http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000663.php
or
http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2002/45/ma_153_01.html
or
http://www.bergenaction.net/campaign_nclb.html
No Child Unrecruited
Should the military be given the names of every high school student in America?
David Goodman
November/December 2002
Sharon Shea-Keneally, principal of Mount Anthony Union High School in Bennington, Vermont, was shocked when she received a letter in May from military recruiters demanding a list of all her students, including names, addresses, and phone numbers. The school invites recruiters to participate in career days and job fairs, but like most school districts, it keeps student information strictly confidential. “We don’t give out a list of names of our kids to anybody,” says Shea-Keneally, “not to colleges, churches, employers — nobody.”
But when Shea-Keneally insisted on an explanation, she was in for an even bigger surprise: The recruiters cited the No Child Left Behind Act, President Bush’s sweeping new education law passed earlier this year. There, buried deep within the law’s 670 pages, is a provision requiring public secondary schools to provide military recruiters not only with access to facilities, but also with contact information for every student — or face a cutoff of all federal aid.
“I was very surprised the requirement was attached to an education law,” says Shea-Keneally. “I did not see the link.”
The military complained this year that up to 15 percent of the nation’s high schools are “problem schools” for recruiters. In 1999, the Pentagon says, recruiters were denied access to 19,228 schools. Rep. David Vitter, a Republican from Louisiana who sponsored the new recruitment requirement, says such schools “demonstrated an anti-military attitude that I thought was offensive.”
To many educators, however, requiring the release of personal information intrudes on the rights of students. “We feel it is a clear departure from the letter and the spirit of the current student privacy laws,” says Bruce Hunter, chief lobbyist for the American Association of School Administrators. Until now, schools could share student information only with other educational institutions. “Now other people will want our lists,” says Hunter. “It’s a slippery slope. I don’t want student directories sent to Verizon either, just because they claim that all kids need a cell phone to be safe.”
The new law does give students the right to withhold their records. But school officials are given wide leeway in how to implement the law, and some are simply handing over student directories to recruiters without informing anyone — leaving students without any say in the matter.
“I think the privacy implications of this law are profound,” says Jill Wynns, president of the San Francisco Board of Education. “For the federal government to ignore or discount the concerns of the privacy rights of millions of high school students is not a good thing, and it’s something we should be concerned about.”
Educators point out that the armed services have exceeded their recruitment goals for the past two years in a row, even without access to every school. The new law, they say, undercuts the authority of some local school districts, including San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, that have barred recruiters from schools on the grounds that the military discriminates against gays and lesbians. Officials in both cities now say they will grant recruiters access to their schools and to student information — but they also plan to inform students of their right to withhold their records.
Some students are already choosing that option. According to Principal Shea-Keneally, 200 students at her school — one-sixth of the student body — have asked that their records be withheld.
Recruiters are up-front about their plans to use school lists to aggressively pursue students through mailings, phone calls, and personal visits — even if parents object. “The only thing that will get us to stop contacting the family is if they call their congressman,” says Major Johannes Paraan, head U.S. Army recruiter for Vermont and northeastern New York. “Or maybe if the kid died, we’ll take them off our list.”
Re: No Child Unrecruited
INteresting that it’s taken an extra week or so for other newspapers to pick up this story! (Not interesting in a good way… kind of sickening…)
I am an educator in Illinois, I am a parent of two sons. One of my sons passed away at 16 years of age. He had never shown any interest in the military and had never signed up for any information about the military. This was before this bill was passed—but it didn’t matter. My son’s school has all Junior students take the ASVAB as a vocational assessment. When I objected to this, I was told that the military did not get names and addresses, and beside they could get them from the state lic. bur. if they really wanted them. I was told the military did not use this information for recruiting purposes. You don’t need a seeing eye dog to read the writing on that wall—the military has all the access it could want. And now, with this, there are no hoops for them to jump.
I would like to meet Major Johannes Paraan, and explain how I called all the recruiters that sent information and told them my son had passed away andasked them to take his name off the list, of course his social security number was deleted, I talked with our local postmaster, who bless his heart tried to stop the onslaught of mail and calls, I talked with my congressman, I confronted the recruiters who came to my son’s school, and for Major Johannes Paraan’s information—the military doesn’t stop even “if the kid died”…..it is a quota thing, and just so long as a recruiter tries to make contact it counts. I resent the Major’s glib retort.
I respect any individual who wants information about the miltiary, and who wants to join the military. I understand all 18 year old males need to register, but schools should be safe from solicitation and that includes the military. Please continue the struggle to undo this under the table act. Thanks for listening.