The Nation’s Top-Performing Public School System

Improving America’s schools can sometimes seem like an impossible task. Politicians have been promising to do so for decades, yet the U.S. remains well behind many other countries in basic measures of learning. The Covid pandemic, with its extended school closures, aggravated the problems.

But making progress really is possible, and a story by my colleague Sarah Mervosh describes perhaps the best case study. The network of schools run by the Defense Department has been performing well for years and continued to do so during the pandemic. These schools are typically on military bases, and they educate about 66,000 children of service members and Defense Department civilian employees.

Last year, this school system outperformed all 50 states on reading and math scores for both eighth graders and fourth graders. Before the pandemic, the military schools did well but were not ranked No. 1. The schools also have smaller learning gaps between white and both Black and Hispanic students than other schools have.

“If the Department of Defense schools were a state, we would all be traveling there to figure out what’s going on,” Martin West, an education professor at Harvard, told Sarah.

Perhaps the most important lesson is that the schools are excelling not by discovering some new secret about education. They are doing what decades of research has suggested is successful. “It is not surprising that they have good outcomes,” Douglas Harris, a Tulane professor who has studied the recent progress by a different school system — in New Orleans — told me. “It’s consistent with many decades of research about effective schools.”

High standards

Among the reasons the Defense Department schools do so well:

• Consistent with military culture, they set high standards and create a disciplined classroom culture. In 2015, the schools overhauled their curriculum using principles from the Common Core, a national program that many other districts have abandoned after criticism from both the political right and left. But the approach seems to benefit students. “Unlike the Common Core, which was carried out haphazardly across the country, the Defense Department’s plan was orchestrated with, well, military precision,” Sarah writes.

• Defense Department schools are racially and economically integrated. Asian, Black, Hispanic and white students attend the same schools. So do the children of Army privates earning $25,000 a year and the children of high-ranking officers earning six-figure salaries.

• The schools receive more funding than public schools in many states do. One teacher at an elementary school on Fort Moore in Georgia told The Times that she doubled her salary by switching from a traditional public school in Florida. The supply closets at Defense Department schools tend to be well-stocked, and teachers don’t have to pay for paper, pencils and books out of their own salaries, as is common elsewhere.

• During the pandemic, the military’s schools reopened relatively quickly — and it’s clear that extended closures were terrible for children. By December 2020, 85 percent of students at Defense Department schools were learning in person, officials told Sarah. Only a handful of states exceeded that share, according to the Covid-19 School Data Hub. The share was below 10 percent in California, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia and several other states.

Two striking statistics

The Defense Department schools are hardly perfect. They also have some inherent advantages that other schools do not. More of their families have two married parents than is the case nationwide. By definition, at least one parent in each military family is employed. And the military provides health care and housing.

“Having as many of those basic needs met does help set the scene for learning to occur,” Jessica Thorne, an elementary school principal at Fort Moore, said.

Given this contrast, many other schools are unlikely ever to fare as well. Still, it would be a mistake to think that the military schools are thriving only because of the underlying differences in their students. After all, those differences have long existed — but the gaps between the Defense Department schools and all others have recently grown, especially among vulnerable students.

Consider these two striking comparisons from Sarah’s story: At Defense Department schools, Black and Hispanic eighth graders have higher reading scores than white students do nationwide on average. And eighth graders whose parents graduated only from high school performed as well in reading as students nationwide whose parents were college graduates.

For more, I recommend Sarah’s story and Kendrick Brinson’s accompanying photos, which take you inside Fort Moore’s schools.

THE LATEST NEWS

Israel-Gaza War

• Israel retook towns near Gaza after days of fighting and is now moving to secure the border.

• The country has mobilized a record number of reservists and asked the U.S. for more weapons.

• Israel’s defense minister ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip. The territory relies on Israel for most food, water and electricity.

• The Israeli military said it struck hundreds of targets in Gaza, including a mosque and a refugee camp. These satellite images show the devastation.

• Hamas threatened to execute a hostage each time an Israeli airstrike hit a home in Gaza. Read what we know about the at least 150 hostages and how they were taken.

• Western nations consider Hamas a terrorist organization. The brutality of its recent attacks stripped away illusions about the group, The Times’s Steven Erlanger writes.

• Both Democrats and Republicans condemned Hamas, but the consensus may fade as Israel continues to retaliate, Peter Baker writes.

• Vladimir Putin’s response has been muted. Russian commentators have said the fighting in Gaza could sap Western support for Ukraine.

More on the War

Business

• The giant Chinese property company Country Garden said it couldn’t repay a loan and signaled it would default on its debt.

• South Korea announced that it had secured waivers from U.S. rules that sought to limit semiconductor chip exports to China.

Strikes

• The United Automobile Workers union went on strike in three states against Mack Trucks, in addition to its strike against major car companies.

• Hollywood writers voted to approve a new three-year contract with studios, formally ending a five-month labor dispute.

Politics

Other Big Stories

• The San Francisco police shot to death a driver who crashed into the city’s Chinese consulate.

• Hurricane Lidia is expected to make landfall in western Mexico today.

• During a solar eclipse this week, tribal parks in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah will be closed to visitors to accommodate traditional beliefs of Indigenous peoples.

Opinions

A referendum on Saturday is a chance to give Aboriginal peoples a voice in Australia’s politics, Thomas Mayo writes.

Here’s a guest essay by Margaret Renkl on butterflies.

Stream queen: Margrethe II of Denmark was a costume and production designer for a Netflix fantasy show about royals.

Flu season: Feeling sick? Read how to know what you have — and how long you need to stay at home.

Ask Vanessa: A reader asks The Times’s chief fashion critic whether she can be a feminist and love fashion.

Lives Lived: Charles Feeney, a duty-free shop pioneer and start-up investor, promised to donate almost all of his $8 billion fortune before he died, and he did. He died at 92.

SPORTS

Baseball: A stunning double play finished a massive 5-4 comeback win for the Braves, who tied their series with the Phillies at one win apiece.

M.L.B. playoffs: The Dodgers are down 2-0 in their playoff series against the upstart Diamondbacks after a surprising 4-2 loss.

N.F.L.: The new Green Bay quarterback, Jordan Love, endured his worst game as a professional in a 17-13 loss to the Raiders.

ARTS AND IDEAS

Hip-hop’s Olympic moment: Breaking — the dizzying athletic dance style that accompanied the rise of hip-hop — has largely faded from popularity in the U.S. Next year, though, breaking has an international spotlight, debuting as an Olympic sport at the Paris Games. “I’m like, ‘We going to the Olympics, but this started right here in my backyard,’” said Alien Ness, a pioneering B-boy from New York City.

Related: Flag football and lacrosse could be among the five new sports added to the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.