(Washington, D.C.) – Today, Monday, April 28th, 2014, U.S. Senator Patty Murray, a senior member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, introduced new legislation to help track school progress of students from military-connected families.
“We ask so much of our servicemembers and their families, but we don’t have any methods in place to study the impact that life in a military family can have on child’s education,” said Senator Murray. “This bill would allow us to take the first step in helping military-connected children succeed in school by learning more about how life events – from deployments of their parents to changing schools every few years – impact their success in the classroom.”
Though there are over one million school-age military-connected students in pre-kindergarten through grade twelve, there is no reliable, consistent, school-based data on the academic well-being of these students. With the information collected by this legislation, school districts can track these students’ performance, educators can assist students dealing with frequent moves, deployments, and family reintegration, and school districts will be more easily able to discover practices and processes worthy of attention and replication to ensure success.
Sen. Murray’s Helping Military Children Succeed in Schools Act would create a report-only subgroup for military-connected students, generating precise data about their classroom success and the schools they attend, and help federal, state, and local entities eventually target resources for this vulnerable population.
This week, Senator Murray will also join with Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) in introducing a bipartisan resolution honoring military children during “National Month of the Military Child.”
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