RELATED STORY:One sister persuades another to teach overseas

Arriving at Capitol Hill High School in Oklahoma City eight years ago, Patrice Powdar was enthusiastic about teaching the fundamentals of biology.

Instead, she was greeted with an overburdened school system: too many students and too little funding. Limited supplies made dissecting frogs and examining cells difficult.

"Shelves had dust on them where the microscopes were supposed to be," she said. "I felt as if the students’ best interest was not a priority."

Powdar, whose husband is a technical sergeant in the Air Force, secured a chemistry teaching position at Kadena High School in 2005, a year after the family transferred to Okinawa.

The differences between the Department of Defense Dependents Schools system and the Oklahoma City School District were stark.

Powdar, 37, said the DODDS-Pacific district pushes for professional development and emphasizes student achievement in ways she hadn’t experienced stateside.

"You can focus on your classroom, and you feel more supported and less stressed," Powdar said.

DODDS teachers in the Pacific and Europe districts say while the appeal of overseas living and job security are enticing incentives that may lure educators into the system, it’s the moderate class sizes, availability of teacher training and a supportive administration that seal the deal.

Education advocates say such factors are critical to sustaining an effective teaching work force.

While stateside school districts grapple with ways to recruit and retain effective teachers amid budget constraints and the demands of standards-based education reform, the Department of Defense Education Activity has more than 60,000 teachers on a waiting list.

It took math teacher Scott Brannon, 35, three years to secure a coveted position at Kubasaki High School on Okinawa. He had applied in 2000 at the suggestion of his pastor, only to get an e-mailed response that DODDS had received 7,000 applications for 300 slots. Three years later, Brannon updated his online application with a computer science certification, which he said may have given him a boost over other applicants.

Parents have mostly favorable opinions of the DODDS system and its teachers.

In a 2008-09 survey, 74 percent of parents rated their schools positively.

A 2008 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll of 1,000 parents of school-aged children reported that 22 percent graded the nation’s public school system above average.

“We have no complaints,” said Shannon Martinez, who has two children attending Joan K. Mendel Elementary School at Yokota Air Base in Japan.

Martinez said she feels parents are encouraged to be hands-on in their children’s education.

“You pretty much have open access to your children,” she said.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Caesar Ulsano of Sasebo Naval Base in Japan said DODDS teachers helped his 7-year-old son quickly adapt to English, since Tagalog was the primary language spoken at home.

Now the first-grader at Sasebo Elementary is writing, speaking and reading English fairly well, Ulsano said.

Some parents voiced concerns about overcrowded classes and a curriculum that lacked uniformity.

Army spouse Araceli Martinez has four children — ages 14, 10, 8 and 6 — in DODDS at Ramstein Air Base in Germany and said their classes are too crowded.

While Martinez doesn’t think the schools are exceeding allowed student-to-teacher ratios, she thinks classrooms are too full for teachers to give students individual attention.

DODEA officials say they’re not exempt from issues that affect stateside schools, such as trying to hire for hard-to-fill positions such as math, language immersion and special education teachers. And they would like to increase diversity among its staff.

Advocates say DODEA succeeds partly because it’s free of the federal education reform mandates to which stateside public schools are bound.

Though federally funded by Congress, DODEA is overseen by the Department of Defense, rather than Department of Education. That makes the schools free from high-pressure measures adopted by states to boost student achievement in reading, math and science in order to increase federal funding.

“If that standard is appropriate for every other public school funded by public government, why is this system exempt?” asked Joellen Killion, deputy executive director for the National Staff Development Council. “That’s why other systems don’t look to DODDS for model practices, because they know the conditions don’t match.”

DODEA officials, however, say the system is very much connected to the pulse of its stateside counterparts. In 2005, DODEA adopted a Community Strategic Plan to bring classroom and standardized test expectations in line with those of stateside schools.

“Honestly, I don’t think we feel all that isolated,” said Dr. Peggy Bullion, chief of education for DODDS-Pacific. “We feel that we stay in touch with what’s in the written research and what’s in.”

According to the 2008 State Teacher Policy Yearbook — compiled by the National Council on Teacher Quality in Washington — a majority of U.S. school districts lack the proper accountability and support systems to reduce the number of ineffective teachers and retain effective ones.

Many stateside districts offer few incentives, such as performance pay, loan forgiveness and additional certification that would help keep effective teachers in classrooms. DODDS — with its overseas living, housing allowances and teacher development — creates an environment where teachers want to stay and thrive, said Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality.

“I’ll be the first to admit, it’s a really good gig,” said Kim Gold, a DODDS elementary school teacher for 17 years.

Gold, who teaches at Seoul American Elementary School in South Korea, said she plans to stay partly because she has lived overseas for so long that adjusting to American life would be difficult. And she said, as a single parent of a 6-year-old daughter, she can afford to raise her daughter in a better environment through DODDS.

Gold, 40, said the student demographic she’s serving makes it easier to concentrate more on learning and less on the socio-economic issues that sometimes plague students in disadvantaged school districts.

“We have our issues, but we don’t have to worry as much about ‘Do I have to feed my kids in order for them to function in the classroom?’ Every one of my kids will go home tonight and sleep in a bed under a roof. I can’t guarantee that in the States,” Gold said.

Her colleague Lori Lundy, 50, agrees.

“One of the things is you’ve lived over here for so long, you lose track of being in a school district where you have to worry,” said Lundy, a DODDS teacher for 18 years. “It’s the best-kept secret.”

Last year, after school closures at Ramstein Air Force Base, Lundy was able to transfer to Seoul American Elementary School to teach second grade.

Some of her friends in education aren’t so lucky.

“A lot of my friends are teaching in Florida where jobs are being cut back. I have several friends who can’t even afford to live in the counties they are teaching in now,” Lundy said. “That is something I don’t have to ever worry about.”

Stars and Stripes reporters Bryce Dubee, Jimmy Norris, Jennifer Svan and Travis Tritten contributed to this story.