[CSPS] recruiting in high schools

[Sarah Bednarz]

I even hesitate to bring this issue up in College Station, but I think 
this facet of NCLB is not well known. Please read the piece prepared by 
a geography colleague of mine pasted below. I wonder what the policy is 
at Consol....

NCLB and the Military Recruitment Provision

Most geography educators have been so concerned about the absence of 
geography funding in the No Child Left Behind Act that they have missed 
Section 9528 that was carefully and quietly braided into the 
legislation’s thick content. This controversial provision requires all 
public high schools accepting Title I funds to grant military 
recruiters access to student information (i.e., names, addresses, phone 
numbers)unless parents sign a form authorizing school authorities to 
withhold that information from the Pentagon. Otherwise, the information 
will be included in a directory of a school's juniors and seniors that 
will be given upon request to military recruiters.In addition, they 
must be permitted on school campuses and admitted to school activities 
to conduct recruiting for the armed services.

Although most school officials bristle at the provision because of 
privacy issues, so far few have been willing to oppose it. Its purpose 
is clearly to support military recruiting on school property during 
school hours. Many school principals, teachers, and students complain 
that recruiters are often aggressive in their pursuit of potential 
enlistees with unwanted phone calls, unwelcome home visits, invitations 
to social and athletic events off school grounds with offers of 
rides. Some recruiters insist that they should be able to pull students 
out of classes for counseling sessions, film and video presentations, 
and aptitude testing.

The law also requires high schools to allow military recruiters the 
same campus access as post high school counselors give colleges and job 
recruiters. Some schools, including those in San Francisco and 
Portland, Oregon, have refused military recruiters entrée to their 
campuses on the grounds that the Pentagon discriminates against gays 
and lesbians through its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

Some education lobbyists and congressional aides indicate that Pentagon 
officials had been trying for years to insert recruitment provisions 
into education legislation to counter what they argued was a lack of 
cooperation from some high schools. When the NCLB legislation was being 
negotiated in the summer and fall of 2001, however, the bill was so 
thick with other controversial issues, such as school vouchers, funding 
matters, testing standards, and accountability provisions that 
lawmakers who might have otherwise fought the new recruitment rules had 
their attention focused on other provisions.  Military recruitment 
simply was not on anybody’s radar screen.

As one wag suggested when school officials began to receive letters 
from military recruiters in the summer of 2002, “Not only does the act 
want to leave no child behind; it wants to leave no child unrecruited.”
Prepared by James Marran
December, 2004


*******************************************
Sarah Witham Bednarz
Associate Professor of Geography
Department of Geography
Texas A&M University
College Station, Texas 77843-3147
s-bednarz at tamu.edu
979/845-1579
FAX: 979/862-4487
CELL: 979/229-7247
http://missiongeography.org
**************************
" A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, 
their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, 
restore their government to its true principles.  It  is true that in 
the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit and incurring  the 
horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt......If 
the game runs sometimes against us at home, we must have patience till 
luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back  the 
principles we have lost; for this is a game where principles are at 
stake."
   
Thomas Jefferson, 1798