'No Child' law reveals student info
WILLIAM COOPER JR., Bradenton Herald, January 9, 2005
Cox News Service

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WEST PALM BEACH - When the U.S. Marine recruiter called Julien Maynard, the Palm Beach Lakes High School senior told him that he was college bound.

A few months later, the recruiter called again, and for a second time Maynard said he wasn't interested in the military.

"I'm the kind of person that's geared toward books and college and not guns and war," said Maynard, who is ranked second in his class and has applied to Duke University, New York University and Emory University.

Maynard, who was puzzled at how the recruiter got his telephone number, experienced one of the military's weapons in recruiting: the No Child Left Behind Law. Thousands of high school students across America are being recruited by telephone because federal lawmakers passed the law in 2001 with a little-noticed provision that requires the nation's public schools to report the names, phone numbers and addresses of high school juniors and seniors to the military.

All branches of the armed forces now have access to students' information. The military now has a jumpstart on potential recruits long before males turning 18 are required to register with the Selective Service.

For peace activists across the country, the law has become a hot-button issue because they believe the military has been given unprecedented access to impressionable teens. The law is being used by the military to recruit teens without involving parents, according to some activists.

Under the radar

The controversial provision went virtually unnoticed until America's increased involvement in Iraq, according to peace activists. With military resources stretched thin and U.S. reserve units experiencing shortfalls in recruitment quotas, anti-war advocates launched a campaign to make it public.

The difficulty, according to the peace organizations, is that while the law gives parents an "opt out" option that prevents release of information to the military, most school districts in America aren't doing much to let parents know about it.

"I don't think people know they have the opportunity to have their child not recruited," said Richard Hersh, who is organizing a local effort to educate parents about military recruitment. "This is an attempt to make people aware of their rights under the law and encourage them to start asking questions."

Palm Beach County school officials said they're complying with the federal law. In fact, they've always provided military recruiters with students' personal information - when asked, said Christie Ragsdale, a secondary guidance specialist at the district.

"This hasn't changed things very much," Ragsdale said.

However, under the new law recruiters don't have to ask, and the school district is mandated to give recruiters the personal information of all 12,661 juniors and 9,146 seniors, schools officials said. Typically, the information is provided to recruiters in the spring.

The only notice students get about the "opt out" option is contained in the Family and Student Handbook, which is handed out at the beginning of the school year. The handbook also is posted in the Document Center of the school district's Web site.

Ragsdale said parents have 10 days from the time the handbook is issued to write school officials requesting the information remain private. The request must be in writing; officials don't take them over the phone. Parents' next opportunity to opt out will be at the beginning of next school year.

Hersh said the school district must do more to inform parents of this part of the law. He and other peace activists plan to meet with school officials to see if they can visit high schools and explain the impact of the law.

"We're hoping to pass out materials and talk to as many high school kids as we can," Hersh said. "Parents and students need to know about this."

Almost total compliance

According to federal figures, 96 percent of America's public schools have complied with the federal law, said Lt. Col. Joseph Richard, a Pentagon public affairs spokesman.

All Florida public schools have complied with the measure, he said. The military is working with those schools that aren't in compliance, he said.

Failure to comply can result in public schools losing millions in federal education money, said Jim Bradshaw, a spokesman with the U.S. Department of Education in Washington. Bradshaw said the military monitors the compliance of schools and forwards the information to federal education officials.

"Ultimately, the penalty is to cut off the elementary and secondary education act dollars," Bradshaw said. "We haven't gotten near to that point."

Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, teacher's unions, peace organizations and some veterans groups have joined in the effort to get out word on the law. The initial opposition included threats of lawsuits and protests.

Privacy education

But in two years, the most effective step by the organizations has been to educate parents about their right to keep the information private, peace activists agree.

In an effort to do what they believe schools failed to do, peace activists nationally mobilized, confronted school districts and even posted opt-out forms on the Internet.

In California, where the activism has been most aggressive, teachers in Los Angeles got the union involved and began meeting with administrators in the Los Angeles Unified School District, said Andy Griggs, a math coach and chairman of the human rights committee of the United Teachers of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles school district consists of 750,000 students, compared with Palm Beach County's 174,387.

"We found so few people who even knew about the law. Our teachers didn't know about it," said Griggs. "We divided up the city into regions and exposed a lot of people to what was going on."

Griggs said the group held workshops, distributed information in several languages and met with community groups. Their efforts got the attention of Los Angeles schools officials, he said.

Bud Jacobs, the director of high school programs in Los Angeles, said the group's efforts prompted the school district to better inform parents about the law and provide a specific "opt out" form. Schools officials also extended the amount of time parents had to return the form to the district, Jacobs said.

"We are making parents more aware they can opt out," Jacobs said.

From NYC teacher Mr. Ron Isaac:

Recruitment Blues
by Ron Isaac

Biting the hand that feeds him is modern man's seminal act of affirmation. We are shaped by our disparagements and defined by our ingratitude. Does that justify or even explain the rage over the release, unbeknownst to high school seniors, of their names, phone numbers, and addresses to military recruiters?

Entombed but thriving in that legislative sepulchre called "No Child Left Behind" is a stealthy clause that coerces schools to yield to the armed forces such personal data as may be necessary to contact potential cannon fodder. It is the military's take on identity theft.

Until 2001, the scoop was surrendered voluntarily after students and their parents, given a fair time-window for reflection, decided not to opt out of disclosure. Today, with a cranky and fully cranked war machine, the wheels of the apparitional train of national security are grinding patriotism with the down-home fervor of a presidential inauguration, and volunteering it on behalf of non-approvers.

Until the Act was rammed through, military reps, armed with sales pitches so charming, during the Age of Innocence preceding the Patriot Act season, as to make them de facto draftsmen, needed to solicit confidential information. They had to earn it by right of trust. Now they demand it by right of law. Students and their parents are generally oblivious to the intelligence takeover and until now have scarcely resisted, because it has been implemented as discreetly as an Afghani election. It is an avant-garde genre of military invasion.

Colleges pass the informational ammo to track down prospective grunts because if they don't, the military will quarantine their pipeline to federal funds. It is pacification by threat of dollar rather than intestinal evisceration. The military is adaptable.

Privacy rights even in the best of times have not been so dear as property rights. Yet even as they are strafed they are being raked with care. Students are still given prior notice of their privilege to keep their existence hidden from military eyes. It is so stated as a wretched footnote in every school's Student Handbook and posted as an arcane link on the school district's web site. Between them they draw fewer hits per year than there are drownings in thimbles of orange juice.

From the date the handbook is issued, which by accidental design may foreshadow its distribution by days, parents have ten days to specifically non-authorize school officials from relaying their family stats to the wing commanders. It is recommended that messages of indignation and non-compliance be dispatched with a return-receipt requested tag, as they tend to get lost.

When we are ignorant of choice, our consent is implied and inescapable. That makes assent worse than obligatory. We can defy when we are aware, but insults to our principles cannot be braved or fielded retroactively. By being caught off guard as intended, students and parents inadvertently heed the cry of haphazard nationalism.

But is the military out of bounds for expecting courtesy, if not embrace from the citizens it undeniably protects? Soldier Eisenhower warned of the "military-industrial complex." Perhaps pacifists and peace organizations, which not ironically include some unabashed veterans groups, should remonstrate against the "anti-military-academia" complex. Many of the same parents who bemoan their having been given no prior knowledge of the release of their children's phone numbers to the military, defend these same children's right to an abortion without their parents' awareness.

For many, their loathing of the military is exceeded only be their love of knowing that it's there, just in case. Security's cling has made cowards, or at least hypocrites of them. They know as well as anybody else that they would want the killers of their killers to be seen as humanitarians.

If the call of the military is such anathema to a targeted recruit that he recoils at even having diplomatic relations with them, that young American should luxuriate in the courage of his convictions, tell them where he lives, high-tail it to Canada, leaving a forwarding address, and gladly suffer the consequences.

If fired by honor, their protest would welcome the crucible of inconvenience. If lit by bravado, it would scramble for excuses to cheat the ordeal of self-sacrifice.

Once again the military stands by as the ideologues fight it out.