Schools May Track Military Students' Progress

Advanced Placement chemistry teacher Stacy Stoll, second from left, guides students Lissa Haddock, Brandon Pope, and Morgan O’Quain through a titration experiment at Harker Heights High School, near Fort Hood, in Harker Heights, Texas. The district is taking part in a pilot project this year aimed at increasing AP science enrollment among children of military families.

—Erich Schlegel for Education Week

By Sarah D. Sparks

The increased federal focus on military children may lead to more detailed tracking of how they fare academically in schools located off base.

As part of a joint tour promoting military families, first lady Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, a community college instructor and the wife of Vice President Joe Biden, are calling for more targeted support services for military students and better access to rigorous curricula. Yet a recent report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office suggests it may be hard to identify and serve highly mobile military students.

The GAO reported in March that the inability to track military students’ progress made it difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of the $1.3 billion federal Impact Aid grant program. The main grants compensate school districts for property tax lost due to the presence of federal property, such as a military base, in their taxing districts. Schools in which 20 percent or more of the students come from military families get supplemental grants from the U.S. Department of Defense. These Impact Aid grants are among the most flexible federal grants, and can be used for anything deemed to support the students, from teacher salaries to...