"A Safe Place at School"

Despite all the efforts to create positive educational opportunities for military children, by streamlining their moves between schools and providing a supportive, high quality education in those schools, an increasing number of military spouses and servicemembers worry about their children’s education in civilian schools, Jeff Schogol reports in his Stars and Stripes article, “Kids’ education a growing concern for mil families.”

Blue Star Families, a non-profit group for military families conducted surveys in 2009 and 2010 to determine the key issues facing military families. As I reported earlier in this blog, the percentage of respondents who listed their children’s education as their top concern rose from 3 to 12 percent. Put another way, for more than one in ten respondents, this was a greater concern than long deployments, pay and benefits, or anything else.

One big worry is having to attend a new school with every change of station, the executive summary said. “Moving from state to state, school to school causes huge gaps in the education process,” one person who responded to the survey wrote. “Every state has its own standards and requirements for graduation. Many children have to change classes and even take extra classes to meet all the requirements to graduate on time or spend 5-6 years in high school.”

I’ve reported here about a coordinated effort between 37 states to standardize course placement, records transfer, and graduation requirements for children in military families, but that won’t be enough if the schools themselves do not meet children’s needs. The survey also found that one in three (34 percent) of respondents had little or no confidence that civilian schools were responsive to the needs of military families.

“My children attend public schools and do not have peers, teacher, administrators or counselors who can even fathom the life of a military child,” one person wrote. As a result, my child does not have a safe place at school to express her feelings of sadness, and anger.”

“It is one thing to move a child from a school in Texas to a school in Kentucky. It is another thing to have to change schools multiple times in Kentucky because of housing issues on and off post,” another wrote. “Post schools should be available for families living off post who are on the waiting list for on post housing, so that the children do not have to be uprooted when housing becomes available.” This certainly seems easy enough to accomplish.

“I worry about gaps in their education, changing schools and not ever picking up exactly where they left off,” another commented. “I worry about them feeling anonymous when they move to a new school and feel like they aren't part of the community.”

“Their teachers had no idea what a deployment really meant and how deep a concern it would be for older children who do understand the dangers of said deployment,” another said. “The teachers would tell them to 'get over it' and that instead of being worried, that they should feel proud.” Instead of being worried? Military children are entitled to feel legitimately both.

It sounds as if despite a lot of effort, there is still a long way to go before children, who “serve too,” don’t pay an unnecessarily high price for their parents’ decision to serve our country.

The Suffering We Can't See

I’m back after a few days to writing again about Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.‘s recent article, “When the Troops Come Home.” It’s a lot easier to write about fun things like fishing days and quilting than about the darkest downside of military deployment--the serious psychological trauma that affects many service members and their families. Though most of the article is about spouses,it's obvious that the shape of a marriage has a profound impact on the children.

In 2002, early in the Afghanistan war, four Fort Bragg Army sergeants murdered their wives, and two committed suicide after. Three them had returned from Afghanistan. Suicide rates continue to rise. Marital tension can be overwhelming, and many marriages do not survive the deployed service members’ return.

Service members now always return home to a series of post-deployment briefings from chaplains, financial advisers, and psychologists but many veterans are afraid to report problems that might hurt their career, Air Force Tech. Sgt. Herbert Simpson did seek counseling but discovered there is no magic cure. He describes having frequent arguments with his wife. “I was rigid; I demanded things to be my way. I didn't want to take my anger out on my kids or my wife, and I did my damnedest not to. There was one [time] I just got so mad, I just went to the garage and closed the garage and just started to cry."

According to his wife Selina, "He was angry at the world. He wasn't angry at the children....They only saw their fun-loving dad who likes to give horsey rides. [But] I saw it. My demands were, 'Either you fix it -- 'cause it's got to change -- or we'll have to discuss living arrangements.' "

Three years of therapy later, they, unlike many others from his unit, are still together. "I can't fix him, I support him, but I can't fix it,” Freedberg quotes Selina as saying when speaking of the terrible things her husband witnessed during his deployment. “I have chosen not to be burdened with his knowledge, just for my own mental health. I don't need to know those things. And I know that sounds like a horrible thing to say aloud and to try to explain to somebody, but I deal with the day to day and making sure the kids are happy."

Part of going on, I've learned in my own life, is understanding that that’s all anyone can do about many things.

But the trauma isn’t limited to the service members themselves. Dawn Phillips, an Army wife of 30 years, was talking on the phone with her husband, Brig, General David Phillips, who called from Baghdad's Green Zone. “It dawned on me that the noise in the background was a rocket coming in. The last thing I heard was BOOM, and the phone went dead. I just fell down on the floor sobbing," she says. "I thought he was gone. Twenty minutes later, he was able to get a call through, and I still couldn't quit sobbing."

In the DSM-IV, the official handbook of the psychiatric profession, the triggers of post-traumatic stress disorder include "learning about unexpected or violent death, serious harm, or threat of death or injury experienced by a family member or other close associate." As Freedberg points out, “almost any deployed service member's loved ones can meet that criterion.”

But the question of how much to share is a difficult one. Most don’t share the details, to protect their spouses’ peace of mind. This can make the spouse feel shut out, though, when service members get together after their return.

After Brig. Gen. Phillips's unit returned from its first Iraq deployment, "we had a huge picnic there, and...a big group of us [soldiers] got together. All of a sudden, we're talking real animated because we had all been through different experiences together....[W]e're around this little bonfire, and all the spouses were outside of that circle. And when my wife pointed that out to me, I saw what she meant. She goes, 'I don't know you now. You don't include us; you don't include me in what took place.'"

We all know that to a certain extent such isolation and disconnects are an unavoidable part of the damage of war. Still, we know so much more about how to help and how to advocate that families get that help. It’s true, as Selina Simpson says, we can’t fix it or them, but we must never lose sight of the fact that a great deal of hidden suffering goes on in the families of those who are fighting our wars.

The Neighborhood We Live In

Yesterday, dozens of military family members convened in Washington to present the findings of the Blue Star Families’ 2010 Military Family Lifestyle Survey, marking the opening of the Joint Congressional and Senate Military Families Caucus Event.

Spouses and parents, for the most part, made up the 3,634 people who took the online survey in May. Their top concern was for pay and benefits, but the next-greatest concern was the toll a parent’s deployment takes on children. The biggest differences between respondents’ concerns this year and last was in children’s education. Twelve percent of respondents this year called it a major concern, compared to 3 percent last year.

Douglas B. Wilson, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, spoke at the event about a new program called ‘Me and a Friend,’ which he created as a result of a conversation with a deployed servicemember. The program, hosted by Blue Star Families, issues free tickets to sporting and cultural events for military children and their friends.

“It’s a matter of looking into our community and understanding that maybe the next-door neighbor is overseas, but maybe the neighbor’s child would like to go to an event,” he said.

The words of Martin Luther King Jr., echoed through the day:  “If you’re not as concerned with your neighbor’s child as you are with your own, you’ll wake up one day and not recognize the community you live in.”

The Defense Department alsohas announced it will undertake for the first time a Military Family Life Project survey, which will examine the broad impact of deployments.   Here are links to a video  about the event, and the article that was the source of this post.  

GI Junior Scholarships

The Pacific Research Institute (PRI), a California-based public policy think tank, has released a policy brief  that concludes that education opportunities for school-aged military children in California would be improved by introducing something called GI Junior Scholarships.  Essentially, these scholarships are school vouchers to allow parents to choose their children’s school. 

Military children attend an average of six to nine different school systems throughout their elementary and high school years.  Overall, school districts surrounding military bases throughout California have a slightly lower Academic Performance Index (API) than the statewide average. No more than half the students in public schools surrounding California’s 26 military bases score at the “proficient” level in English language and math on the California Standards Test. Only14 percent of high school students in those schools on average score college-ready in English on the Early Assessment Program and 9 percent score college-ready in math.

“It’s entirely reasonable that military parents, who have little to no control over where they will be stationed should command more choice over the education of their children,” one of the authors of the study says. “Expanding private education options for students from military families by allowing students to attend private schools using public funds would help ensure they have access to high-quality schools regardless of where their parents are stationed.”

I am a strong supporter of increasing opportunities for military children to do well in school, but I believe a larger, critical point is being overlooked here.  If these schools are not good enough for military children, why are they good enough for others?  They clearly aren’t serving anyone very well, and resources could be better put into improving these schools than finding ways to abandon them and go elsewhere.

Here’s a link to an article about this subject:

http://www.pacificresearch.org/press/new-study-finds-gi-junior-scholarships-would-expand-education-options-for-ca-military-children

Going to School, Virtually

I am taking a break today from discussing the many issues raised in the article “When the Troops Come Home,” to talk about another interesting initiative that started this school year,a virtual high school offered through the Department of Defense Education Activity. It’s an accredited distance-learning program for military students, offering 48 online courses in the full range of disciplines, including foreign language, math, science, social studies, language arts and physical education, as well as many advanced placement courses. The school also offers English as a second language and special education.

 “Virtual High School Opens ‘Doors’ to Learning.”  explains how the program works.The school is designed primarily for students eligible to attend a Defense Department school but who don’t live near one.  Some students attending local schools might need particular courses to graduate, as a result of having moved from school to school, and the virtual high school solves this problem.

Students currently attending Defense Department schools can request to take classes online, but only when there’s a scheduling conflict or a required course isn’t offered. At this point the virtual high school isn’t meant to be the only way students receive education, but rather a means to fill in while the student attends a regular school. The hope is to create virtual elementary and middle schools down the road, and plans are being laid to get the virtual high school certified to grant diplomas, but to do this it would have to offer all courses needed to meet graduation requirements.

I’m not of the age group that jumps willingly into new technologies, but it is easy to see how this program might be immensely helpful in keeping teenagers motivated to pursue and excel at their studies.  I was fortunate to have a lot of excellent teachers in my day, and I wouldn’t trade the daily socializing for time in front of a computer monitor, but this seems to be an excellent means to help vulnerable and stressed young people over the bumps in the road to graduation.  Perhaps in the next generation of scholars and high achievers there will be some who were helped to stay on track by programs like these.

How the Brass See It

Here's some  more from the article "When the Troops Come Home," which I started discussing yesterday in this blog.  From the perspective of military leaders, the well being of military families is an essential consideration, because the unhappiness and stress that loved ones experience is a great incentive to quit. "You recruit and train a soldier, but you retain the family," said Denis McDonough, chief of staff for the National Security Council, which is finishing up a major review of how every Cabinet department can support military families. In the long run, the stability of the military can only be achieved when service members believe that have left their family in good shape when they deploy and will have the help they need to reenter family life on their return. 

Speaking of the attitude of the Obama administration, McDonough says, "In a lot of ways, it's kind of an emotional thing here. The first lady is raising the bar on this." Michelle Obama has made military families a White House priority, working alongside Vice President Biden's wife, Jill.  Their son served in Iraq. At one meeting, McDonough says that President Obama looked over 2011 spending proposals and said, "This is easy.... Here's the deal: I'm not going to go home tonight and tell the first lady of the United States that I had an opportunity to ensure that our budget meets the investments that she's been telling me about, but that I didn't take it."

That is good news, but budgetary considerations often trump good intentions. Since 9/11, the Defense Department has invested heavily in military family support initiatives, but as people perceive the wars winding down, as the recession lingers, and as deficits mount, funding for these initiatives at the same, or the higher levels that are needed, may not be possible..

The Pentagon's budget estimates it will spend about $10.7 billion in both fiscal 2010 and the 2011 on services to  military families, including on-base schools, youth programs, and subsidized grocery stores.However, that figure does not include military housing allowances, a total of $19.7 billion requested for 2011; or military health care at $50.7 billion, so the competition with the financial demands of combat operations and weapons procurement is growing ever stiffer.

"People are looking at health care costs as a component of Pentagon spending," McDonough said. "By the same token, we've made clear that a mission-critical effort is keeping our force healthy, keeping our families healthy, making sure that they get a good education." 

"We know cuts are coming down the road," said Kathleen Moakler, government-relations director at the National Military Family Association.  Let's hope eliminating waste and duplicative efforts will be all that is needed, so we don't take a step backward just when stressed families need more and more support.

Measuring Up at Home

A lengthy article in the National Journal, entitled “When the Troops Come Home”  showed up in my in email inbox today, and it is going to take a while to absorb everything in it.  I’ll probably be blogging about the issues it raises for a while as I think about each in turn.  One of the things I noticed immediately was the candor with which some of the interviewees talked about what it was like to have a service member back after deployment. 

As a professor at an urban community college, I have a lot of military spouses, wives mostly, who have gone through similar experiences during the semester they are in my class.  They talk of their excitement about the spouse returning, mixed with fear that something will go wrong at the last minute.  There’s always a little bit of anxiety, or perhaps a lot, mixed in with the happiness that the deployment is nearly at an end.  When one person has held down both spouses’ part of the job of keeping a home and raising a family, it's hard for the returning spouse to fit in smoothly. Much as both spouses vow to focus on the good, the little details sometimes derail a happy return. 

'"[When] there's soup bowls in the sink that should've been rinsed out and put in the dishwasher, it's really easy to start getting mad about it and yelling at your wife or yelling at your family," says one Army bomb squad officer. "But you have to look at it and just kind of take a step back and say, 'Man, I'm glad I'm home and that these are my worries now.' "

And on the other side, the spouse who has been at home feels much of the same stress.  "You finally let your guard down from worrying and worrying and worrying," says one military wife, but then "you start to get mad, like when he does little funny things around the house -- man, they just sound silly -- but not putting your dish away. And you just get angry. Like, 'Do you have any idea how much I worried for you? Put your dish away!'... It sounds silly, but you really do feel those feelings."

Some of the explosiveness of this period is letting go of months of anxiety.  Other times it comes from the fact that people change when they are separated, and the fit will not be--cannot be--exactly the same as when they parted. Every return requires a renegotiation of the relationship, which takes place in a highly charged emotional environment. 

As the article points out this renegotiation is “a delicate task, for which a year of screaming orders at subordinates in a combat zone is not good preparation,” and relationships can come apart at the seams in the months after the return.

The article doesn’t talk specifically a great deal about children, but it is easy to see how complicated a return must be for them.  They expect the parent they remember--or in the case of the young, have mostly imagined--to be at their best and to meet their needs, when in fact it may be difficult for the returning parent to meet his or her own.  Possibly there’s been a great deal of idealization of that parent, which is natural.  It’s hard to imagine how any parent could live up to all the expectations of their children for how things would be when he or she returned.  Add to that the observable strain between mom and dad as they adjust--the arguments over dirty dishes, and the like--and it is easy to see that it isn’t appropriate to see military children’s stresses ending in the rosy glow of their parents’ return.