MJ: No Child Unrecruited

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Wed Dec 4 15:38:32 PST 2002


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



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