DOD Dependents Schools: Enrollment Categories, Numbers, and Locations
Abstract
The Secretary of Defense is authorized by the Defense Dependents' Education Act of 1978 to establish eligibility for space-available enrollment for students and has placed space-available children into two broad categories: tuition-paying and tuition-free. Tuition-paying students can be either (1) federally connected, such as dependents of the State Department or other U.S. government agency sponsors or (2) nonfederally connected, including dependents of retired military and foreign national sponsors. The majority of tuition-free, space-available students are the dependents of DOD military or civilian sponsors who are not authorized government transportation and housing overseas for their dependents. A Conference Committee report instructed DOD not to include the cost of educating tuition-free, space-available students in its budget request, and to include only the cost of educating space-required and tuition-paying, space-available students. DODDS has not followed these instructions, even though doing so would not pose a serious burden on most schools, whose space-available, tuition-free enrollments are very low. Currently, the number of tuition-free, space-available students in DODDS is only about 3 percent of its student population. For a few schools in Korea, however, where many children fall into this category, DOD would have to act to ensure that following the report's instructions will not leave these children without access to an education.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 1995
- Accession Number
- AD1173976
Entities
People
- Cornelia M. Blanchette
Organizations
- United States Government Accountability Office