Military Child Demographic Identifiers are so vitally important.

As military families we bounce around. A lot. Like at least every three years a lot. For many of us, we only know how our own kids are doing in school. We are sent all over the country, to districts both familiar and unfamiliar with serving military children. Our kid’s long term academic performance is affected by our frequent moves and quality of schools, as well as the individual teacher’s awareness of working with military families.

This is why military child demographic identifiers are so vitally important.

Military child identifiers would follow two distinct categories: active duty or National Guard/Reserve connected children. Students identified as military connected K-12 students would be tracked across several academic and school related areas: attendance; current and long term performance in math, reading, and science; graduation rates.

None of this would be released as a personal identifier outside of your current district/school. So your particular child wouldn’t be singled out on a national or state level. Instead, it would be a big picture of how military children are doing as a whole. Having the two categories of students would also allow policymakers to compare the academic success of active duty vs. Reserve/Guard children.

Local Level Impact

For individual schools, the information would be more personal, and that’s a great thing. Teachers and administrators would be able to gather data about MilKid attendance rates and academic performance during deployments, homecomings, prior to PCSing, and just after arriving at a new duty station. All of these changes affect how children perform academically and socially.

Teachers would be armed with data about trends in student academic performance when experiencing deployments, or when moving from a particular area. The classroom teacher would also be better prepared to ally with you during your whole experience, from providing extra support during deployments to helping to prepare your family when you enter and leave a district.

National Level Impact

It is helpful for policymakers to get a snapshot of the performance of military children. Our kids experience a lot of stress in their lives. Moving, deployments, and reunions all take their toll. By tracking our kids in school, we can tweak existing policies and programs to better assist them when times get tough. Lawmakers and DOD officials would be able to see what percentage of military children are graduating high school or where they generally fall in the broad spectrum of academic performance.

Our kids are seeing the broad spectrum of education standards of learning, from Common Core to standards set by individual states. With all the discussion about what direction to take our public K-12 education policies, military children provide a great, diverse glimpse into the performance of children who have experienced multiple sets of standards and assessments. Sharing this data is an excellent addition to the overall conversation about education in America.

Meeting Changing Needs

We have all experienced the funding gaps that occur in school systems across the country. Some schools are very well funded, and others are way underfunded. With improved military child data tracking, DOD and federal resources could be better allocated to schools and adjusted based on when and where military children are moving.

For example, if a community is suddenly experiencing a huge unexpected influx of military families, the DOD and federal government could step up resources available to those schools to meet the needs of students. These resources would help the whole school, and are not exclusive to military children.

Current Systems in Place

Currently, there is no national or consistent system in place to track military children’s academic performance. Some states do have forms of military child school demographic identifiers. However, not all states operate these demographic identifiers in the same manner.

The Department of Defense is recommending that all states, and the federal government, adopt a uniform demographic tracking system for military connected children.

One way to help support the implementation of military child demographic identifiers is to support Kids of America’s Heroes. Another great way to show support would be to contact your Senator or Representative to let them know to support this and want to see action.

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