The Educational Partnership Program promotes quality education, seamless transitions and deployment support for military students through outreach and partnership development. Service members often accept or decline assignments based on the availability of quality educational opportunities for their children.

Welcome

The Evaluation Technical Assistance Center is pleased to support the staff and grantees of the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) in their mission to provide a quality education to all military-dependent children.

The DoDEA Educational Partnership Branch is dedicated to promoting every military child's right to a quality education regardless of their location or how often their family relocates. DoDEA has more than 60 years of experience supporting military students within the Department of Defense (DoD) system around the world.

The Educational Partnership Program promotes quality education, seamless transitions and deployment support for military students through outreach and partnership development. The Educational Partnership Program also has the authority to issue grants for programs that enhance student achievement and develops an annual Report to Congress articulating student growth projections, recommendations for appropriate means of assistance, and the DoD plan for outreach.

Working in concert with ED, the Partnership's Outreach Team manages the DoD Impact Aid program (Supplement, Base Realignment and Closure, and Children with Severe Disabilities) funding distributed annually to eligible military-connected school districts nationwide.

New Resources

"Be Here" Toolkit

The DoDEA Educational Partnership Branch is pleased to announce the launch of the "Be Here" attendance campaign Toolkits! These toolkits contain downloadable "ready-to-go" briefs, flyers, PSAs, newsletter/newspaper articles, message templates and much more. The resources are organized into three toolkits: Schools & Teachers; Parents & Students; Military Leadership & SLOs. Whenever possible, DoDEA has provided resources in WORD or PPT format so that they may be modified and/or revised to meet your specific needs. The toolkits are available at the DoDEA Educational Parternship Branch website.

Please feel free to provide the link on your websites, and share the resource with all of your stakeholders and partners in your efforts to improve attendance and inform families about the new DoDEA attendance policy. Please check back often as DoDEA continues to update the site with additional resources. We hope you find these toolkits helpful in your efforts to promote the "Be Here" campaign, and ultimately improve attendance.

Effects of Parental Deployment on Student Performance

According to a study conducted by RAND Arroyo Center, the academic performance of elementary and middle school aged military connected students is negatively affected by the long and frequent deployments of their parents. Students who have experienced parental deployment for 19 months or more, have significantly lower scores and more behavioral problems than their peers who have not experienced parental deployment at all or as much. Interviews with school officials showed that a majority of them were not able to adequately understand the problems facing their military students and a lot has to be done to inform and support these officials.

Children of Military Service Members Resource Guide

This guide is provided by the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury (DCoE) to support military families and health care providers in tackling the mental and emotional needs of military children. It is a compilation of topic-specific and age related resources from DCOE's internet-based literature review materials which include books, websites, films and social media and support groups.

Grantee Spotlight

Fairfax County Public Schools students from Mount Vernon HS and Walt Whitman MS visited NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. to meet with astronauts Doug Hurley and Rex Walheim, who flew on the final mission of the space shuttle Atlantis.

Children examining beakers in a science classroom J.E.J. Moore Middle School in Prince George County Virginia was awarded a 2009 DoDEA grant to extend their After School Knowledge (ASK) Tutoring Program to the military installation at Fort Lee. The goal of the program is to increase the achievement in mathematics of military students and to provide professional development to mathematics teachers.

Previously, the school implemented the ASK Program on campus to assist all students, both military and non-military, who are academically at-risk. However, a majority of the military students that were identified as having needs could not attend these sessions due to transportation difficulties. Shuttling students the 18-mile round trip to and from the school would stretch the budgets of military families and cause many other inconveniences. Hence the ASK Program was expanded to Fort Lee to eliminate this barrier and allow military students to participate in the after school tutoring program.

Ever since its implementation at Fort Lee, the Moore Math Program has grown and the military staff on-base has been very supportive. Students that were recently interviewed expressed their gratitude for the program, as it has not only helped them drastically improve their grades but also save their parents money that they would have used for travel.

Due to the successes of the ASK Program at Moore Middle School, Prince George County Public Schools Systems is brainstorming ways to sustain the program beyond the grant period. A slideshow and article highlighting the program are available on the Grantee Materials page.