Military Education Coalition builds understanding between students and educators

January 14, 2001 - WASHINGTON (DeploymentLINK) -- Do you remember your freshman year in high school? Finding classrooms, learning names, observing schedules, making friends, earning grades - just a few of the reminders of that hectic, demanding first year. How would you like to repeat that adjustment experience two or even three times in your high school career? Add to that the pressure of accumulating the required credits to graduate or preparing for multiple school-mandated exit exams.

Highly mobile military-connected teenagers often do. In fact, the average military student faces transition challenges more than two times during high school. This situation often subjects some of the 175,000 secondary school-aged students of military personnel to a variety of educational challenges not experienced by the general population. In 1997, a group of concerned parents and educators came together to address the needs of the military child and to provide a forum for exploring issues and solving the problems associated with the transition process. Four years later, the Military Child Education Coalition, headquartered in Harker Heights, Texas, has become the leading advocate in developing systems and processes to resolve educational transition issues for military families.

"Most military children have from six to nine different school systems in their lives from kindergarten to 12th grade. Our organization addresses the challenges - academic as well as social - as children move from school to school," said Dr. Mary Keller, executive director, Military Child Education Coalition.

"We focus exclusively on school transitions. We believe transitions are a shared responsibility, and that is why we are a coalition," she said, noting that the organization is a community of military personnel, educators and concerned parents.

By performing research, sponsoring conferences and professional institutes and serving as an incubator of creative practices and an information source for other organizations, educators and parents, the coalition has contributed to the educational well-being of military students.

"Part of our inspiration is derived from serving two cultures - the military and the school system culture - who are devoted to service," Keller said.

She explained that the cultures are completely different. School systems are bottom up, and the military system is top down.

"We have to respect the autonomy of the local school system where local control exists, and at the same time amplify their capacity to respond to the children's needs when they transition from one school to another," she said.

The turbulence associated with the teen years can be exacerbated by a teenager's move from high school to high school. In 1999, the U. S. Army Community and Family Support Center asked the coalition to conduct an in-depth two-year study with nine school districts that served the largest Army installations worldwide. The purpose was to increase the understanding of the effects of moving during the high school years on the military student. The resulting Secondary Education Transition Study addressed transition issues such as the transfer and interpretation of academic grades, differences in adjusting to alternative block schedules or traditional class schedules, graduation policies that require mobile students to take multiple state exit exams and other educational and social challenges.

Based on this research and conversations with parents and students, the idea developed among coalition members to create a series of professional development workshops to support one of the key persons involved in the process - the high school counselor. Keller said counselors are experts in their own local school systems and can have a substantial influence as students enter and exit the school system.

"After talking with parents, educators and students, we were persuaded that expanding on the school counselors' capacity to understand and respond to the needs of military children as they come into their school system, and as they leave, would do a lot to help the students and the schools," said Keller, who served as the chief research and principal author of the Army-sponsored study.

"Each local school district is a policy entity. And, the more the schools know about each other, the more confident they are in helping each other to solve the children's problems," she added.

With this in mind, the coalition established the Transition Counselors Institute to increase the availability of specifically trained transition counselors who could help navigate school to school moves during the military child's high school years.

The Institute's curriculum includes topics that increase awareness of the military lifestyle, the social and emotional impact of transition, secondary school practices and procedures, and the importance of fostering relationships and partnerships among counselors, school districts and installations. The curriculum is presented in three different levels spanning two or three days during the Military Child Education Coalition's national conferences. During its two years in existence, more than 150 counselors from 50 different school systems located in five countries have been trained by the Institute. The coalition hopes to develop a cadre of expert transition counselors accessible to mobile military students throughout the world.

Beyond being a tool to foster increased understanding, high school counselors find the Institute to be an important source of peer group problem-solving and consultation.

"The Institute offers a wonderful learning experience for the trainer facilitators and the counselors," said Lana Jones, an Institute coordinator who is also an Army spouse and a mother of a high school junior who recently relocated from Texas to Georgia. Jones emphasized that the emotional upheaval associated with moving can be great for some children without the additional worry of whether they will have enough credits to graduate. When counselors who attend the Institute get to know each other by name, they can more readily contact each other on behalf of the students they are helping, she said, and more readily resolve problems.

Keller offered an example of how the Institute can help. Last year a student moved to another state in the spring of his senior year and faced a graduation exam in the new school. The student took the test based on a specific, state-developed curriculum and failed. The student was then notified that he would not graduate.

"The incoming student did not have the preparation for that test because the tests are focused on the curriculum taught in the state," Keller explained. "With the help of our Transition Counselors Institute network, we were able to energize a number of counselors and obtain a reciprocal diploma from the student's former school where he had met the graduation requirements. The student walked across the stage of the new school on graduation day with a diploma from the former school. Because the counselors knew each other from their Institute attendance, we expanded their ability to help this student," Keller said.

"One of the real strengths of the Institute is the networking between counselors across the country and the world," said Dr. Jim Mitchell, superintendent, Groton Public Schools in Groton, Conn., and chair of the coalition committee that oversees the Institute. Serving as a counselor for many years in a district where 42 percent of youngsters are children of active duty personnel, Mitchell has observed both the military child's ability to adjust to new settings rather quickly, and the effects of regulations that hamper a quick adjustment.

"We've fine-tuned some of the things we do in Groton as a result of attending the Institute and sharing ideas," Mitchell said, noting that one of his Groton district counselors has completed all three phases of the Institute's curriculum. He said that as a result of discussions with educators and military personnel, Groton public schools initiated a military superintendent liaison committee where school representatives and military representatives meet monthly to talk about issues affecting transitioning youngsters and how the schools might support the children and families.

Keller emphasized that once the constituencies she works with become aware of their shared responsibilities, they want to cooperate. Sometimes military parents tell us that "if all schools were alike, we wouldn't be dealing with these problems." She said to expect schools, whose history is one of local level growth and development, to be alike reflects a lack of understanding. And we hear from educators that "if the military would just stop moving their kids, we wouldn't have this problem." Military families move due to the mission, she continued. In both cases, when people understand, things change.

Because Marianne Ivany wanted to foster understanding in the Carlisle School District - the home of the U.S. Army War College - she invited the Transition Counselors Institute to offer the training in her area. She has been associated with the Military Child Education Coalition since its inception and found their assistance to be absolutely invaluable.

"The training set the groundwork for knowing our educators face-to-face and working with the counselors one-on-one," said Ivany, who is also the wife of the commandant of the War College. "We tried to help counselors understand our military culture. Now, we also know more about the Pennsylvania school district rules and regulations."

"Our community is so unique," she explained. "Like other advanced staff colleges, the children of the war college students are here for just one year."

Approximately 300 children attended Carlisle area schools in 2001 as a result of parent enrollment at the War College. Ivany said that when a high school student moves for just one 10-month period, there is some risk. If they "miss the boat" with the educational experience, they could suffer terribly.

Some of the difficulties the children encounter represent a microcosm of issues the coalition was created to address. The manner in which an accumulative grade point average is weighted, acceptance of honor courses from other schools and mandated assessment tests that determine graduation are part of locally mandated requirements that vary from district to district and provide transition challenges.

"These issues can present great problems for our children," Ivany said. "We don't want more advantages for our kids, just a level playing field."

Some 40 counselors, including nine from neighboring school districts, attended the Institute sessions in Carlisle, Penn., last August. A pre-Institute reception helped military parents establish relationships with regional superintendents, school board presidents, area principals and assistant principals. Ivany noted that the networking proved to have a positive reciprocal effect when the community dealt with the emotional aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

"We requested and received 100 percent backing from our superintendent to organize visits to the schools by students from the War College," Ivany recalled. She said the teams of War College officers communicated two primary messages to the students: the importance of trusting leadership - both the country's leadership and the schools - and the importance of tolerance for all cultures, since the school system has many Middle Eastern and international students in attendance.

"Their visits eased the anxiety in the community and among children of military personnel who were concerned that parents would immediately deploy," Ivany said. "Our partnership with the schools was a direct result of building a prior relationship with the education community."

Keller echoed the value of developing partnerships within the community.

"No one person or organization can do this," Keller said. "We believe in switching on individual counselors, parents, school systems, the military installation, military services and research-based organizations to ease the transition for students."

The organization's current challenge is gaining reciprocity among states in the area of exit-level testing. Currently, 18 states require a student to take an exit test to qualify for graduation. Keller pointed out that there are 124 military installations located in those 18 states, and the problem for the mobile military child is the likelihood that there will be more than one exit test to pass.

"We don't say that military children should not meet a standard, but there is no reciprocity," Keller said. " If they move, they still have to take another exam."

Keller said the organization is creating awareness around this issue and has developed a Memorandum of Agreement that has been designed to facilitate the mutual development of reciprocal practices and partnership models to institutionalize transition predictability for the military-connected student. Senior leaders from 37 school districts have signed the memorandum and have agreed to study the issue.

"The good news is that we are working with state leaders and working with ally organizations to get our message out," Keller said. "Ultimately, all our efforts are for the sake of the child."