Posting #40. The story of schools, curriculum, and the Department of Defense

The story: When Americans think about what is K-12 schooling in the US, they are likely to imagine two genres, depending on how the schools are funded: public schools, funded by the taxpayer; and private, boarding, parochial, and home schools, funded by parents (who are also taxpayers).

This strict dichotomy about funding, however, is untrue.

In fact, billions of US taxpayer dollars go to private schools. Vouchers, tax credit scholarships, education savings accounts, and state spending all funnel taxpayer dollars into private schools. In Ohio (where I once lived), for instance, voucher benefits “extend to more than 150,000 students across the state, costing [Ohio] taxpayers nearly $1 billion, the vast majority of which goes to the Catholic and evangelical institutions that dominate the private school landscape there.” ProPublica suggests billions more taxpayer dollars, as part of “a nationwide money grab…by parents who are already able to afford tuition and to kids who are already enrolled in private schools” will be redirected, with Trump’s blessing, into private religious schools.

My take on the story: So the strict division between public and private schools is not definitive, as Americans might imagine. With so much taxpayer money going to religion-based schools, as in Ohio, the line between Church and State has been dissolved.

There is yet another form of US K-12 schools, though, and they are a part of the Department of Defense (DoD). I’m obviously not referring to the taxpayer-funded college-level service academies, like West Point, or the military academies, like Norwich University, or the taxpayer-funded graduate level war colleges intended for senior military officers, like the National Defense University.

I’m referring instead to the DoD Education Activity (DoDEA), a pre-K-12 school system funded wholly by taxpayers but intended exclusively for the children of DoD employees.

What are the DoDEA schools?

This system serves “military-connected” children abroad and domestically, school-age children “who would otherwise not have access to high-quality public education.” According to a 2020 report, fewer than 80K of the 1.2M US military-connected school-age children—or less than 1/10^th—attend a DoDEA school. The students attend 161 schools in 11 foreign countries, 7 states, Cuba, Guam, and Puerto Rico. Do the math: the average population of each school is about 500 students and a significant portion of the schools are in the United States, even though the US public school system is in operation.

In effect, then, the DoD-sponsored school system is exclusive and private but funded wholly by taxpayers.

History of DoDEA

The DoDEA website reports that its schools were the result of post-World War II military members stationed in occupied countries needing schools for their children:

DoDEA's beginnings can be traced back to the end of World War II with the establishment of the Department of Defense Dependents Schools (DODDS). At the end of the war, there was no precedent to follow for establishing and operating dependents[sic] schools in foreign occupied countries and quite often, parents organized small schools.

The Department of the Army established the first dependents [sic] schools—on and off military installations—in 1946 in the occupied countries of Germany, Austria and Japan. Within three years, there were nearly 100 schools which were operated separately by the Army, Navy, and Air Force, in countries around the world.

It makes sense that the US military would establish these schools abroad after the World War, given that there were very few international schools available then in countries like Germany, Austria, and Japan, virtual schooling wasn’t possible, and homeschooling was less popular than it is currently. Now there are DoDEA schools abroad in Bahrain, Belgium, Cuba, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.

This does not explain, however, why nearly a third of the DoDEA schools are in the United States. The explanation is buried deep on the DoDEA website: it was a result of segregation because “State law prohibited integrated education or segregated education was deemed unsuitable.” At Fort Jackson in South Carolina, for instance, the Hood Street Elementary School was built in 1963, on post, and was intended to prevent the children of the already-integrated US military from being bused off-post to what were still-segregated schools. Other locations of integrated schools built on military posts include Fort Bragg (North Carolina), Fort Campbell (Kentucky), Camp Lejeune (North Carolina), Fort Benning (Georgia), Fort Stewart (Georgia), Fort Knox (Kentucky), Maxwell Air Force Base (Alabama), and Fort Novosel (Alabama). Other not-abroad DoDEA schools are at West Point, Puerto Rico, and Cuba.

It’s not hard to imagine that the DoD is trying to conceal this fact about the origins of its stateside schools. Early in my research for this posting I found a 2022 article entitled “Maxwell AFB, DoDEA reflect on pioneering school,” one that outlines how a racially integrated school was built on the Air Force base in Alabama. Here is a quote from the article:

In 1954, the Supreme Court decision Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education overturned Plessy vs. Ferguson. As a result, the DoD announced that all schools on U.S. military installations would operate on an integrated basis.

However, the Montgomery County School Board superintendent refused to integrate Maxwell’s new school facility, located just off base property, stating it was a violation of the Alabama Constitution.

As a result, the U.S. government announced on March 16, 1963, that it would build an elementary school on Maxwell that would operate as a fully-integrated school.

“DoDEA, through its history, contributed to the desegregation of education in America,” Ms. Judith A. Minor, director of student excellence DoDEA Americas, said. “Our core values of student-centeredness, excellence, continuous improvement, diversity, individual potential, lifelong learning, shared responsibility and trust continue to inspire our mission. We work to advance the vision of ‘Excellence in Education’ for every student every day, everywhere.” (emphasis added)

Not only has diversity been erased in 2025 as one of DoDEA’s Core Values, DoDEA does not toot its own horn now about integrating schools.

When I click now on the link for the Maxwell AFB article, I receive the “404—Page Not Found” message, a message being found repeatedly in the Pentagon and by Air Force members on the Air Force Reddit channel as the DoD—and DoDEA—deliberately erase or conceal or minimize history.

These stateside schools—the majority of which were established in southern states when southern schools were not integrated—still exist as DoDEA schools.

My family’s history with DoDEA schools

I spent two years in such a school system as a young child when my father was stationed in West Germany in the early-to-mid-1960s. (Otherwise, stateside my parents sent me to elementary Catholic schools and, in high school, to three different public schools.) At that young age I don’t remember much more than: my second-grade teacher wearing a blond bouffant before she married a US Army officer and stopped working; playing Dorothy in my class’s performance of “The Wizard of Oz”; holding the book of good and bad children for Saint Nicholas when he visited our class; the 3d-grade schoolroom being a drafty, World War II wooden barracks that had been converted; and being required—because I was female—to wear skirts, even in frigid weather.

Much later (when I was in college and Army ROTC), my father was stationed at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Belgium for two years. During that time, four of my eight siblings were still living at home. My parents sent the two youngest to a French-speaking international school, free of charge, and the two older ones were sent to the free-of-charge DoDEA high school: SHAPE High School, known as the “Spartans.” The younger of the two high schoolers reports that his two years in the DoDEA school were “transformative” because of the school’s uniqueness: the diversity of the campus, which included a Canadian and German high school; the diversity of the SHAPE high school, which included American, Greek, Turkish, and Norwegian students; the small size of the school, about 500; the inclusion of PhD-holders in the faculty; and all of his schoolmates were the children of senior military officers and so had similar backgrounds.

My experience of a DoDEA school abroad sounds typical of a US public school in the 1960s; my sibling’s two decades later sounds like a private school.

Curriculum of DoDEA schools

Even more important than the taxpayer funding of what is essentially a private school is that DoDEA functions like a private school when it comes to curriculum. That is, US public school curricular standards are set by elected or appointed state boards of education and elected, local school boards (NOT, as claimed by the Department-of-Education-destroying Trump administration, the Department of Education.)

These public school curricular standards can vary widely. For example, the California State Board of Education has mandated all high school students must have taken an ethnic studies class before graduation and that California fourth graders must be taught Native American history in a way that “includes the mistreatment and perspectives of tribal members.” Meanwhile, State Boards of Education in Texas, Missouri, and Florida are spending their valuable time banning books and preventing the preferred use of pronouns.

The curriculum of private schools, however, are internally determined and so can differ remarkably, from an arts to religious to alternative teaching methods focus. Private schools are not governed by state or local school boards nor are they answerable to the federal Department of Education. This is the case with DoDEA schools: their curriculum is determined by the DoD, even when they are one of the 50 DoDEA schools physically located in the United States.

DoDEA Headquarters is in Alexandria, Virginia and staffed by federal, DoD employees—a Director, a Chief Academic Officer, a Chief Operating Officer, and a Chief of Staff. Many of these employees are experts in education, having the highest degrees possible in the field and extensive teaching and administrative experience. One might logically assume that it was their expertise in the field that led to their appointments and that this expertise would be an unquestioned boon to the DoD, whose business is, not to put too fine a point on it…war.

However, DoDEA operates as a subsidiary of the taxpayer-funded Department of Defense, “under the direction and authority of the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness.” The Undersecretary—who reports directly to the Secretary of Defense—is:

the principal staff assistant and advisor to the Secretary of Defense for force readiness; force management; health affairs; National Guard and Reserve component affairs; education and training; and military and civilian personnel requirements and management, including morale, welfare, recreation, and quality of life matters.

Note that this officer primarily is responsible for recruiting, retaining, and managing the careers of military servicemembers. Because that responsibility is the Undersecretary’s focus, the school system is undoubtedly influenced. As the Brookings Institution reports in 2024, “DoDEA schools are rooted in the mission, culture, and organization of the armed services. There’s a military-style chain of command, and military supervisors handle student behavioral issues, leaving teachers to focus on teaching and learning.” Consequently, the DoDEA curriculum is designed to enhance “force readiness.”

Evidently, having experience in the military seems more important to being the Undersecretary than being an education professional. Under the Biden administration, the Senate-confirmed Undersecretary was Gil Cisneros, an 11-year Navy veteran and Representative from California; he had no experience as an education professional. The current occupant of the Undersecretary’s role, Daren Selnick, is a 4-year Air Force veteran and an Acting Undersecretary (e.g. “Acting” because he has not been Senate-confirmed, as required). Selnick has spent most of his career advocating for veterans and has no experience as an education professional.

(Since I first starting writing this posting a few weeks ago, Selnick was reappointed as the deputy chief of staff and then suspended as a part of the Pentagon leak investigation into “military operational plans for the Panama canal, a second carrier headed to the Red Sea, Elon Musk’s controversial visit to the Pentagon and pausing the collection of intelligence to Ukraine.” The current acting Undersecretary is Jules Hurst.)

One might think, then, that the DoDEA education professionals would have the final word on how to educate what they call “military-connected” children. After all, two of the 4 Headquarters staff have PhDs in Education as do the majority of the 9 region superintendents, and, though a significant number of the staff grew up in military families, only 7 of the total 22 DoDEA leadership served in the US military.

But apparently, the education professionals—those with expertise and experience and academic credentials—DO NOT have the final word. At least in the Trump administration.

In a February 19, 2025 letter to the entire DoDEA school system, the Director wrote that DoDEA would be complying unquestioningly—as a military entity should—with DoD “guidance” regarding curriculum. Compliance, or following orders, is the key word in the letter: the school system must comply with DoD requirements, regardless of their educational value. Library books “potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology [i.e. Diversity/Equity/Inclusion] topics” were being culled and DoDEA would “fully comply” with the DoD directive that prohibits “the use of official resources to host celebrations or events related to cultural awareness months.” “We are working through the Executive Orders at DoDEA headquarters,” the Director’s letter continues, “to determine required actions for DoDEA schools and providing guidance, as appropriate, to ensure there are consistent policies and practices in place that comply with current Executive Orders and DoD guidance.” She concludes that “DoDEA is committed to its core mission in support of the Warfighter.”

The DoDEA Director’s reference to “the Warfighter” makes utterly clear for whom the DoDEA curriculum is designed.

So what?

According to Task and Purpose, a military newspaper, here are some results of these ideological, not educational, mandates coming from the DoD as a result of Executive Orders:

· A chapter on sexuality and gender in Advanced Placement Psychology classes has been pulled

· Elementary school lessons about Albert Cashier, someone born female in Ireland but passed for male as a Union soldier during the Civil War, have been halted

· Readings on how immigration affects the US have been censored

· Among the library books removed from the shelves were 2003’s Kite Runner, a novel by Khaled Hosseini about a boy growing up in Afghanistan amid the rise of the Taliban, and (no small irony), JD Vance’s 2016’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis about his upbringing in Ohio in a poor Appalachian family.

· Additional books recorded by a highschooler as missing from the library shelves are: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley; An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz; Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves by Glory Edim; and War: How Conflict Shaped Us by Margaret MacMillan.

Here are more results, according to another military newspaper, Stars and Stripes:

· A Black History Month portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama was removed after Black History Month was canceled

· Any materials suggesting alternatives to heterosexuality are under review

And the New York Times reports these changes:

· Some flags of foreign countries have been removed

· Clubs for gay students and their allies, a Women in STEM group, and groups for students of Hispanic and Asian heritage have all been halted because their faculty advisors are federal employees and so are prohibited from encouraging the gatherings

· Teachers have been ordered to drop personal pronoun preferences from their signature blocks

And Military.com, another online newspaper about the US military, reports:

· Students whose DoD parents’ employment was at risk still walked out of their high school in Germany

· Staffing at child day care centers is in jeopardy

· The likelihood of military children enlisting is reduced with these attacks

· Other walkouts have occurred at DoDEA high schools in Japan and South Korea

· Unreliable funding means “not essential” school athletic events have been canceled

· The freeze on hiring “nonessential” employees includes substitute teachers and extra aides

· Additional books banned: about “pioneering astronaut” Sally Ride; the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg; the plays, Fences and Twelve Angry Men

At the DoDEA SHAPE high school that two of my siblings attended and one called “transformative,” there was panic about abiding by the DoD directives before the wife of the Secretary of Defense arrived. (Simultaneously, her husband was lambasting NATO members in Brussels.) At the SHAPE K-12 school, the New York Times reports that “Harriet Tubman posters, origami paper cranes and rainbows have been disappearing from the halls of the American schools at NATO headquarters in Belgium,” teachers fearing “they would be seen as signs of Black, Japanese and gay culture—and thus run afoul of the new rules from Washington.” Moreover, “educators have been trying to figure out how to comply with Mr. Trump’s directives given that the schools had such a diverse and highly international student body,” and older students and parents protested Mrs. Hegseth’s visit to the SHAPE school. Similarly, middle school students had walked out of the DoDEA middle school in Stuttgart, Germany in protest when both Hegseths visited.

As one US military officer stationed abroad anonymously commented, Trump’s attacks on gay children and transgender servicemembers “hits home in so many ways…It’s dehumanizing.” He further offered that:

his spouse is a teacher at a DoDEA school and was told teachers will be fired for even talking about Trump’s anti-DEI policies. “If they engage with the media, they will be fired,” said the officer. “If they protest, they will be fired; if they encourage students to protest, they will be fired; if they use social media to protest changes and can be identified as a DoDEA employee, they will be fired; if they speak out at a town hall (even as a parent of a DoDEA child), they will be fired.”

This censorship of government employees is par for the course in the US military and poses a threatening environment for students. DoDEA employees/teachers—whose core mission apparently is to “support the Warfighter”—are prevented from criticizing the very policies antithetical to their teaching mission.

Now, commitment to the Warfighter comes before all else.

In 2024, before the Trump administration, “Fourth and eighth-grade students attending Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) schools led the nation in scoring on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Reading and Mathematics Assessments.” Notably, with this news the DoDEA Director congratulates everyone…but DoD: “Credit for this success belongs to our incredible teachers, administrators, and staff of DoDEA, and most importantly to our students and their families, for all their hard work and dedication.”

As it should be, in 2024 the professional educators and the students receive praise for their achievement.

Now all credit—and blame—can be ascribed to the DoD, a DoD led by a Christian Nationalist who insists that traditional gender roles will be re-enforced in the US Military.

(And the ACLU is suing the Trump administration on behalf of 6 military-connected families with children in DoDEA schools, alleging “widespread First Amendment violations within the DoDEA school system.”)

So what shape do you imagine the private, taxpayer-funded, DoDEA schools’ curriculum taking as history is deliberately erased, student identities are denied, faculty are compelled to silence themselves, and DoDEA leadership must willingly comply with ideologically oriented DoD mandates?

When do you think girls will be required to wear skirts and boys, trousers? When do you think students will be required to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance? When do you think they will be required to pray, as a class, to a Christian deity?

How does this censorship and silencing and poor—yes, as an educator I say poor—educational practice support the “Warfighter”? What possible connection do the educational practices have to military readiness? What is DoD afraid of when research over decades confirms that diversity and inclusiveness enhance both academic outcomes AND military readiness?

It grieves me to say that we taxpayers now are probably funding a private “educational” network of 161 fear-driven, Christian nationalist, MAGA brainwashing factories.