“Get to know your students” is a familiar back-to-school piece of advice. Another important question is how much work students and families must do to make themselves known.
Entering a school can require families to learn unfamiliar procedures, complete forms, transfer records, explain prior services, identify the right staff members, and help a child rebuild social connections. Military-connected families may repeat this process across multiple schools, states, countries, or education systems.
A recent study of 40 highly mobile military-connected families found that parents described difficult academic transitions and a substantial emotional toll on their children. Parents and students viewed new social connections as critical, and even small gestures of understanding from school personnel were meaningful (Spencer et al., 2026).
This research points to a useful perspective:
Schools can learn about students while reducing the work students and families must do to become understood, connected, and supported.
A new lens for understanding school transitions
Public-administration researchers use the term administrative burden to describe the costs people incur when navigating public systems. These costs generally fall into three categories:
- Learning costs: Finding out what to do, where to go, and which rules apply
- Compliance costs: Completing forms, providing documentation, and satisfying requirements
- Psychological costs: Experiencing stress, frustration, stigma, or a loss of control while seeking help
This framework originated in research on interactions between individuals and government agencies. Applying it to school transitions offers a new, practical way to identify parts of the transition experience that schools can make easier (Moynihan, Herd, & Harvey, 2015).
Reduce learning costs
New students must quickly learn the formal and informal rules of a school. Where do they go when they arrive? What happens if they are absent? How do they join an activity? Which adult can answer a question? What classroom practices are different from those in their previous school?
Experienced students often acquire this knowledge gradually from friends and routine interactions. A student who arrives after the year begins may have fewer opportunities to do so.
Schools can reduce learning costs by:
- Providing a short “start here” guide with essential information
- Giving new students a tour that includes services, activities, and common gathering spaces
- Assigning one staff member or trained student ambassador as a reliable point of contact
- Teaching routines directly so that every student understands them
- Posting schedules, expectations, deadlines, and contact information in one predictable location
- Checking what remains confusing after the student has attended for several days
These practices help all students. They may be particularly useful for military-connected students who are simultaneously learning a new school, community, curriculum, and set of expectations.
The Greeting Students module offers strategies for creating a positive initial connection. The Maximize Structure and Predictability module can help educators make classroom procedures easier to learn and follow.
Reduce compliance costs
Families may encounter forms, enrollment requirements, record requests, course-placement decisions, special-education procedures, activity-eligibility rules, and graduation requirements. Each individual step may appear reasonable. Together, they can create a confusing process, especially when responsibilities are divided across offices.
Schools can reduce compliance costs by:
- Giving families one checklist with coordinated instructions
- Identifying one person who can help families track unresolved issues
- Explaining which documents are needed and why
- Using information the family has already provided whenever possible
- Coordinating communication among enrollment, counseling, special education, and instructional staff
- Beginning academic and social supports while administrative questions are being resolved, when permitted
- Connecting families with personnel who understand military-related transition policies
The Transfer of Educational Records for Military-Connected Students module explains guidelines from the Interstate Compact on Educational Opportunity for Military Children. Installation school liaisons can also help educators and families navigate transition concerns. The How Can School Liaisons Help School Personnel? module explains how to use this partnership.
A useful test is simple:
Can a new family complete the transition without having to call several offices and explain the same situation repeatedly?
When the answer is no, the school may be placing unnecessary coordination work on the family.
Reduce psychological costs
Students and families may also carry a less visible burden. They may need to ask repeatedly for help, disclose personal circumstances, correct assumptions, or retell difficult experiences involving deployment, separation, injury, or loss.
Educators need enough context to provide support, while students and families need control over what they share. Schools can use universal, optional questions such as:
- What would you like us to know about your strengths and interests?
- What helped you feel successful at your previous school?
- What is still unclear or unfamiliar here?
- Who should receive school communications, and what is the best way to reach them?
- Are there upcoming changes that may affect routines or communication?
- Is there an adult or peer at school you feel comfortable approaching?
When a family shares relevant information, staff should follow school policies for documenting and communicating it. A coordinated response can protect privacy and reduce unnecessary retelling.
The Frequent Parent Communication module can help schools establish communication before concerns arise. When a military-related absence is relevant, Communication During Parental Absence offers more specific guidance.
Make belonging part of the transition process
Record transfer, enrollment, and orientation address important parts of a transition. Students also need opportunities to determine where they fit within the school community.
A meta-analysis of 82 studies found that school belonging was positively associated with students’ motivational, social, emotional, behavioral, and academic functioning. The correlational design of the included studies limits conclusions about causation. The findings still demonstrate that belonging is meaningfully connected to students’ experiences of school (Korpershoek et al., 2020).
Schools can make belonging an explicit transition goal by:
- Pairing new students with trained peer mentors or ambassadors
- Introducing students to classmates with similar interests
- Sharing clubs and activities before registration deadlines pass
- Scheduling a second check-in after the initial welcome
- Asking students whether they have identified an adult and a peer they can approach
- Creating opportunities for new students to contribute their strengths and perspectives
The Mentoring Programs module provides guidance for developing structured mentoring supports.
Treat student context as changing information
Information collected on the first day may describe only one point in a student’s experience. Military training, deployment, reintegration, relocation orders, injury, caregiving responsibilities, and other family changes can occur throughout the year.
A practical approach is to conduct brief check-ins after a student’s first days, again after several weeks, and following a known transition. Educators can ask what is working, what remains confusing, and whether anything has changed. Current strengths and needs should guide the response.
The Risk and Protective Factors for Military-Connected Students During Geographic Transitions module can help educators recognize factors that may shape adjustment while maintaining an individualized, strengths-based approach.
The back-to-school takeaway
Schools can begin by asking four questions:
- How easily can a new student learn how this school works?
- How many people must a family contact to resolve a transition issue?
- How often must students or families repeat information they have already shared?
- Does every new student have an identifiable adult and peer connection?
Getting to know students provides the foundation. Schools can build on that foundation by designing systems that make it easier for students to be known. Reducing learning, compliance, and psychological burdens can create a more welcoming transition for every family while offering especially meaningful support to military-connected students.
Explore additional training in the Foundations for Supporting Military-Connected Students series.
Reference(s):
Korpershoek, H., Canrinus, E. T., Fokkens-Bruinsma, M., & de Boer, H. (2020). The relationships between school belonging and students’ motivational, social-emotional, behavioural, and academic outcomes in secondary education: A meta-analytic review. Research Papers in Education, 35(6), 641–680. https://doi.org/10.1080/02671522.2019.1615116Moynihan, D. P., Herd, P., & Harvey, H. (2015). Administrative burden: Learning, psychological, and compliance costs in citizen-state interactions. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 25(1), 43–69. https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muu009
Spencer, R., Drew, A. L., Gowdy, G., Nicholson, J. H., Steggerda, J. C., Herrera, C., Smith Slep, A. M., & Cavell, T. A. (2026). A little goes a long way: Highly mobile military-connected parents’ and students’ perspectives on school supports for school transitions. Improving Schools, 28(2), 296–311. https://doi.org/10.1177/13654802261433276.