Terrific piece, Tim. When I was writing my book about Success Academy, I noted the observably disproportionate share of children there whose parents were married, employed, and religious. I came across research from William Jeynes who told me, “Family factors are even more important than school factors in terms of determining achievement. That’s just a reality." Jeynes metastudies demonstrated "that in religious (mostly Christian) schools the achievement gap 'mostly goes away' among African American and Latino students 'who are religious and from intact families.'"
Could that explain at least part of what's going on here? If Grok/AI is correct:
Approximately 85-90% of children in DoDEA (Department of Defense Education Activity) schools come from two-parent families, compared to about 70% of U.S. children overall.
Approximately 40-45% of active-duty military personnel attend religious services weekly, compared to about 20-25% of U.S. adults overall who report weekly attendance.
As a curriculum and instruction guy, I'd like the difference to be those things, not family-related. But like the song says, you can't always get what you want. What do you think?
I don't think religion plays a role except as a motivator for marriage and against divorce. East Asians do very well academically and a lot of them are agnostics or atheists. But Asian families have very low divorce rates and parents are rarely unemployed.
Unifying the instructional materials certainly helped increase achievement, but I wonder how much school culture/military culture influenced outcomes. This is of course difficult to measure, but from a purely anecdotal perspective, I have a brother in the military, and having met military families from different socioeconomic backgrounds, I can say with confidence that they all teach their kids to respect authority figures. I will admit that I have a limited perspective because I've never worked at a DoDEA school, but hopefully someone who has worked at one can speak to how military culture (discipline, respect, authority) influences the school environment.
In 2017, I wrote for the TNTP Blog about my experience growing up as a DoDEA student years ago and how its common core-like standards today help kids achieve.
This is great stuff. It's the "old school equity" you mention that does it for me!
After ten years teaching in public, private, and charter schools in the NYC area, I finally fled after hearing that traditional education and academic achievement were tools of oppression one too many times (by the way, once is one too many times, but I had to pay rent).
Now I teach ESL in Central America to the most adorable first graders you could ever care to meet. In my short time here, two major differences have struck me about education compared to NYC. First, the general public holds teachers in much higher esteem than in the States. Second, my students are eager to learn and want mid-90s and above on every assignment because their parents demand it. So if you ask me, the secret ingredient to the DoDEA success is simple -- mom and dad.
Great posting -- when I was at ED in 2009-2013, we tried so hard to work with DoDEA and they were quite inflexible and uninterested in improvement. After I left ED and started working with DoDEA through my CCSSO support of states in 2014, DoDEA was under new leadership and they were all ears! It was a joy supporting them in implementing new standards and curricula. That's where their military "home" really shined -- they IMPLEMENTED those materials everywhere, with integrity, as per their plan.
On implementation, they have a huge leg up on states -- their structure is more like a district's structure than a state's (in that all principals report to them), but their culture is centralized and precise in ways that no district's is. Once they decide to do something, they do it like the military does -- they do it well.
P.S. I have an aunt who was a DoDEA teacher as well -- in Europe and Asia! She was my fave.
Then I'm questioning what you convinced DODEA to implement starting in 2014. Because pedagogically speaking, it's been all down hill since then. Efficient roll-out is great. Unless the product being rolled out is crap. DODEA pedagogy is an obstacle, not an asset. DODEA scores could and should be much higher than they are.
Ehhhh I don’t find it all that impressive…sorry. The U.S. military increasingly draws from middle class and even upper class ranks. This creates a selection effect that hard to square. You also have a more unified culture with stable employment. The right comparison would likely be a private school of similar demographic mix, not overall public schools. Sorry to be a downer
Everyman, You are not a downer, you're right on target. As a DODEA teacher for 34 years, I can tell you that the only question worth asking is why the gap between DODEA schools and US states' performance levels isn't LARGER. For the reasons you mentioned above, and for many others, it should be much larger. Furthermore, the notion--proffered in the article in question--that DODEA-promoted/mandated pedagogy and DODEA leadership has ANYthing to do with any kind of success of DODEA schools is, indeed, absurd. Both are nothing but obstacles, bordering on malpractice. The assertions made, and the data provided in that article would be laughed out of the room in any Stats Department in any university worth its salt. Spot-on observation, Everyman. Compare DODEA to schools with a similar demographic mix. Don't compare apples to pop-tarts. (Oranges aren't different enough.)
In the mid 80s I was traveling in East Germany by rail, in my car was a factory manager who was also a Communist Party official, I asked him if as a teacher I had a troublesome student and the parent was uncooperative and had would you respond, the parent would be reprimanded by the factory manager and the local CP leadership…
I appreciate this piece and it sparked a few questions/curiosities: Does the data allow you to separate domestic from international DoDEA schools? I ask because domestically, military families disproportionately exit their public schools. Home school rates are more than twice as high among military families than the general population. I wonder how these factors skew the data. Also, being a military family where parents have a low-level of education is a markedly different from being a civilian with a low-level of education. Meaning, military families have: started families, taken a full-time job, have stable housing, are part of a cohesive community. Even a little variability in any of those factors would show up in academic achievement. Just some things to consider.
Brilliant! I always see DoDEA at the top of NAEP scores and always wished someone would analyze it. I finally got my wish, so thank you. I do think attentive military families and the discipline that is likely part of they manage their households is one factor, as Robert P. points out. I will be referring to this article a lot and hope Delaware might take some lessons from it.
Thank you for writing this! There few positive stories about American education these days, its hard to make the case that student decline is not inevitable but a policy choice
If you want to reverse student decline, DO NOT follow DODEA's lead. Read carefully. This is not a positive story, it's statistically insignificant / misleading nonsense.
1. The importance of every child having an employed parent, sufficient nutrition as a result, and a bed to sleep in cannot be overstated. The U.S. must take steps to ensure ALL children have these basic necessities of healthy living. That is not happening in most states, even in MA.
2. There's no mention of ELL students. I suspect the numbers are lower in DoDEA schools than those of the average US school. ELL students in MA must take grade-level tests after being in the country for one year. These students are not yet fluent readers/writers, but will be with time and proper instruction. However, during the first year or two, their scores are lower, just as any English speaker 's scores would be if they were required to take a 4th/8/th/10th grade test in German, Mandarin, Spanish, etc. after just one year living in another country.
"We determine these adjustments by calculating how each individual student who takes the NAEP scores relative to students nationwide who are the same gender, age, and race or ethnicity and have the same free and reduced-price lunch receipt status, special education status, and English language learner status"
MI's ELL population is around 3% and MA's is around 10%. In addition, not all ELL's come from the same language group or educational background. For example, Spanish is much closer to English than Portuguese (Brazilian students). so it takes differing amounts of time for students from certain language groups to master reading, writing, and speaking skills. Nothing wrong with that, but the data isn't typically broken down to such a granular level. Another difference is socioeconomic differences in ELL students. One student may have highly educated parents who are professors at a university, and another may come from an impoverished background and have been unable to attend school, or had schooling in their home country that's limited or inadequate,
Yes to your first point, Jane! The "bottom 10%" of military families still have all that you mentioned...PLUS universal health care. The bottom 10% of students who I taught when I taught public school were homeless, living in cars, and couldn't see the board because they didn't have enough access to health care to get glasses.
How much would the achievement gaps in our country disappear if we stopped blaming teachers and curriculum and started funding social safety nets that our DoDEA students have?
"One DODEA" is nothing more than Group Think and has nothing to do with what needs to happen on the ground. Don't confuse those scores differences with anything like meaningful data. Comparing DODEA to US States' scores is absurd. The gap should be LARGER.
Terrific piece, Tim. When I was writing my book about Success Academy, I noted the observably disproportionate share of children there whose parents were married, employed, and religious. I came across research from William Jeynes who told me, “Family factors are even more important than school factors in terms of determining achievement. That’s just a reality." Jeynes metastudies demonstrated "that in religious (mostly Christian) schools the achievement gap 'mostly goes away' among African American and Latino students 'who are religious and from intact families.'"
Could that explain at least part of what's going on here? If Grok/AI is correct:
Approximately 85-90% of children in DoDEA (Department of Defense Education Activity) schools come from two-parent families, compared to about 70% of U.S. children overall.
Approximately 40-45% of active-duty military personnel attend religious services weekly, compared to about 20-25% of U.S. adults overall who report weekly attendance.
As a curriculum and instruction guy, I'd like the difference to be those things, not family-related. But like the song says, you can't always get what you want. What do you think?
Best,
Robert
I don't think religion plays a role except as a motivator for marriage and against divorce. East Asians do very well academically and a lot of them are agnostics or atheists. But Asian families have very low divorce rates and parents are rarely unemployed.
Unifying the instructional materials certainly helped increase achievement, but I wonder how much school culture/military culture influenced outcomes. This is of course difficult to measure, but from a purely anecdotal perspective, I have a brother in the military, and having met military families from different socioeconomic backgrounds, I can say with confidence that they all teach their kids to respect authority figures. I will admit that I have a limited perspective because I've never worked at a DoDEA school, but hopefully someone who has worked at one can speak to how military culture (discipline, respect, authority) influences the school environment.
I've been in DODEA as a classroom teacher for 34 years. Please see my response to "Everyman" below.
Given your experience at DoDEA, perhaps you should write a response piece. I think it's important to consider another viewpoint.
Thank you. I'll take a look.
In 2017, I wrote for the TNTP Blog about my experience growing up as a DoDEA student years ago and how its common core-like standards today help kids achieve.
https://tntp.org/blog/for-military-brats-the-common-core-is-a-no-brainer/
This is great stuff. It's the "old school equity" you mention that does it for me!
After ten years teaching in public, private, and charter schools in the NYC area, I finally fled after hearing that traditional education and academic achievement were tools of oppression one too many times (by the way, once is one too many times, but I had to pay rent).
Now I teach ESL in Central America to the most adorable first graders you could ever care to meet. In my short time here, two major differences have struck me about education compared to NYC. First, the general public holds teachers in much higher esteem than in the States. Second, my students are eager to learn and want mid-90s and above on every assignment because their parents demand it. So if you ask me, the secret ingredient to the DoDEA success is simple -- mom and dad.
Great posting -- when I was at ED in 2009-2013, we tried so hard to work with DoDEA and they were quite inflexible and uninterested in improvement. After I left ED and started working with DoDEA through my CCSSO support of states in 2014, DoDEA was under new leadership and they were all ears! It was a joy supporting them in implementing new standards and curricula. That's where their military "home" really shined -- they IMPLEMENTED those materials everywhere, with integrity, as per their plan.
On implementation, they have a huge leg up on states -- their structure is more like a district's structure than a state's (in that all principals report to them), but their culture is centralized and precise in ways that no district's is. Once they decide to do something, they do it like the military does -- they do it well.
P.S. I have an aunt who was a DoDEA teacher as well -- in Europe and Asia! She was my fave.
Then I'm questioning what you convinced DODEA to implement starting in 2014. Because pedagogically speaking, it's been all down hill since then. Efficient roll-out is great. Unless the product being rolled out is crap. DODEA pedagogy is an obstacle, not an asset. DODEA scores could and should be much higher than they are.
Ehhhh I don’t find it all that impressive…sorry. The U.S. military increasingly draws from middle class and even upper class ranks. This creates a selection effect that hard to square. You also have a more unified culture with stable employment. The right comparison would likely be a private school of similar demographic mix, not overall public schools. Sorry to be a downer
Everyman, You are not a downer, you're right on target. As a DODEA teacher for 34 years, I can tell you that the only question worth asking is why the gap between DODEA schools and US states' performance levels isn't LARGER. For the reasons you mentioned above, and for many others, it should be much larger. Furthermore, the notion--proffered in the article in question--that DODEA-promoted/mandated pedagogy and DODEA leadership has ANYthing to do with any kind of success of DODEA schools is, indeed, absurd. Both are nothing but obstacles, bordering on malpractice. The assertions made, and the data provided in that article would be laughed out of the room in any Stats Department in any university worth its salt. Spot-on observation, Everyman. Compare DODEA to schools with a similar demographic mix. Don't compare apples to pop-tarts. (Oranges aren't different enough.)
Great blog. The steadiness since 2013 in the wake of all the declines is fascinating. You put forward 3 explainers:
1. The Other Tom Brady - instructional change
2. Changing demo - more college grads among DOD?
3. School culture - held steady, while typical schools got lax
If you could only guess one....?
In the mid 80s I was traveling in East Germany by rail, in my car was a factory manager who was also a Communist Party official, I asked him if as a teacher I had a troublesome student and the parent was uncooperative and had would you respond, the parent would be reprimanded by the factory manager and the local CP leadership…
DoD schools are similar…
Glad you're highlighting this very special set of schools Tim. When I wrote about them a few years back I tried to make the case that the shared values of DoD families were an important factor. (Surely there are many) Maybe you have a view? https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/what-defense-department-can-teach-us-about-schooling
I appreciate this piece and it sparked a few questions/curiosities: Does the data allow you to separate domestic from international DoDEA schools? I ask because domestically, military families disproportionately exit their public schools. Home school rates are more than twice as high among military families than the general population. I wonder how these factors skew the data. Also, being a military family where parents have a low-level of education is a markedly different from being a civilian with a low-level of education. Meaning, military families have: started families, taken a full-time job, have stable housing, are part of a cohesive community. Even a little variability in any of those factors would show up in academic achievement. Just some things to consider.
Brilliant! I always see DoDEA at the top of NAEP scores and always wished someone would analyze it. I finally got my wish, so thank you. I do think attentive military families and the discipline that is likely part of they manage their households is one factor, as Robert P. points out. I will be referring to this article a lot and hope Delaware might take some lessons from it.
don't waste your time. this article provides no meaningful data.
Thank you for writing this! There few positive stories about American education these days, its hard to make the case that student decline is not inevitable but a policy choice
If you want to reverse student decline, DO NOT follow DODEA's lead. Read carefully. This is not a positive story, it's statistically insignificant / misleading nonsense.
Interesting article.
A few thoughts:
1. The importance of every child having an employed parent, sufficient nutrition as a result, and a bed to sleep in cannot be overstated. The U.S. must take steps to ensure ALL children have these basic necessities of healthy living. That is not happening in most states, even in MA.
2. There's no mention of ELL students. I suspect the numbers are lower in DoDEA schools than those of the average US school. ELL students in MA must take grade-level tests after being in the country for one year. These students are not yet fluent readers/writers, but will be with time and proper instruction. However, during the first year or two, their scores are lower, just as any English speaker 's scores would be if they were required to take a 4th/8/th/10th grade test in German, Mandarin, Spanish, etc. after just one year living in another country.
I was going to say that I agreed, but then I checked the link and it seems like the demographically adjusted measurement does control for ELL status:
https://www.urban.org/research/publication/states-demographically-adjusted-performance-2024-national-assessment
"We determine these adjustments by calculating how each individual student who takes the NAEP scores relative to students nationwide who are the same gender, age, and race or ethnicity and have the same free and reduced-price lunch receipt status, special education status, and English language learner status"
MI's ELL population is around 3% and MA's is around 10%. In addition, not all ELL's come from the same language group or educational background. For example, Spanish is much closer to English than Portuguese (Brazilian students). so it takes differing amounts of time for students from certain language groups to master reading, writing, and speaking skills. Nothing wrong with that, but the data isn't typically broken down to such a granular level. Another difference is socioeconomic differences in ELL students. One student may have highly educated parents who are professors at a university, and another may come from an impoverished background and have been unable to attend school, or had schooling in their home country that's limited or inadequate,
Yes to your first point, Jane! The "bottom 10%" of military families still have all that you mentioned...PLUS universal health care. The bottom 10% of students who I taught when I taught public school were homeless, living in cars, and couldn't see the board because they didn't have enough access to health care to get glasses.
How much would the achievement gaps in our country disappear if we stopped blaming teachers and curriculum and started funding social safety nets that our DoDEA students have?
Fascinating. I had no idea there was a DoDEA.
Amazing, and had no idea. Thanks so much for writing about it.
No it's not amazing. It's tragically misleading.
"One DODEA" is nothing more than Group Think and has nothing to do with what needs to happen on the ground. Don't confuse those scores differences with anything like meaningful data. Comparing DODEA to US States' scores is absurd. The gap should be LARGER.