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The Common Core State Standards will provide military-connected children—who often change schools frequently as their parents move from duty station to duty station—with more consistent and high-quality education.
Common Core, Education, K-12
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States across the country have always established their own academic standards, curricula, and achievement goals. This inconsistency, however, creates problems for children from military families, who must move and change schools frequently as their parents are reassigned. For these children, moving from state to state not only has significant social and emotional challenges, it also complicates their education. It is critical for states to minimize the strain that moving has on these children; adopting and effectively implementing the Common Core State Standards would ensure that as students change schools, their education is consistent and of high quality.
There are 1.2 million military-connected children in the United States. On average, these children move three times more often than their civilian counterparts. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, military children typically move between six and nine times before they graduate from high school. This translates to a move every 18 to 24 months.
Changing schools often negatively affects student achievement, and the differing standards of state education systems only exacerbate the problem. Moving’s effect on student achievement is consistently and increasingly negative; the more students move, the more pronounced their decrease in achievement. Those students who move three or more times achieve a basic level of performance at half the rate of their peers who have not moved, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP.
What students are expected to know and be able to do often differs from state to state.
Completing Algebra I in eighth grade is often considered an indicator of college and career readiness. Which grade students are scheduled to take the course, however, varies from state to state. Children who move frequently may have to take algebra multiple times or may fall behind their peers because they have not taken it at all.
States with low standards may leave students unprepared for higher standards in other states. What students learn and the levels of proficiency they are expected to reach differ dramatically from state to state. This patchwork of standards and expectations is problematic for students who change schools frequently as there may be gaps in what these students have learned that leave them unprepared for more challenging education systems in other states. For example, using its own tests, New York determined that 62 percent of its students were proficient in math; however, the nationwide and more rigorous NAEP assessment found that only 32 percent were proficient.
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