Who Runs the Best U.S. Schools? It May Be the Defense Department. [View all]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/us/schools-pandemic-defense-department.html
https://archive.ph/LW9e0

Who Runs the Best U.S. Schools? It May Be the Defense Department.
Schools for children of military members achieve results rarely seen in public education.
By Sarah Mervosh
Oct. 10, 2023, 5:01 a.m. ET

Amy Dilmar, a middle-school principal in Georgia, is well aware of the many crises threatening American education. The lost learning that piled up during the coronavirus pandemic. The gaping inequalities by race and family income that have only gotten worse. A widening achievement gap between the highest- and lowest-performing students.

But she sees little of that at her school in Fort Moore, Ga.

The students who solve algebra equations and hone essays at Faith Middle School attend one of the highest-performing school systems in the country.

It is run not by a local school board or charter network, but by the Defense Department.

With about 66,000 students — more than the public school enrollment in Boston or Seattle — the Pentagon’s schools for children of military members and civilian employees quietly achieve results most educators can only dream of.

On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal exam that is considered the gold standard for comparing states and large districts, the Defense Department’s schools outscored every jurisdiction in math and reading last year and managed to avoid widespread pandemic losses.

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