Air Force releases 2021 assessment of states’ support of military families: Goodfellow included in report

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  • By 17th Training Wing Public Affairs

The Department of the Air Force, or DAF, released its 2021 assessment that details how states provide support to Air and Space Force families. Goodfellow Air Force Base was included in this report. Although Goodfellow’s licensure portability rating did not change since the 2019 report, the public education opportunities rating declined.

In an effort to address retention and family readiness issues, the DAF Force launched the Support of Military Families program. The program focuses on evaluating public education opportunities and occupational license portability. Public education opportunities for dependents and the ability of spouses to sustain careers are important decision points for military member retention. These two areas are part of the broader strategic basing process consideration.

The first Support of Military Families, or SoMF, report was compiled for 2019 and was released in 2020. The information provides community leaders awareness of how their community’s support is assessed in two areas that are important to our Airmen and Guardians. In addition, this information is included as evaluation criteria for strategic basing decisions.

The goal is to incorporate family support factors into basing criteria, and provide communities with information, so they can better support Airmen, Guardians and their families. To help address these quality of life concerns, the Air Force collaborated with policy professionals and subject matter experts to develop quantitative criteria and analytic frameworks to assess support.

Licensure Portability
The State of Texas received an overall yellow rating for licensure portability indicating the state statutes contain barriers to licensure and certification portability for military spouses. Barriers still exist for some professions including Cosmetology, Psychology, and Teaching, which all include “substantial equivalency” requirements. Other occupations also have barriers as current statute does not exclude any other occupations from licensure portability burdens. Licensure Portability rating is determined by state, not by installation. Goodfellow does not receive a rating, rather it’s the state of Texas. Despite improving accessibility through user friendly online applications, there were no changes to the state’s statute and no change from the 2019 assessment.

Public Education
The 2019 study rated Goodfellow above the 66.7% percentile. The 2021 study revealed that Goodfellow scored below the 33.3% percentile. Goodfellow’s overall public education rating shifted to a lower rating, with overall academic performance shifting due to the student learning rate. The student average annual learning rate is assessed by:

  • Average increase in grade level competency as measured by federally mandated test scores across grades three through eight.
  • Stanford Education Data Archive, or SEDA, measures the number of grade level years accomplished by students within a school district (e.g., a cohort of students beginning at 3rd grade level and exiting at 8th grade level should average 1 grade-level per year).
  • The National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, is what SEDA uses to compare student learning rates, standardizing rates on a common scale across states, grades, and years.
  • NAEP provides a common inter-state scale of 3rd and 8th grade test score averages.
  • SEDA uses these averages to estimate for the years where NAEP was not administered (data does exist).

The SEDA then uses these state specific NAEP estimates to place each state’s learning rate scores on a NAEP scale. The resulting student learning rates are comparable across states and years.

The COVID-19 pandemic was not taken into consideration for the 2021 evaluation. The areas with the lowest relative ranking, which may require additional state or community support include: student to mental health support ratio, pre-kindergarten availability, student learning rate, and suspension rate.

Education:

  • Public Education is compiled using 60% Academic Performance, 20% School Climate, and 20% Service Offering.  Every state has an issue with Mental Health support ratios.

Additional information about the data sources and methodology used in the assessment are available in the “2021 Support of Military Families Support Material” document, in frequently asked questions, and background information available on www.af.mil. Please direct any questions and feedback to the office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary (Reserve Affairs and Airman Readiness) at SAF.MRR.Workflow@us.af.mil

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:

Q: What school districts were considered for the Goodfellow report?
A: Ten independent school districts across Region 15 within the Goodfellow Military Housing Area. The districts include: San Angelo Independent School District, Wall ISD, Grape Creek ISD, Christoval ISD, Veribest ISD, Miles ISD, Paint Rock ISD, Water Valley ISD, Robert Lee ISD, and Sterling City ISD (Eldorado).

Q. How many military students does Goodfellow have in the ten school districts?
A. As of April 2020, approximately 1,800 enrolled Goodfellow military school-age students, kindergarten through twelfth-grade.

  • San Angelo Independent School District: 14,100 Total Students - 894 Military Connected Students
  • Wall ISD: 1,258 Total Students - 45 Military Connected Students
  • Grape Creek ISD: 1,099 Total Students - 48 Military Connected Students
  • Christoval ISD, Veribest ISD: 566 Total Students - 13 Military Connected Students
  • Veribest ISD: 258 Total Students - 4 Military Connected Students
  • Miles ISD, Paint Rock ISD: 468 Total Students - 21 Military Connected Students
  • Paint Rock ISD: 237 Total Students - 1 Military Connected Students
  • Water Valley ISD: 313 Total Students - 2 Military Connected Students
  • Robert Lee ISD: 258 Total Students - 5 Military Connected Students
  • Sterling City ISD (Eldorado): 521 Total Students - 23 Military Connected Students

Q: What raw data were used to calculate Academic Performance criteria items?
A: The Academic Performance category consists of four year graduation rates and student average annual learning rate. Graduation rates are taken from US Department of Education, or USDOE, EDFacts website. Student average annual learning rate is obtained from the Stanford Education Data Archive. Student average annual learning rate assessed by: 

  • Average increase in grade level competency as measured by federally mandated test scores across grades three through eight.
  • Stanford Education Data Archive, or SEDA, measures the number of grade level years accomplished by students within a school district (e.g., a cohort of students beginning at 3rd grade level and exiting at 8th grade level should average 1 grade-level per year).
  • The National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, is what SEDA uses to compare student learning rates, standardizing rates on a common scale across states, grades, and years.
  • NAEP provides a common inter-state scale of 3rd and 8th grade test score averages.
  • SEDA uses these averages to estimate for the years where NAEP was not administered (data does exist).

Q: For Public Education, how did you land on 33.3% and 66.7%; what do these numbers mean?
A: The DAF Support of Military Families initiative utilizes a public education framework that is organized into nine criteria across three categories for each location. The comparative analysis uses the colors red, yellow and green to graphically display results for all criteria, categories and locations. The colors are assigned using percentiles, divided into thirds, to provide information about a location’s relative position compared to all others.

Q: Were the graduation rates from the publicly available adjusted cohort graduation rate available on the USDOE website?
A: Yes, four year graduation rates were available and taken from USDOE EDFacts website. Districts that had a range greater than or equal to 10% were not used and were dropped from the calculation.

Q: Does the DAF include charter schools in the analysis?
A. The DAF only considers charter schools in the current analysis if the school district being assessed reported the charter school to the USDOE as a public school and data was made publicly available similar to the other public schools in the district. If this is not the case, then a charter school was not included.

Q: Were local or state educational agency leaders consulted directly as part of the workgroup developing these measures?
A: National level educational experts were part of the workgroup developing these measures, such as Education Commission of the States, Council of Chief State School Officers, American Association of School Administrators, and the School Superintendents Association to name a few. In addition, the DAF collected feedback from state and local education leaders nationwide on the 2019 analysis and took that into consideration when conducting the 2021 analysis.

Q: It seems that Graduation Rate, Chronic Absenteeism Rate and Suspension Rate are more measurements of Parenting and the socioeconomic status of the community, than the quality of education available at schools for Military Dependents. So why does the Air Force think these three criteria (Graduation Rate, Chronic Absenteeism Rate and Suspension Rate) are good measurements of the quality of public education available to the Military Dependent?
A: The DAF used a full-spectrum approach to measure how schools could best support military children on a national level, and not the quality of public education. School climate measures environmental factors that affect academic learning and educational success. It captures chronic student absenteeism and rates of disciplinary actions that result in a student’s suspension from school. When developing these criteria, careful consideration was given to incorporate quantitative criteria which would limit or mitigate the impact of socioeconomic factors.

Q: How is the "Chronic Absenteeism" category defined?
A: The USDOE defines chronic absenteeism as the rate of students that missed at least 15 days of schools in a given school year. This data is reported once every other year to USDOE - Civil Rights Data Collection.

Q: When determining whether to put a community into a specific category (red, yellow or green), does the report compare each community to some national education standard, or are they only measured in relation to the other communities in the survey? For example, is the "student to counselor ratio" based on the national recommendation of 1 counselor to 250 students? Or, are all communities ranked numerically, and then the bottom third are red regardless of whether they meet the national standard or not?
A: There is no established national standard in this analysis. The colors are assigned using percentiles, divided into thirds, to provide information about a location’s relative position compared to other DAF installations.

Q: How was the counselor student ratio determined for each state and then over all United States?
A: The student to counselor ratio was not determined for each state nor the overall United States. The averages of the school district student to counselor ratios were used to determine the installation assessment. The ratio of student enrollment to total teacher FTEs or Full-Time Equivalents and is reported once every other year to USDOE - Civil Rights Data Collection.

Q: Will there be any consideration to broadening or modifying the education assessment criteria, possibly reflecting the National Assessment of Educational Progress or each state’s ranking of K-12 Achievement found in Education Week’s Quality Counts?
A: The student learning rate measure does use the NAEP performance in its calculation, but also controls for what level students have already achieved when they enter the cohort (3rd grade). High performing schools are also assessed upon the growth of the students during their time in the district and will likely perform well. Our team is listening, and we rely on stakeholder engagement as part of our evaluation of the framework for the future and as we consider any specific adjustments. All questions and or feedback should be directed to SAF.MRR.Workflow@us.af.mil.

Q: Were the scores from all the school districts averaged?
A: Yes, specifically, the nine education criteria are individually evaluated across the school districts supporting an installation, with larger school districts (by total student enrollment) receiving proportionally greater weight. The criteria results are then combined (straight average) into the three categories to determine ratings for Academic Performance, Service Offering, and School Climate. Finally, the three categories are combined (weighted average, 60, 20, 20, respectively) to determine the composite score for the installation.

Q: It appears for the purposes of this study, "Pre-Kindergarten" was defined as "state-supported, state-mandated, public" pre-K, as opposed to parent-funded preschool options like Montessori. Is this the case?
A: Yes, the level of Pre-Kindergarten available within the MHA associated with DAF Installations. Categories of Pre-Kindergarten offered nationwide vary from none, part-day to some, part day to all / full day to some, full day to all. Reported every two years to USDOE - Civil Rights Data Collection.