The Primary Educator | Amy Haywood – February 18, 2025
Editor’s Note
There could hardly be two issues more important to the preservation of the American way of life than the health of our Armed Forces and the education of our children. Amy Haywood examines a little-noticed corner of the Pentagon bureaucracy and finds the DoD falling short on both counts. Haywood dissects the arguments for preserving the status quo and urges newly confirmed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to pursue immediate reform in accordance with President Trump’s executive order on school choice. Part 1 of 5.
The K-12 school system for military children overseas is rife with the same bureaucratic incompetence and woke ideology that have infected the rest of the Defense Department, as I have previously covered. Just this week, a DoDEA school in Stuttgart, Germany, was the site of a walkout protesting the visit of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Given this state of affairs, school choice for military kids overseas should have been a common sense solution, and even a bipartisan compromise.
Instead, language to give these military children education options equal to those of the children of State Department personnel was stripped out of the FY25 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) during House negotiations with the Senate before it became law in December. Unfortunately, Democrats in Congress who opposed the measure were operating on faulty information furthered by teachers’ unions.
Despite this setback, and given President Trump’s recent executive order to expand school choice to all Americans — military kids included — a unified Republican Congress, the Trump administration, and a potentially new director at the Pentagon’s K-12 schools have an opportunity to make equality in school choice for military kids overseas a reality before the midterm election. To that end, the facts surrounding the program, and the status quo of the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA), need clarification.
The Banks Pilot Program in the FY25 NDAA would have enabled military and DoD children to use an education voucher to attend a private international school in Bahrain instead of the island’s DoDEA school. The pilot program would have followed the same rules and regulations used for State Department children, known as the Department of State Standardized Regulations (DSSR).
State Department dependents have had this benefit since 1955. The legislative history of the program in a GAO report from 1986 revealed that the State Department “did not want to limit employees’ freedom to educate their dependents as they pleased.” Indeed, it is the gold standard in school choice programs and is a valuable recruiting tool for the Department of State.
When former Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), then-chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s (HASC) Military Personnel Subcommittee, introduced the language in the committee markup of the legislation in May 2024, Rep. Jill Tokuda (D-HI) and HASC Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-WA) tried to sink the effort. Tokuda claimed that the cost of private school tuition often exceeds the amount of vouchers and that students using vouchers would not be provided the “same rights and special education programs and services” they would receive at DoDEA. Smith echoed Tokuda’s concerns and added that sending kids to an unknown international school without the regulations necessary for a good education was not the solution.
These talking points were uncannily similar to those put forth by the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, both of which swiftly denounced the pilot program. These claims omitted some very basic facts about the issue that need to be corrected in order for an honest debate to take place. Each of these claims is addressed in detail below, based largely on the personal testimony of military parents, before we return to the discussion of a solution.
Democrats Are Wrong About Military School Costs
Claim #1: The cost of private school tuition often exceeds the amount of vouchers.
This claim is false. While something like it may be true in a domestic setting, in an overseas context, the State Department gives a generous tuition reimbursement based on the least expensive “adequate” school at post.
The State Department provides a table for allowable tuition rates by country. In Bahrain, for example, the voucher available to State Department children is $26,600 for elementary school, $27,950 for middle school, and $29,250 for high school. This voucher can be used at the DoDEA school or a private international school. Additionally, a portion could be used for homeschool expenses. State dependents can also apply yearly for a Special Needs Education Allowance (SNEA) of up to $95,000.
But military kids do not have this choice; they must attend the DoDEA school, or their parents can fund other schooling options on their fixed military income. This was a reality that Alyse [name has been changed] and her active duty husband found out the hard way.
In a letter to the HASC Military Personnel Subcommittee in support of the Banks Pilot Program, Alyse wrote that after the DoDEA school in Bahrain violated disability law by denying her son testing, services, education, transportation, and an IEP revision — and even went so far as to go to her “husband’s command saying that he was a drain on resources” — she hired an attorney and withdrew her children from the school.
She then enrolled her son (and her other two children) in a local British international school. “During his enrollment assessment the administrator said she did not see any behavioral issues, but she was 99% sure he had dyslexia,” Alyse wrote. “Within 45 minutes she figured out his reading difficulty that DODEA could not figure out within a whole school year.”
The child, who had been a behavioral problem at DoDEA, began to excel at school; he was making friends, and his reading had improved significantly.
But paying for three children in private school was a financial hardship because of tuition, and inclusion services fees on top of that. Alyse wrote, “With total costs upwards of $40,848.05, I had to work two jobs to help pay for everything. I was gone 12 hours a day and my husband was gone 12+ hours a day because Bahrain is a demanding duty station. That left very little family time and we all suffered.”
Access to the same benefits used by State Department families would have made all the difference for this military family, and tuition costs and special needs services would have been fully covered with thousands left over.
DoD Schools Are Failing Special Ed Students
Claim #2: Students using vouchers are not provided the “same rights and special education programs” as DoDEA students.
This is partly true. DoDEA claims to abide by disability law, but some families have found that this doesn’t always happen in practice. And though international schools don’t follow U.S. law, many voluntarily accommodate special education students.
Over in Korea, Jetta Allen and her active duty husband, SFC Timothy Allen Jr., found that their child’s DoDEA school did not provide the same rights, special education programs, and learning supports that most Americans are accustomed to in public schools in the continental United States.
The Allens’ son is autistic and had experienced wonderful special ed teachers at his elementary school in Korea, but when he moved up to Humphreys Middle School, it no longer provided the services he needed. According to many families, hit-or-miss special ed services seem to be characteristic of this federal system.
Jetta, herself a special education certified teacher, did everything in her power to advocate for her son. “As a student with a disability he was not given access to free and appropriate public education per the Individual with Disabilities Education Act,” she relayed. “As a parent to a child with a disability, we were not given access to our parental rights. We sought resolution at every level.”
It ended up being DoDEA and DoD attorneys against the Allens’ one privately hired civilian attorney after the Judge Advocate General (JAG) refused to represent their son in mediation or due process. The DoDEA school team (including the superintendent) and their attorneys and legal staff did not attend mediation, and the school and their attorneys didn’t attend any of the mandated resolution sessions. Meanwhile, the costs were adding up for the enlisted military family, and the case stretched on for months.
In April 2024, their court date was finally set. Jetta conveyed that, up to that point, she and her husband had spent “over $45,000 in legal fees, over $2,000 in tutoring fees, $1,500 in assistive technology equipment, and over $1,000 in private school tuition since DoDEA was refusing [their] son an appropriate education.”
When their attorney estimated that legal expenses were sure to exceed an additional $70,000, they dropped the case and homeschooled their son.
“The actions of the various DoD components influenced our decision to homeschool at our own expense and to seek costly medical treatment,” said Jetta. She noted that taxpayers via Tricare were footing the bill for medical interventions that would not have been necessary had the school provided the appropriate educational interventions required by law for a student on an individualized education program enrolled in special education.
She concluded that DoD and DoDEA “will continue to operate without accountability and oversight because they have limitless funds to draw out these Special Education Due Process Hearings and other dispute resolution methods. … DoDEA will continue to not resolve these issues at the lowest level when it personally costs them nothing to drag servicemembers through court.”
The experience was damaging to her family and to military readiness, and it left her wondering how often this was happening to other military families.
Jetta explained that her husband had been deployed multiple times to the Middle East, but dealing with DoDEA had been more stressful than her husband’s serving in an active combat zone; it had caused more hardship to their family than year-long deployments.
Meanwhile, the State Department provides a guide to assist its families with special needs children before a move, and it reveals that most State Department families enroll their children in private, independent schools overseas. According to the guide, “many international schools have embraced the concept of inclusive education and their capacity to support children with the range of special needs—mild, moderate, and more intensive.” Additionally, the State Department includes the range of services provided in special needs profiles of each of the schools recommended for families at each post, and many other supports are available.
Equal treatment might have made all the difference for the Allens.
School Choice Would Improve on DoD’s Failed Oversight
Claim #3: “The absence of accountability invites fraud and abuse—especially when funds would go to schools or institutions outside the purview of the United States, as they would in Bahrain.”
This is mostly false: The State Department financially assists international schools overseas so they can provide an American-style education to dependents. Though no schools in Bahrain are considered “assisted,” several are fully accredited.
While DoDEA runs 115 physical schools overseas (and 45 in the United States), the State Department’s Office of Overseas Schools (OOS) financially assists 193 schools that have curricula “based primarily on U.S. programs” and are “fully accredited by U.S. standards.”
Technically, there could be schools overseas like the ones described by the unions and Ranking Member Smith, but these aren’t the schools being used by State Department families, and they aren’t the ones that would be approved under a parallel voucher program for military families.
If assisted schools are not available in a country, the OOS provides personnel with a list of adequate schools. In Bahrain, for example, 7 unassisted schools are on the list — a mixture of British and fully accredited American schools. It’s well known that children of the country’s government and business leaders and our embassy personnel attend these international schools.
It is ignorant at best and deceitful at worst for the NEA to launch a campaign that prevents military families from using vouchers in Bahrain because of claims it would invite fraud and abuse if used at international schools not subject to the laws of the United States.
Moreover, this claim ignores the inconvenient reality that fraud, abuse, and other malfeasance currently run rampant in institutions that are under the purview of the United States — including DoDEA. I have previously written extensively on DoDEA’s promotion of woke ideology, its practice of shuffling staff around to avoid accountability, and other clear failures in this rarely noticed corner of the Pentagon bureaucracy.
It is a transparently bad-faith argument to insist that school choice would lead to a lack of oversight when Congress has already neglected its oversight responsibilities in this area.
Understanding the other side’s argument is important, but it is not nearly enough. We must take a hard look at the current state of affairs in DoD schools; understand what is at stake, both for American education and our national defense; and have the courage and coordination to impose decisive reforms:
A Way Forward for Military Schools
With President Trump and Secretary Pete Hegseth eager to reform woke and ineffective military bureaucracies, this is a historic chance to bring change not just to the obvious places but to every aspect of the Armed Forces — including the education of servicemembers’ children.
It would also be an easy victory, which could help provide momentum to Secretary Hegseth as he moves forward to larger battles. School choice is a popular initiative among military families. Unfortunately, past legislative efforts to provide Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) for military families in the continental United States have failed — and have been opposed by non-profits like the National Military Family Association and the Military Child Education Coalition that purport to speak on behalf of military families.
But school choice overseas, in light of the State Department’s thriving program, is an entirely different conversation from domestic efforts to create ESAs. Though it’s a shame the Banks Pilot Program was removed from the NDAA, it’s important for the public and Congress to know that a successful overseas school choice “pilot” using the DSSR is already being used by 4,550 American military kids abroad. It’s a DoDEA-run program known as the Non DoD Schools Program (NDSP), but it’s only available for children outside the service area of a DoDEA school.
Congress should consider skipping an additional pilot and pass a law to expand the NDSP to any of the nearly 49,000 military children overseas that wants it (Note: figure does not include domestic DoDEA schools). Lawmakers should also ensure that additional conditions are not added that would limit choice. Military parent comments from a 2023 Stakeholder Feedback Survey, obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests after they were withheld from the public, underscore the urgency of this issue.
There could hardly be two issues more important to the preservation of the American way of life than the health of our Armed Forces and the education of our children. The mismanagement of DoD schools means that we are failing to form the next generation of responsible and patriotic citizens. But it also means that current or prospective service members are disincentivized from putting on or keeping on the uniform, because they have no guarantee that their families will be taken care of. Both problems — one in the short term, one in the long term — put our nation under threat.
Originally published at TomKlingstein.com on February 13, 2025