The effect of high school JROTC on student achievement, educational attainment, and enlistment.

• Author: Pema, Elda
• Position: Clinical report

1. Introduction

   The Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps 0ROTC) is a program for high school students funded jointly by local school districts and the federal government. The national program was established in 1916; although, individual programs date as far back as 1874. The program remained small until a major expansion was launched in the mid-1990s. By 2007 the JROTC program enrolled roughly 525,000 students in 3400 high schools. (1)

   The JROTC program is of interest to policy makers for several reasons. First, although it has elements of a military preparation program, its goals are multidimensional and include improving academic outcomes for high school students. (2) Understanding the program's effects on student achievement is especially important given the heavy enrollment of at-risk students: Nearly 40% of the high schools that offer JROTC are located in inner-city areas, and about

   one-half of enrollees are minorities. Another indicator of program diversity is that about 40% of enrollees are females. In addition, the program accepts many students who could not qualify for military enlistment (Coumbe, Kotakis, and Gammell 2008). These enrollment patterns in part explain why most students who participate in JROTC do not enter the military (about 70% in our data). (3) From a social cost-benefit perspective, it is important to understand the full array of program impacts, including effects on both cognitive and noncognitive outcomes as well as on employment in the military.

   A broader public policy issue revolves around the value of offering JROTC in public schools, which has been the subject of ongoing debate. Proponents argue that the program improves both the cognitive and noncognitive skills of participants. President George H. Bush described JROTC as a "... program that boosts high school completion rates, reduces drug use, and raises self-esteem..." (cited in Corbett and Coumbe 2001, p. 40). JROTC includes elements that are similar to better-known high school initiatives, such as career academies and school-to-work (STW) programs. Some JROTC activities are comparable with other extracurricular high school activities, such as band, team sports, or school clubs, and many participants engage in community service after school and on weekends. Critics often oppose JROTC in public schools for philosophical reasons but also on the grounds that there is no evidence that the program improves academic achievement (Lutz and Bartlett 1995).

   The opponents are correct about the lack of research on JROTC. To date no analysis has attempted to assess the wider effects of the program using nationally representative data. This study evaluates the impacts of JROTC on a broad list of student outcomes, including in-school and post-school performance, based on data from High School and Beyond (HSB) and the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS). We obtain estimates using a variety of techniques to control for the selection of individuals and schools into the program. Overall, we find mixed program effects on educational outcomes. While JROTC participants in general have poorer academic performance, the program appears to reduce dropout rates and improve graduation rates for black participants and self-esteem scores for female participants. We also find strong enlistment effects across all participants.

   The article is structured as follows. Section 2 describes the basic features of JROTC, section 3 reviews prior literature on the effects of JROTC and related educational initiatives, section 4 presents the data, and section 5 discusses the estimation and selection issues. Section 6 discusses the baseline ordinary least squares (OLS) and probit models, section 7 presents school fixed effects estimates, and section 8 discusses the two-stage matching estimates. Section 9 concludes.

2. The Program (4)

   Prior to 1964 JROTC was a relatively small program operated by the Army. The ROTC Vitalization Act of 1964 expanded the program and extended it to all four military services. The goals of the program at its inception were to instill citizenship values and disseminate information about military careers. After the introduction of the All Volunteer Force in 1973, the program incorporated recruiting incentives by offering advanced military pay grades to those who completed at least 2 years of JROTC. Currently, Congress has capped the number of JROTC units and several hundred high schools are on a waiting list for a new unit (Coumbe, Kotakis, and Gammell 2008). An incentive for participation of local schools is that the federal government pays a portion of the program costs. In 2005, federal spending on JROTC was about $239 million (USDOD 2008). According to estimates, federal subsidies cover about 40% of program costs (Denver Public Schools 1996). Based on these figures, total JROTC spending at all levels would be about $730 million annually. The multidimensional aspects of the program, which combines elective credit with extracurricular activities, helps supplement the standard classroom and extracurricular offerings of local schools. The operation of each unit varies largely by school, military branch, and JROTC instructor. This induces a certain degree of randomness in the way that students enter the program.

   Currently, little is known about the program at the national level and even less is known about the careers of participants who do not join the military. Program administrators do not track the careers or educational outcomes of participants. The only participants that can be tracked through administrative data sources are those who report JROTC participation upon enlistment (about 30% of all students who ever participate in the program). However, analyzing the effect of the program on all participants is important for a comprehensive program assessment. In addition, program effects on non-enlistees have implications for local youth labor markets, especially in inner cities and in the South, where the majority of JROTC units are located.

3. Related Initiatives

   Educational initiatives with some elements comparable to JROTC are those that assist the transition from school to employment. These include career academies and federally funded STW programs--reforms that stress both academic and vocational curricula and that establish formal links with employers. Evidence on the effects of these educational initiatives has been mixed. Attending career academies had no effect on high school completion or postsecondary education, but male attendees experienced higher earnings than non-attendees eight years after high school (Kemple 2008). Similarly, Neumark and Rothstein (2003) find that only two of six STW activities (school enterprises and job shadowing) increased college enrollment; whereas, one activity (Tech Prep) reduced college enrollment. With respect to labor market outcomes, co-op education, school enterprises, and internships increased employment, especially for at-risk males (Neumark and Rothstein 2005).

   Indirect evidence on the effect of JROTC on academic performance can be gleaned from a pilot program created in 1992 by the Departments of Education and Defense that combined career academies with required JROTC participation. (5) Elliott, Hanser, and Gilroy (2002) find few differences between students in JROTC Partnership Academies and those attending magnet schools or other career academies. However, JROTC Partnership Academy students had better attendance, grades, and graduation rates than students in a general academic track and not in a magnet school or other career academy. Also, outcomes were better for JROTC Partnership Academy students than for students in "regular" JROTC. Finally, regular JROTC students performed on par with general track students not in a magnet school or in a career academy, suggesting that the career academy component, rather than the JROTC component, accounted for most of the success of the combined JROTC Partnership Academies.

   Other analyses of the regular JROTC program have consisted primarily of case studies. One such study compared student outcomes in E1 Paso, Texas, and Chicago, Illinois, inner-city schools (Taylor 1999). In Chicago, JROTC students performed no better in terms of attendance, grades, or graduation rates; whereas, in E1 Paso they had fewer disciplinary problems and better attendance but lower test scores and college attendance. The analyses in these case studies do not attempt to estimate causal effects or consider the selection of students and schools into the program.

4. The Data

   The HSB and NELS surveys are the only data sets that provide national-level participation rates for JROTC. (6) In addition, these surveys span two decades, allowing for an assessment of changes in program impacts over time. This is important in the case of JROTC because the program expanded substantially in the 1990s.

   From the HSB survey we use the sophomore component, which follows a representative sample of 10th graders from 1980 to 1992. About 14,825 sophomores randomly drawn from the original sample were re-interviewed in 1982, 1984, 1986, and 1992. The NELS surveyed a sample of eighth graders in the spring of 1988 from 1052 schools. We focus on the subsample of 12,144 students who were reinterviewed in 1990, 1992, 1994, and 2000. Both surveys contain detailed information on student backgrounds, academic performance, and post-high school experiences. In addition, both surveys collected information from school officials on school characteristics such as enrollment, educational and special programs, dropout rates, and racial composition. We merged data from both surveys with information from the High School Transcript Survey to obtain information on courses completed and academic achievement. Transcript data were available for 13,024 HSB sophomores and 10,310 NELS students. Our empirical analysis restricts the samples to students in public schools, resulting in samples of...