USA Today recently had an article posted on its site about the Department of Defense schools. Now while the school I teach at, Baumholder American High School, wasn't mentioned, it is nice hear some positive things about the system I work for.
Military schools producing army of solid performance
By Fredreka Schouten, Gannett News Service
When U.S. Army Maj. Tony Fish and his family moved to Fort Campbell, Ky., they faced a yearlong wait to move into housing on post.
Instead of settling in a nearby town, Fish and his wife, Judy, seized on an unorthodox approach: They spent $100,000 on a recreational vehicle and set up housekeeping on the post's campground — all so their two kids could immediately begin attending classes at Fort Campbell.
"That's how strongly we felt about the schools," Judy Fish said.
Defense Department schools, like those at this sprawling post on the Kentucky-Tennessee border, inspire fierce devotion, and with good reason. Students at the schools consistently rank near the top on federal reading, writing and math tests.
And 50 years after the legal end of school segregation, the Pentagon's schools are models of integration and strong minority academic achievement.
Last year, black and Hispanic eighth-graders in these schools outperformed their peers in all 50 states in reading.
"I think this is the finest school system in the world," said Claire Smrekar, an associate professor at Vanderbilt University, who co-wrote a report on minority academic performance at Defense schools.
"There are excellent schools all over this country," Smrekar said. "But the consistency with which this school system delivers high performance and produces outstanding outcomes for these kids and their families is unprecedented."
The military's little-known school system enrolls about 100,000 children — a fraction of the kids in military families — attending 220 schools around the globe. Nearly 30,000 of those children attend the stateside Domestic Dependent Elementary and Secondary Schools, a system roughly the same size as the Des Moines, school district. The 69 schools that make up the domestic system are scattered throughout seven states and two U.S. territories and Cuba.
At Fort Campbell High School, where minority students account for about half of enrollment, nearly three in four seniors go on to college. More than one in four take rigorous Advanced Placement classes. During a recent AP calculus class, nearly half the students speeding through square roots were black or Hispanic.
Kids who need extra help get it long before their grades falter. Incoming freshmen with below-average math scores, for instance, receive an additional 50 minutes of algebra instruction each day.
Principal Kenneth Killebrew said the key is high standards for all, regardless of race or rank.
"We tell all our students, 'We expect you to be successful. We know you can be successful,'" he said. "Then we provide the necessary support to make it happen."
Students in Defense Department schools enjoy some advantages over students in public schools: At least one parent in each military family has a full-time job and at least a high school diploma.
And the military encourages parents to participate in school events. Fail to appear at a parent-teacher conference and the school might complain to your commanding officer — a stick that administrators say they rarely use.
Nearly 64% of Defense Department teachers have master's degrees, compared with 42% of teachers nationwide. They earn nearly $10,000 more than their public school peers. Schools are small and boast state-of-the-art computer labs where second-graders learn how to make PowerPoint presentations.
The schools share a common curriculum around the world. That means a student who transfers from a middle school at a military base in Germany to the middle school at West Point should have little trouble adjusting to the course load.
But students at Pentagon-run schools also face their share of difficulties. They move constantly. And they're just as likely as other public school students to live in poverty. At Fort Campbell High, nearly one in four students qualify for subsidized meals.
And during the past year, many have lived with the fear of losing a parent in a war halfway around the globe. The post, home of the 101st Airborne Division, bore the heaviest casualties of any military installation in the war in Iraq: 58 dead and 383 wounded.
Another source of stress is a pending announcement by Pentagon budget-cutters on whether authority over the schools should be transferred to local school districts. Military parents vocally oppose any change.
Cenema Judd, president of the seven-member Fort Campbell School Board, said Defense Department schools are one of the few benefits of having to move all over the country on Army business.
"You pray that the next duty station will have one of these schools," she said.
Before moving to Fort Campbell in 2001, her daughters attended public schools in Hawaii. Judd said the school her eldest daughter attended in Hawaii didn't offer algebra in the middle-school grades, but Fort Campbell's middle school does offer the course.
Judd's daughter, Aleia, now in high school, has persuaded her father to delay his Army retirement by two years so she can graduate from Fort Campbell High.
Parents say the schools give the children a sense of stability — even through the most tumultuous times.
Last October, Greg Orlando, 17, and Jason Orlando, 11, got the news they most feared: Their father, Lt. Col. Kim Orlando, a military police battalion commander, was dead — killed in a firefight in Karbala, Iraq. Both boys still chose to go to school that day, said their mom, Sherry Orlando.
"Everyone at the school has been incredibly supportive," she said. "Being in a military environment helped. All their friends were in the same boat. All their parents were deployed. This could happen to them, too."
Parents say they love the schools because the schools love them back.
Staff Sgt. Randel Harris was in Iraq performing policing duties when his 11-year-old daughter gave a fall clarinet performance at Mahaffey Middle School, one of two middle schools at Fort Campbell. Harris was scheduled to leave again just in time to miss Kirstin's spring concert, so band teacher Jamie Austin arranged a performance just for the Harris family.
"I was shocked that she would plan a pre-concert just for us," Harris' wife, Angela, said. "This shows how supportive the schools are."
That support extends to the home lives of the disabled preschoolers taught by Rita Bumgardner at another Fort Campbell school, Lucas Elementary.
During a recent parent-teacher conference, the mother of a developmentally delayed 3-year-old sought Bumgardner's advice on a delicate family problem: With her husband back from a long tour in Korea, how could they coax the toddler out of their bed and back into her own room?
Put her to sleep in her own bed, Bumgardner said. Be firm. Use a pacifier.
Dispensing parenting advice is just another part of the job, the 32-year teaching veteran said.
"We're not supposed to just teach the child," she said. "We are here to serve the whole family."
Despite their military sponsorship and shared curriculum, Pentagon schools are open to experimentation and innovation, experts say.
At Fort Campbell High School, for instance, counselors bring to life the connection between education and earning potential by hosting a "reality fair" for freshmen at the end of their first semester. The counselors pack a hall with insurance agents, car dealers hawking sports cars, ministers asking for contributions, and realtors selling everything from mini-mansions to rundown trailers.
Students with a perfect 4.0 grade-point average have the largest fantasy income — $4,000 per month — to "spend" on monthly expenses like mortgage and insurance payments. Flunking students get just $800 a month.
Before the fair is over, kids who don't budget sensibly "have to trade their sports cars for a bus pass," counselor Louvenia Peavie said.
Students at Pentagon-run schools marvel at how little their friends at civilian schools know about their lives.
"They want to know, 'Do you drive a tank to school?'" said Marcus McClinton, an 18-year-old senior. "Sure, right. All the time."
Most public schools would have a tough time duplicating what takes place in classrooms at posts like Fort Campbell, said Paul Houston, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators.
Houston spent five years at the helm of public schools in Tucson, where the local school district operated two schools at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Although the schools were part of his system, they were imbued with the military's culture.
"Those principals never had a discipline problem," he said. "They could call the colonel. The colonel could call the parent, and that was that."
But Smrekar and other education experts say the system offers lessons for other schools.
At Mahaffey Middle School, practical moves like exempting the school counselor from loads of administrative paperwork could work at any school, said Sara Moore, co-director of the Center for Middle School Academic Achievement at Eastern Kentucky University.
Moore led a team of educators who this year selected Mahaffey as one of just three "middle schools to watch" in Kentucky.
"The notion of freeing up the counselor's time to counsel students, anybody can do that," she said.
Smrekar, at work on her second major report on the Pentagon's schools, said schools everywhere should study this system. "You can't copy it, but you can learn from it."
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