, following through, doing hard things, completing a task - Collectivism - other people are important, a team can accomplish more than one person - Egalitarianism - treat everyone equally, respect the office not the individual

mleo 3y ago

I spent the entirety of my elementary through high school life on a military base and schools on it. 1. On our base, school involvement was “easier” for the enlisted parent. They usually worked consistent hours and were available for after school involvement. They weren’t generally working late and night shifts allowing time to be involved with sports and other school activities. 2. Healthcare was provided and for regular services it was consistent and available. While we didn’t have to pay for it, we would often spend several hours at urgent care waiting to get seen when one of kids was not feeling well. It was a little strange that when I went to college, I had little understanding about how to go about seeing a doctor. 3. We had a small school which allowed everyone to know each other by name, even if we weren’t friends on day to day basis. We knew who was enlisted kids and who were officer kids and who were staff kids. This didn’t generally color attitudes, just part of who we were. It was a good community. 4. We had access to technology early and part of what led me to career in tech. 5. It was a very diverse environment of kids. It was just the way it was and I never gave any thought to race growing up. 6. We had a decent house on base (1950s brick) with each kid having their own room. If there was issues, like ceiling falling in on kitchen, base housing fixed the issues. All of this took burdens off of my parents and us kids. I try to provide my kids with opportunities I had or even more than I had, but it certainly is a much different environment to do so.

wiskinator 3y ago

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

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago

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

RecycledEle 3y ago

Get rid of the misbehavers and you get better results for everyone. When the military can discipline parents for misbehaving kids, the kids do not misbehave.

woldemariam 3y ago

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