How Two Public School Districts Are Improving K-12 Education For Military Children

Members of the military who have school-age children move six to nine times before their kids finish high school. Most of those 1.2 million students attend schools around military installations, so they are exposed to the vagaries of U.S. education far more than their civilian counterparts. The education of military children can suffer as students are regularly put at a disadvantage of being either ahead of or behind their peers.What is unfolding outside the gates of two Air Force bases, one in Montgomery, Alabama and the other in central Missouri, highlights how two communities are addressing education quality issues in ways that could help other regions with sizeable military populations. What’s more, the solutions could also improve military readiness by ensuring service members are willing to stay in the military and relocate where they are needed most.In Montgomery, the service is struggling to attract military families and faculty to take up residence in and around Maxwell Air Force Base, which is home to the service’s Air University, a major education center for the service that provides a range of programs including graduate level study. The reason is the area’s struggling public schools. Some 34% of Montgomery County seniors in the 2016-2017 school year graduated without being college or career ready. The five regular high schools in the district had a combined average ACT score of 16, below the minimum score of 21 for enrollment at the University of Alabama. On the state’s own education report card, 66% of the Montgomery public schools received grades of D or F, according to the Montgomery Advertiser.