No Child Unrecruited
(
http://www.motherjones.com/news/outf...ma_153_01.html)
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 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."
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