Army getting kids' names, Schools aiding armed forces
Ohanian Comment: Another windfall from NCLB: High schools must supply student directory information to the military. "100 percent contact with every senior" has quite a ring to it. Note that the Pentagon uses $150 per student of our tax dollars to administer what some people call an aptitude test and others a recruiting device. Parents do not have to be notified that their children are taking the test.
Shane Johnson
Last September, while poring over provisions of the sweeping federal No Child Left Behind Act, Deanna Taylor came across Section 9528 buried deep in the 670-page document.
That provision of the expansive education reform act -- passed by Congress in January 2002 -- mandates that high schools across the country provide student directory information to military recruiters upon request or risk losing federal education funding. And the section mandates that schools give military recruiters the same access to students as they would to college recruiters.
"I was just aghast; literally, my jaw hit the floor when I read it," said Taylor, a music teacher in Salt Lake City whose son attends a Jordan District high school.
To ask a recruiter, though, the access mandate will make little difference in Utah, where schools have long been accommodating to the military.
"The schools here in Utah are very, very cooperative. They have always been pro-military. I would say about 95 percent of the time there was no problem with access," said Thomas Franks, assistant commander of the South Salt Lake City Army recruiting station.
Nonetheless, Taylor said the provision does not belong in an act designed to improve her children's education. So she immediately wrote to her son's school and district officials requesting that his information be withheld from recruiters.
Taylor's request was honored, but she had never received advance notification from the Jordan School District that the information would be made available to the military, a requirement that also is in Section 9528.
Nor was Taylor informed of her right to opt out of the disclosure as required by law. The notice has been included in the district's registration package that will go out this summer.
Salt Lake City School District also was late in complying with disclosure parts of the act. Its notice did not include a reference to military recruiters until January of this year.
Parents in both districts will receive notifications in their registration packages this summer that include the new mandates and instructions on how they can opt out of having their students' information made available to recruiters. However, it could be a moot point.
"We've already got our senior lists for next year," Franks said Thursday.
Franks' boss, Steven Hixon, oversees eight recruiting stations in Salt Lake City, Price and Bountiful. He is a 30-year Army veteran tapped by a private company last year to head a test program in Utah that has replaced uniformed Army recruiters with civilians.
Hixon's recruiters are charged with the mission of making "100 percent contact with every senior," he said.
Combined, the eight-station battalion has the goal of signing 45 recruits a month, with more than half of them delayed-enlistment high school students and fresh graduates.
Recruiting strategies range from "cold calling" students to see what their plans are after graduation, to setting up booths in hallways and cafeterias during lunch.
But a more exacting tool at recruiters' disposal is the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB). Nationally, it was administered to 1.25 million students by more than 14,000 high schools in 2002. That is about 90,000 more students than took the ACT college entrance exam. In the past year, about 9,000 Utah students took the military ASVAB, Hixon said.
The ASVAB is a mandatory test for entrance into any military branch, its primary purpose is to classify prospective service members into suitable jobs. It is offered free of charge to any high school willing to use it as a student aptitude assessment, at a cost to the Pentagon of $150 per test. Some schools let students choose if they will take it. Others, like East High School in Salt Lake City, make it mandatory for all juniors.
The test sorts potential recruits by score and future plans, enabling recruiters to fine tune the pitch for when they make contact. Whether students indicate that they plan to join the military, go to college or are undecided, they get a phone call.
"It really doesn't matter what they put down, we call them anyway," said Franks, explaining that high school students, for the most part, are not sure what they want to do, and the military offers many incentives to college-bound enlistees.
But that indecisiveness, said Taylor, is precisely why the military should tread more lightly in high schools.
"Once you sign up for the military, you can't drop out without it going on your record," she said. "When you go to college, if you change your mind, you can drop out whenever you want."
The $150 per test investment is only a small chunk of the military's annual recruiting budget of $1.9 billion, but it seems to be paying off.
"I would say at least a quarter of the kids that take the ASVAB will go into one branch or another. See, the [test results] go to the other branches as well, and they are recruiting just as hard as we are," Franks said.
As with the directory information, parents in Salt Lake and Jordan districts also have not been informed that the ASVAB was being administered to students.
Though such disclosure is not required under law, Ralph Haws, a member of the Jordan School District Board of Education and 37-year Army National Guard veteran, said he is conflicted about the issue of parental notification of the tests.
As a veteran, he supports the mission of military recruiters to supply the country's "all volunteer" armed services, and provide a valuable option for those disinclined to go to college. But wearing his other hat as an advocate for parents and students, Haws acknowledged that the ASVAB is a recruiting device and ought to be disclosed as such.
"I would think that parents would want to be informed, and there should be a sign-off that says 'Yes, you have my permission to do this.' "
— Shane Johnson
Salt Lake Tribune
2003-06-06
http://www.sltrib.com/2003/jun/06222003/utah/68548.asp
INDEX OF MILITARIZATION OF OUR SCHOOLS
