Geographic and Demographic Representativeness of the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps

📖 The Scoop

"The Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC) program serves more than 550,000 high school students each year, many of whom are at risk for failing academically or dropping out of school. Although these programs are widely distributed--programs operate in 50 states, four U.S. territories, and Department of Defense Education Activity schools--there has been recent congressional interest in whether the schools participating in JROTC programs are representative with respect to geographic area, with a special focus on whether rural areas are adequately represented. In response to these interests and motivations, this study had two primary objectives: Examine the representativeness of JROTC at the school level with respect to geography and demographics and determine how federal laws and policies affect starting and sustaining JROTC units. RAND researchers merged JROTC program data with public high school data from the National Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data to analyze demographic and geographic representativeness at the school level. Service and school representatives were interviewed on such topics as benefits of JROTC for the students, challenges with JROTC-unit administration, and instructor hiring. The authors found that JROTC has strong representation among schools with demographically diverse populations. However, geographically, JROTC is underrepresented in rural areas and in about two-thirds of states. A number of factors present challenges for improving representativeness, and the report offers several policy recommendations for addressing these factors, including the expansion of the National Defense Cadet Corps"--Publisher's description

Genre: Business & Economics / Training (fancy, right?)