DoDEA

DoDEA’s ability to impact educational outcomes for children of military families is best leveraged through outreach and partnerships with school districts, professional organizations, and most importantly parents.

DoDEA's Educational Partnership is devoted to providing resources and support military connected school districts. The majority of the 1.2 million school-age children of military families do not attend DoDEA schools.

Through outreach, DoDEA’s Educational Partnership works collaboratively with the U.S. Department of Education and provides resources to public school districts that educate military children. The Educational Partnership is focused on transforming the responsiveness of educators and to build the capacity of the social and emotional climate of schools as well as increase student achievement.

Since 2008, the program has awarded grants to more than 165 military-connected public school districts. These three-year projects impact nearly 280,000 military-connected students and improve academic instruction in nearly 900 schools. The grant program provides resources to military connected public school districts to develop and implement projects that are designed to:

• Promote student achievement in the core curricular areas.
• Ease the challenges that military students face due to transitions and deployments.
• Support the unique social and emotional needs of military students.
• Promote distance learning opportunities.
• Improve educator professional development.
• Enhance and integrate technology.
• Encourage parental involvement.

In addition to providing grants, DoDEA develops and disseminates information and resources, and provides professional development opportunities for educators in military connected schools. Examples include:

The Students at the Center resource guide provides educators with an understanding the unique issues military children face and provides the military community with information on public school systems. To date over 13,500 Students at the Center guides have been distributed; and

Professional development provided to public school educators through a set of 16 special education modules, and face-to-face training. To date, DoDEA has distributed 220 Special Education module sets to LEAs and trained 529 teachers and administrators from eleven publish school districts.

In response to the increasing number of children with a deployed parent, DoD expanded the Child and Youth Behavioral - Military and Family Life Counselor (MFLC) program to support and augment military-connected public schools. There are currently 220 MFLCs in 337 military-connected public schools providing emotional support and guidance for over 113,705 students and provide support to educators as they serve students.