Sunday, November 28, 2004
No Recruitee Left Behind
There is a small blurb in the online version of "The Nation" under the "Daily Outrage" section that states:
A little-known (and underreported) provision of President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act allows military officers to access previously confidential information about high school students. All public schools must now give recruiters a student's name, telephone number and address on demand unlesss parents object on their child's behalf. But most choose not to. Why? Because they don't even know the program exists. Conceal and conquer, as they say.
The thing that I hate about these sorts of blurbs is trying to guage the sense of accuracy behind the statement being made, or for that matter, how this danger could have been allowed to pass in the first place.
The writer has linked to a longer article that appeared in the November 10 issue of "The Connection," which appears to be a local newspaper serving several communities.
In it, the article profiles a local student who was recruited into the National Guard, and met his recruiter on the location of his high school. The author said this was made possible "[T]hanks to a still little-known provision in the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2002."
You remember that Act, don't you? It was one of the first big pieces of the Bush agenda passed in his first term that had strong bi-partisan support. The signing ceremony was held at Hamilton High School in Hamilton, Ohio, and had the visual of President Bush sitting with Senator Ted Kennedy to drive home the point of just how bi-partisan this bill actually was.
The Act itself ran a total of 670 pages, and thus the main focus on the press and the rest of the country was what the new law would actually mean for educational reform in the country. So it is correct to state that a requirement that public schools allow military recruiters access to the personal information of students who are juniors and seniors was mostly missed by everyone (a Lexis search only returned 18 hits in which newspapers mentioned the military provision of the Act).
So how did this come to pass in the first place? Apparently, military recruiters were barred from the campuses of public schools by 25% of the public school districts in the United States for reasons that ranged from privacy concerns to the military's discrimination against homosexuals.
In 2000, Senator Tim Hutchinson (R. Ark) introduced language into the "National Defense Authorization Act" in 2000 that would cut federal funds to any school that denied military recruiters access to the school or the students records. Hutchinson's provision never made it out of the final bill passed by the Congress, which brings us to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002.
Buried all the way down in Section 9528 of the Act is the pertinent section: "Armed Forces Recruiter Access to Students and Student Recruiting Information." And the section is fairly sweeping. It gives military recruiters access to the student's name, address, and telephone number. It does allow parents or students who are 18 years of age to opt out of the recruiting list, but this has become fairly problemmatic simply because most parents and students do not know the provision even exists. As pointed out in the "Connections" article,
"...the military recruiting opt-out form is sent to students' homes in August in a packet of other opt-out forms, most notably for Family Life Education — also known as "sex ed" — and many parents simply ignore the whole packet altogether."
It is also important to note that the identical provision to allow military recruiters access to student information was also contained in the "National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2002" (Public Law 107-107). It appears that Congress was taking no chances in not having this military recruitment provision make it one way or the other.
The Congress has recently updated the abilities of military recruiters both in high schools and on college campuses in this past legislative session. The Congress passed two bills, the "Ronald W. Reagan National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2005" and the "ROTC and Military Recruiter Equal Access to Campus Act of 2004." After the changes were made in the two previous bills, military recruiters were allowed onto campuses, particularly college campuses, for the purpose of recruiting. The argument was that since the schools allowed other potential employers onto campuses to talk with students about job prospects, schools could not keep military recruiters off. The language in the previous bills guaranteed equal entry to the campus.
Well, as one Republican lawmaker complained:
Some colleges and universities, for example, have required military recruiters to set up their recruitment tables off campus, while allowing other employers to recruit on campus. On other college campuses, ROTC recruiters were only given the option of using remote and inaccessible rooms for their recruitment, significantly reducing their ability to reach students. Shockingly, at one of the most prestigious colleges in this country, New York University, potential recruits were harassed and detained by protestors; and their pictures were displayed throughout the school on a poster entitled ``Face of Complicity.'' This is absolutely unacceptable, and that kind of behavior cannot happen again.
Hence the language was change from the equality of entry to the equality of access. All of the other provisions from the 2002 laws are still in place.
So let this fill in where "The Nation" article left off.
|
A little-known (and underreported) provision of President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act allows military officers to access previously confidential information about high school students. All public schools must now give recruiters a student's name, telephone number and address on demand unlesss parents object on their child's behalf. But most choose not to. Why? Because they don't even know the program exists. Conceal and conquer, as they say.
The thing that I hate about these sorts of blurbs is trying to guage the sense of accuracy behind the statement being made, or for that matter, how this danger could have been allowed to pass in the first place.
The writer has linked to a longer article that appeared in the November 10 issue of "The Connection," which appears to be a local newspaper serving several communities.
In it, the article profiles a local student who was recruited into the National Guard, and met his recruiter on the location of his high school. The author said this was made possible "[T]hanks to a still little-known provision in the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2002."
You remember that Act, don't you? It was one of the first big pieces of the Bush agenda passed in his first term that had strong bi-partisan support. The signing ceremony was held at Hamilton High School in Hamilton, Ohio, and had the visual of President Bush sitting with Senator Ted Kennedy to drive home the point of just how bi-partisan this bill actually was.
The Act itself ran a total of 670 pages, and thus the main focus on the press and the rest of the country was what the new law would actually mean for educational reform in the country. So it is correct to state that a requirement that public schools allow military recruiters access to the personal information of students who are juniors and seniors was mostly missed by everyone (a Lexis search only returned 18 hits in which newspapers mentioned the military provision of the Act).
So how did this come to pass in the first place? Apparently, military recruiters were barred from the campuses of public schools by 25% of the public school districts in the United States for reasons that ranged from privacy concerns to the military's discrimination against homosexuals.
In 2000, Senator Tim Hutchinson (R. Ark) introduced language into the "National Defense Authorization Act" in 2000 that would cut federal funds to any school that denied military recruiters access to the school or the students records. Hutchinson's provision never made it out of the final bill passed by the Congress, which brings us to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002.
Buried all the way down in Section 9528 of the Act is the pertinent section: "Armed Forces Recruiter Access to Students and Student Recruiting Information." And the section is fairly sweeping. It gives military recruiters access to the student's name, address, and telephone number. It does allow parents or students who are 18 years of age to opt out of the recruiting list, but this has become fairly problemmatic simply because most parents and students do not know the provision even exists. As pointed out in the "Connections" article,
"...the military recruiting opt-out form is sent to students' homes in August in a packet of other opt-out forms, most notably for Family Life Education — also known as "sex ed" — and many parents simply ignore the whole packet altogether."
It is also important to note that the identical provision to allow military recruiters access to student information was also contained in the "National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2002" (Public Law 107-107). It appears that Congress was taking no chances in not having this military recruitment provision make it one way or the other.
The Congress has recently updated the abilities of military recruiters both in high schools and on college campuses in this past legislative session. The Congress passed two bills, the "Ronald W. Reagan National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2005" and the "ROTC and Military Recruiter Equal Access to Campus Act of 2004." After the changes were made in the two previous bills, military recruiters were allowed onto campuses, particularly college campuses, for the purpose of recruiting. The argument was that since the schools allowed other potential employers onto campuses to talk with students about job prospects, schools could not keep military recruiters off. The language in the previous bills guaranteed equal entry to the campus.
Well, as one Republican lawmaker complained:
Some colleges and universities, for example, have required military recruiters to set up their recruitment tables off campus, while allowing other employers to recruit on campus. On other college campuses, ROTC recruiters were only given the option of using remote and inaccessible rooms for their recruitment, significantly reducing their ability to reach students. Shockingly, at one of the most prestigious colleges in this country, New York University, potential recruits were harassed and detained by protestors; and their pictures were displayed throughout the school on a poster entitled ``Face of Complicity.'' This is absolutely unacceptable, and that kind of behavior cannot happen again.
Hence the language was change from the equality of entry to the equality of access. All of the other provisions from the 2002 laws are still in place.
So let this fill in where "The Nation" article left off.
