3. What student information will be tracked?
The voluntary, self-identification of the children of the Active Duty, National Guard, or the Reserves would allow a data element to monitor the education success including:
- Academic progress and proficiency
- Special and advanced program participation
- Mobility and dropout rates
- Patterns over time across state and district lines
As of today, 14 states have adopted the data element in varying forms: Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. While these tracking programs exist independently, they are not uniformed or shared across state lines and vary wildly in information tracked. For this reason there is a push for a national level of data collection in a more reliable and consistent model.
4. Why do we need to track military student data?
In 2011, the Government Accountability Office reported that: “There is no data available on these [military-connected] students that could be used to assess the academic achievement or educational outcomes, or determine where funding needs are the greatest.”
Tracking the progress of the 1.3 million military-connected school aged students in public school will allow the Department of Education and the Department of Defense to better understand the challenges and needs of military connected children. With better understanding comes better funding for support and services for students at home and in school.
As of now, schools are unable to answer the basic questions how well military connected students are performing in schools, graduation rates or if they attend college. Collecting and analyzing data is the only way to predict trends and anticipate needs of these children.
Military connected children have unique outside stressors such as frequent mobility, attending multiple schools, loss of continuity in education, deployments of parent(s) to war, reintegration and more, which can impact them as a student.
Implementation of a military-connected student identifier will assist educators in more effectively preparing transitioning students for their new school. This will also provide a key performance indicator for the local districts to discover practices and processes worth of attention and replication for students from prekindergarten through grade twelve.
Parents will have evidence-based insights about school districts and campuses. By giving military parents more precise information about how military-connected students are faring as a group, they can be more confident about choices concerning the education of their children.
