Better Education for Military-Connected Children

From Heritage Foundation, Education Policy Center, June 28, 2019

The schooling options available to military-connected children can play a major role in whether a family accepts an assignment, even factoring into decisions to leave military service altogether. Yet, half of all military families live in states with no school choice options at all. 

This week, Paul DiPerna (EdChoice), Lindsey Burke, and Andrew Catt (EdChoice) released a new nationally representative survey reporting on the experiences and opinions of over 1,200 active-duty military families.

Key findings include:

• Nearly three-quarters (72 percent) support ESAs; two-thirds (66 percent) support vouchers; and over two-thirds (67 percent) support charter schools.

• Notably, school safety ranked as the number one priority for active-duty military families and it was the top reason military families chose to homeschool.

• Thirty-three percent of active-duty military families had taken out a new loan to pay for their child’ K-12 education.

Paul, Lindsey, and Drew discuss the implications of these findings for policy – along with dozens of other findings – in an EdChoice podcast.