A Closer Look at "Every Student Succeeds Act"

Congress and President Obama passed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

Embedded in this document is a clause requiring tracking of military students, exactly what K.O.A.H. has worked for! This law went into effect this year, and has gained massive media attention in military circles over the summer.

The military child clause will help leaders in the military and education worlds, at all levels, understand the long term effects of military service on military connected children. States will need to identify and monitor the standardized test results of MilKids. This information will help to identify trends in learning and could impact services that are provided specifically for military children.

This is amazing!

It means that ALL military children with parents on active duty will be identified by their public school districts as being MilKids. It means that we can see, once data has been collected and analyzed for a few testing cycles, what moving every three or so years does to a child or group of children. It means that we can target MilKid specific aid and programs to districts with these children!

What I can’t find is language that spells out HOW, WHEN, WHERE, and WHAT will be collected by states. This troubles me, as a teacher and a military spouse. I’m going to need some specifics about what is going on.

Until someone, somewhere, can provide me some specifics, I have some suggestions and questions of my own.

1. Testing with Integrity.

Here’s the thing: standardized testing shows me just one thing - how well a given child can take a standardized test. Sure, it might show me how much math a fourth grader knows on a given day in May. Or it could show me how correctly that same fourth grader guessed. Or it could show me that the child doesn’t understand how to take a computer based test or a multiple correct options test or that s/he is part of a disadvantaged subset.

We need to take a hard look at what and how we are testing our kids, and make sure that our measures are actually testing what we think they are testing.

2. More than Tests

Our kids are more than just scaled scores from Test X. They are humans with thoughts and feelings and reactions to the lives they are living.

We need to assess this as well.

By focusing just on academic data, we ignore a huge component of a successful education: mental health and well being.

Moving often puts a lot of stress on our kids, and the education powers that be need to know about it in order to serve it.

I would suggest that we include a survey of military children’s mental health as a way to assess how they are doing on that front along with the academic data collection.

3. Direct the Money

With the data that is collected, we also need to direct it appropriately. Just because a district is military heavy doesn’t always mean that they need the bulk or a bigger chunk of the money.

Chances are that military heavy towns have been that way for a while. Jacksonville, NC has been a military town for a good long time now, and their teachers hopefully have a good handle on this aspect of student life.

But a town in the middle of Virginia, with a small enclave of families who are commuting to a semi-distant base, might not have that same insight. A town where a National Guard unit was just activated probably does not have a handle on what it means to be a military family.

These towns and cities, the ones with a smaller population of MilKids, need to be a focus as we work to get teachers and schools on board with best practices.

4. Teacher Training

Teachers have to deal with a lot on a daily basis: special education needs to be me, buckets of data collected and analyzed, lessons to be planned, and assignments to be graded. They are also on the front lines of our children’s mental and physical health.

They NEED to be trained to respond to military children in stressful situations, or just in general.

Part of this initiative should be on-going teacher training for any and all districts where there are military children. If teachers aren’t aware of what they should or could do, they might be at a loss for what to do. After all, if you haven’t personally experienced a deployment it seems overwhelming and strange.

5. Moving Parts

Military families move on average every two to three years.

• How are we going to be tracking which students in a given district as new due to PCS, which have been there for several years, and which are transitioning out?

• What about deployments?

• How about National Guard or Reserve units that have been activated?

• How will scores from different states be compared, contrasted, and ultimately assimilated to form a complete picture of our military students?

• What about children who were previously homeschooled? Or who homeschool using a publicly funded charter school? What about private schools? What about kids who have accessed all of the education options (public, private, charter, homeschool)?

There are so many moving parts to our kids’ lives, and if the state and federal governments want to accurately assess our children then they need to factor these things into their analysis.

This is just my two-cents.

What do you want to see clarified or added to the ESSA Military Child Education clause? Let us know!

K.O.A.H.

MilKids Ed Meg Flanagan

I'm a teacher, blogger, writer, runner, mother, and military spouse. I am passionate about helping ALL children learn, offering tips to guide parents through the K-12 education world, and providing useful advice to teachers of all ages and stages.

#EveryStudentSucceedsActESSA #trackingofmilitarystudents