UH-60 Blackhawk crew chief speaks with high school students

Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered a review of the Department of Defense's support of military families who choose to homeschool their children in the U.S. and overseas.

In a memo released Tuesday, Hegseth said the assessment is part of an overall departmental review of educational choices for military families, done in accordance with a Jan. 29 presidential executive order that directed the DoD to consider the use of Pentagon funds[1] to pay for private, religious or public charter schools for military dependents.

Hegseth said homeschooling should be included in any review of educational opportunities for military children.

Read Next: Tricare Errors Put Military Families at Risk of Paying Higher Costs, Audit Finds[2]

"Through these efforts, the department will uphold the directive to improve the education, well-being and future success of military-connected students, supporting parents in choosing the best educational options for their children," Hegseth wrote in the memo, signed May 15. "This is vital to the department and the quality of life of our service members, who deserve no less."

According to a report published earlier this year by Johns Hopkins' Institute for Education Policy[3], active-duty military families homeschool their children at twice the rate of civilian Americans, with 12% of military families participating, compared with 6% of civilians in the 2023-2024 school year.

Angela Watson, a senior research fellow at Johns Hopkins, said the reasons why military families homeschool vary, but they largely choose the nontraditional setting based on the unique needs of their children.

"There are a variety of reasons that maybe the traditional school system isn't working super great for those families, because somebody is deployed and, when the parent is home, they value their family time together, or they want to homeschool because it's more flexible. Or they don't want to move their kids in and out of schools ... and it's just more stabilizing for them to homeschool," Watson said during an interview Tuesday.

A survey of nearly 750 military families who homeschool[4], conducted by the Military Homeschoolers Association, found the reasons they decided to educate their children themselves were: religion, with 58% citing their faith as a factor in their decision; bullying, with nearly 48% saying they had concerns with traditional school settings, especially for children with special needs; and school violence, something 58% of families factored into their decision.

Nearly 30% were concerned with the educational offerings of their local schools, citing a need for their children to learn critical thinking, or a desire to reduce their child's exposure to age-inappropriate content, topics that didn't align with their world views or incorrect information.

"Traditionally, military families are moving right every two or three years, so you can understand continuity, consistency, flexibility," said Natalie Mack, the association's founder, during an interview. "But there's these new reasons ... rising school violence ... bullying rates. You have people who are homeschooling for traditionally Christian conservative values, and then you have ones who are not -- they're secular and they're just saying, 'My kids have special needs, and we're not feeling confident they're getting what they need."

Hegseth himself is a vocal proponent for Christian-based education. A graduate of a public high school in Minnesota, Princeton University and Harvard, Hegseth wrote the book "Battle for the American Mind: Uprooting a Century of Miseducation," arguing that American K-12 public schools are failing to educate students and losing sight of "virtue and excellence."

"[American culture] is really fragile and not heading in the right direction, and a lot of it does come back to our education system," Hegseth said during a 2023 interview on The Kevin Roberts Show[5]. "If you've removed God, and you're teaching people the country they've inherited is evil and racist, then what optimism can they have? What are they defending?"

The Jan. 29 executive order from President Donald Trump directed the Defense Department to "review any available mechanisms under which military-connected families may use funds from the Department of Defense to attend schools of their choice."

Trump said the provisions in the order seek to "support parents in choosing and directing the upbringing and education of their children."

An exact number of students who are homeschooled in military families was unavailable by publication. Active-duty troops had nearly 500,000 school-aged children as of 2023, roughly 67,000 of whom attend schools run by the Department of Defense Education Activity.

DoDEA students have recently made headlines for protesting changes instituted by the Trump administration at their schools[6], including banning certain books from libraries, dropping portions of curriculum that conflict with the administration's stand on gender identity and race, and restricting extracurricular activities tied to diversity initiatives.

Regarding Hegseth's memo, Mack said homeschooled military children could benefit from more support from the Defense Department, particularly in access to facilities and services.

At Fort Belvoir[7], Virginia, where Mack has served as a homeschooling consultant, she helped partner with the base to use an unoccupied meeting space for classes and academic fairs, and teamed up with the chaplain's office to use buildings on a space-available basis.

The group of families also was given access to a swimming pool during school hours, and they have had opportunities to host clubs and work with school liaisons.

"Have we looked at all of our resources on installation, and can we allocate a building that's not, maybe, being used as often or a gym? Can we allocate a PE teacher? What can the library do to reach out? What can the chaplains do?" Mack said.

She added that military families who homeschool are concerned about the laws that govern homeschooling because they vary from state to state. While the federal government can do little to change those laws, the Defense Department can do more to recognize its homeschooling community and the challenges it faces, she said.

"We want to be respected as a vital part, you know, of the military educational landscape, and so it's really important to make sure that, you know, they receive the resources and support that they are potentially seeking," Mack said.

Related: How to Get Military Homeschooling Help Ahead of Your PCS[8]

© Copyright 2025 Military.com. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rebroadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Military.com, please submit your request here[9].

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Reporter uses phone to record Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has taken yet another step to curtail the work of the press inside the Pentagon by imposing harsh restrictions on where reporters can go without official escort in a memo released late Friday[1].

The new rules forbid reporters from going into the hallway where Hegseth's office is located "without an official approval and escort from the Office of the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs" -- a job held by top Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell.

If reporters wish to visit the public affairs offices of any of the other services, "they are required to be formally escorted to and from those respective offices," the memo adds. The Pentagon will also require reporters to sign a document pledging to protect "sensitive information," likely setting up situations where unfavorable reporting involving documents could be used as pretense to strip journalists of access to the building.

Read Next: Pentagon Sends 1,100 More Troops to Border in Continued Mission Ramp-Up[2]

The move is just the latest in a series of restrictions on press access inside the Defense Department that began with booting legacy press outlets from their workspaces inside the Pentagon and then escalated to closing the press briefing room to reporters.

While none of the actions outright prohibit the press from covering the largest federal agency, they are an escalating trend of ever increasing restrictions on how much access reporters can have to officials who run each of the military services and the Defense Department.

The memo on Friday couched the new restrictions as "updated security measures" that "are needed to reduce the opportunities for in-person inadvertent and unauthorized disclosures."

The memo also notes that "in coming weeks" Pentagon press corps members will be given new access badges with "a clearer 'PRESS' identifier." Hegseth underlined those words on the copy that was made public.

While the new change, and several of the recent firings of top officials[3] from Hegseth's inner circle, have ostensibly been over leaks to the media, the secretary never fully addressed many of the lingering questions over his use of the commercial messaging app Signal[4].

In late March, it was revealed by The Atlantic that members of President Donald Trump's Cabinet -- including Hegseth, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Vice President JD Vance, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of State Marco Rubio -- were part of a group chat on the unsecured app[5] in which they discussed upcoming strikes against Yemen's Houthi rebels.

That discussion of sensitive military operations information on a commercial app that could be hacked by America's adversaries became public because the group inadvertently added a journalist -- The Atlantic's editor-in-chief -- to the text chat.

In April, the Defense Department inspector general's office said[6] it was reviewing Hegseth's use of the app to discuss sensitive details of planned U.S. airstrikes in Yemen.

Then, later in April, media reports revealed[7] that he had a second chat on Signal where he shared those same strike details with his wife and brother. NBC reported that[8] those details came from a secure communications channel used by U.S. Central Command.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has become one of the least transparent agencies within the Trump administration, even as it ratchets down access to the press.

Shortly after taking the job, Sean Parnell posted a video in which he promised[9] to offer weekly updates and "to be the most transparent DoD in American history for the warfighters and the American people."

However, Parnell has hosted only one press conference since taking the job, compared to the Trump White House and State Department, which have been providing regular public press briefings for months.

Parnell's deputy, Kingsley Wilson, has only held press briefings for children[10] during the Pentagon's observance of "Take Your Child to Work Day."

Wilson has also not addressed her yearslong history of social media posts[11] that featured extremist rhetoric ranging from antisemitic conspiracy theories to white nationalist talking points.

Parnell announced Friday that he was promoting Wilson to the job of press secretary for the Pentagon, saying that her "leadership has been integral to the DoD's success and we look forward to her continued service to President Trump!"

Related: Pentagon's No. 2 Spokesperson Has Long History of Antisemitic, Bigoted Social Media Posts[12]

© Copyright 2025 Military.com. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rebroadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Military.com, please submit your request here[13].

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