New federal law requires schools to track students from military families
Schools across the country will start to formally track how students from military families are performing academically.
A provision in the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, which goes into effect during the 2017-18 school year, will require schools to assign an identification number to school-age students from military families called a "military student identifier." Schools will track and keep data on the students' attendance, performance on standardized tests and graduation rates, among other metrics. The identifier applies to children of active-duty service members. States have the option of including children of the National Guard and Reserve.
The students will be tracked as a group, not on an individual level, similar to how performance is tracked for other school populations such as ethnic groups. The Department of Education will be responsible for implementation and communicating it to school districts.
Abbe Smith, spokeswoman for the Connecticut Department of Education, said by email that the department is "still reviewing the regulations" and "not in a position to discuss how it will impact Connecticut at this time."
The "vast majority" of military children — about 1.2 million — are school-aged, and more than 90 percent of them are in public schools, according to the Military Child Education Coalition. The group says that military children, on average, move six to nine times between kindergarten and high school.
In New London County, there were 3,699 military children—between the ages of 3 and 18 — as of 2014, the most recent year for which data is available. The data comes from the Office of the Secretary of Defense and includes all military branches. But it isn't an exact measurement because the data is based on where the service member lives. If a couple is divorced, for example, the children might not live with the parent who is in the military.
In Groton public schools, 25 percent of the total student body comes from military families, according to Superintendent Michael Graner.
The majority of the 1,200 military-connected students attending Groton public schools live in military housing, which makes it easy to identify them, Graner said. Otherwise, school officials have to rely on students to self-identify.
The Groton school district, like many school districts across the country, receives federal impact aid to compensate for lost property tax revenue from tax-emept federal property within its boundaries. The payments benefit all students not just military students.
"We've been fighting for it for years," Graner said of a system to formally track military children.
New at the start of this school year, which is winding down, the district has three certified social workers, which Graner called military family life counselors, exclusively for the military-connected students. The counselors serve the three elementary schools—Charles Barnum, Pleasant Valley, and Mary Morrisson—and West Side Middle School. So the district, in part, is tracking how the military-connected students are doing that way, Graner said.
The district also received a three-year $1 million grant from the Department of Defense to support the academic skills, specifically writing, and the social/emotional needs of its military-connected students, Graner said.
Graner is a member of the local Military Superintendents Liaison Committee, which meets monthly to discuss education and military issues. The committee includes local school superintendents, military leaders from the Naval Submarine Base and the Coast Guard Academy and interested community members.
Connecticut is part of the Interstate Compact on Educational Opportunities for Military Children, through which member states address school transition issues to minimize disruption for military children.
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