The Defense Department’s school system for the children of U.S. service members is a source of pride for many military parents. But a small and growing chorus of protest, like walkouts and missed classes, underscores increasing concern that these schools are being used as a political proving ground – and that education for American military families will suffer.
The Trump administration is rooting out books from Pentagon-run schools that include themes of diversity, racism, and women’s studies – topics it describes as divisive. On the heels of similar directives to remove hundreds of books from the shelves of U.S. service academies, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth earlier this month also ordered these military universities, like those commonly referred to as West Point and the Naval Academy, to end affirmative action measures.
But some U.S. troops — who are also school parents — say bans on literature, curriculum, and certain clubs in Pentagon-run elementary and high schools violate First Amendment rights under the Constitution. These are the same rights that they, as soldiers, have sworn to protect, they say.
Why We Wrote This
Defense Department schools for service members’ children are removing books the Trump administration doesn’t like. Some military parents are objecting, saying that will hurt education.
Last month, a group of parents filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon and Secretary Hegseth, alleging that the military is “quarantining” library books in a manner that amounts to censorship in the education of kids who, because of their parents’ overseas military work, have limited school choices.
“I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘Our diversity is our strength,’” Secretary Hegseth told U.S. troops in his first official town hall meeting, in February. “I think our strength is our unity; our strength is our shared purpose – regardless of our background.”
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File
On the heels of President Donald Trump’s executive orders and Secretary Hegseth’s initiatives, some students in DOD schools are “increasingly afraid to discuss race and gender in their classrooms, because they fear being silenced by teachers fearful of violating” new rules, the lawsuit alleges.
One parent, Jessica Henninger, says that she and her husband, a U.S. Army soldier, decided to become plaintiffs despite concerns about possible repercussions.
For their family, it came down to a matter of principle, the couple reasons. “If I can’t defend our children’s constitutional rights, then what am I doing as a soldier?” Ms. Henninger says.
High-performing schools and “disfavored viewpoints”
There are roughly 160 schools in the Department of Defense Education Activity, as the system, in Pentagon parlance, is formally known.
This school system serves some 67,000 children of service members living on or around U.S. military bases in regions including Europe, Japan, South Korea, the Middle East, and the United States. The schools were formed after World War II by the nation’s then-War Department, which was initially reluctant to take on the job of educating soldiers’ children. But pressure from U.S. troops stationed in countries like Germany, where young soldiers were marrying or being joined abroad by previously stateside wives, finally won out.
Today, these primary and secondary schools mirror the diversity of the armed forces. White students comprise about 40% of the student body; Black and Hispanic children make up 45%. About 28% receive free and reduced-price school lunches.
The reputation of the U.S. military’s school system has long been good, and in recent years it has grown even more. In assessments of educational progress relative to school systems across America, DODEA students’ scores ranged from 10 to 18 percentage points higher than national averages, according to the Pentagon.
In fact, in one area that has dogged most American public schools, the military schools have stood out. Test scores for Black and Hispanic students in the DODEA system are higher than those of any state or jurisdiction in the U.S. These schools also have some of the smallest statistical gaps between the scores of white and Black or Hispanic students.
Ms. Henninger says that she and her husband appreciate the DOD schools, from which two of their five children have graduated, for their diversity and excellent teachers.
But she, like other parents who filed the lawsuit, is concerned that limited access to “disfavored viewpoints” will lead to an erosion of critical thinking skills. This “sets up all DODEA students to be vastly behind their peers,” argues the lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
“My husband fights for our constitutional rights and freedoms for this country,” says Ms. Henninger, a nurse. “To see those rights being taken away from our children, just because their father is a soldier, was just absolutely something that we could not abide.”
Books, clubs, lessons targeted
Shortly after Secretary Hegseth issued a directive against “instruction on critical race theory, DEI, or gender ideology as part of a curriculum,” DODEA officials began putting it into practice.
Schools began pulling books from library shelves.
These include “The Kite Runner,” a novel that describes Afghanistan under Taliban rule, “Fahrenheit 451,” an exploration of censorship amid book burning, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which grapples with prejudice and injustice as a Black man is falsely accused of a crime, and a made-for-kids biography of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, according to the lawsuit.
On a slightly less familiar front, the lawsuit also cites the disappearance of “Freckleface Strawberry,” a picture book about “learning to love the skin you’re in.”
Clubs, too, have been shut down, including for gay students and for “Black girls in STEM,” or science, technology, engineering, and math, says one U.S. military officer with children at a European base who asked not to be named for fear of retribution.
Some schools have scrapped lessons describing the U.S. as a nation of immigrants. “We just want good public schools,” the officer adds. “We don’t want them to be battlegrounds for partisan politics.”
Social conservatives say the political left did much to create that battleground as promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) spread from universities to corporations and beyond. Many Americans came to feel it was going too far – a concern that Mr. Trump tapped into during his election campaign last year.
Yet public views are nuanced. While a majority of U.S. adults (including Black Americans) supported ending affirmative action in a poll last year, most now oppose efforts to end DEI in the federal government. The experience of military schools may reflect this overall trend. The Defense Department has been criticized for including what some view as DEI materials; now, some parents and students are pushing back against the Hegseth-led purge.
A 2021 inspector general’s report also detected concern about discrimination: More than 1 in 10 DODEA students said they had been made fun of for the color of their skin, origin, or religion at school.
In past months, hundreds of students across DODEA schools have staged walkouts. Some of them have received unexcused absence notices, others detention.
Parents have expressed concern about the impact of the protests on the academic careers of their children and on their own careers as well.
“We very much have to worry about retaliation and retribution,” Ms. Henninger says.
“Those of us who have decided to come forward are kind of paving the way for everybody else who feels that, for one reason or another, it’s best for their family to kind of stay on the sidelines.”
“We respect that,” she adds. “But there’s a large group of us who want to fight for this.”
