http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2002/45/ma_153_01.html
Mother Jones November/December 2002
No Child Unrecruited
Should the military be given the names of every high school student in America?
by David Goodman
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 schools on 19,228
occasions. 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."
@2002 The Foundation for National Progress