For years state education leaders have sought data from the Department of Defense (DoD) on how their students who elect to serve in the military are faring.
The idea is to offer much-needed information for high schoolers and their parents on what a career in the military could mean – financially and in potential career skills and upward workforce mobility. The other benefit of data sharing is squarely aimed at the armed services, providing an assist with military recruiting needs through better communication about the value of a military career.
After much back and forth, the DoD has recently begun developing a data sharing plan with state leaders. But while a good start, the effort requires modifications if it is going to have any real impact.
According to education leaders, the DoD has agreed to provide some data—but only the aggregate number of students who enlist in the military from any given region. That’s not what state leaders need to showcase the military as a possible career path for students, nor what could help the armed services with recruiting, and not by a long shot.
“The data provided about military personnel, while anonymized, should be far more detailed,” said Kate Tromble, Vice President for Federal Policy at the Data Quality Campaign. “That would include information such as what high school the service members graduated from; whether the high school properly prepared them for the military; their score on the military enlistment exam; their demographics; what skills they are gaining in the military; how long they stayed in the service.”
In 2023, Kansas led a group of states in pressing the military about the need for data. Simply put, they wrote, schools and communities lack the data from the armed forces to demonstrate to their students that upon graduation they are well prepared to succeed in the military.
“As state leaders, we are dedicated to ensuring all students leave high school ready for success in college or careers, and we believe that serving our country is one viable pathway a student might choose to pursue,” education leaders in more than half the U.S. states wrote the Department of Defense. “Unfortunately, the lack of objective, verifiable data on military enlistment and persistence makes it almost impossible for states to consider military service as a successful post-high school outcome and to confirm if students were successfully prepared to serve.”
“Our priority is to ensure that all high school graduates in our states are ready for college and career success. When students decide to pursue a career in the military, we hope that—and would like to know if— they are succeeding in that career choice. Our efforts as a state education system are only improved when we know how our students are doing,” they said.
The effort has strong support on Capitol Hill, where a bi-partisan group of lawmakers introduced a bill last year seeking to formalize the data sharing.
This isn’t the first time school districts have attempted to gather information on how well their students were doing in the military. After the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015, 10 states planned to use military service as one of their indicators of student success. Lacking an effective way to collect that data, officials shelved it.
Lizzette Reynolds, Tennessee Commissioner of Education, was one of the signers of the original request for DoD data sharing.
“Entering military service is both an extremely difficult and important decision, and an honorable career choice, for students and parents,” she told me. “Here in Tennessee, we want to understand whether our education system—from teachers and district supervisors to the curriculum and available resources—is effectively preparing students for a successful military career. We need more information to make that determination.”
Data sharing done right has a lot of winners—high schoolers and their parents will get more insight on the military as a meaningful career path, while school systems around the nation will gain insight into how well they are preparing students for those careers. Not to mention the Defense Department, which has struggled to reach graduating high schoolers with messages about careers in the military.
Data sharing will improve all of these situations. But DoD must go further in providing the information that states require.