No Child Left Behind... by Aggressive Military Recruiters

[rainbow4321]

http://okimc.org/newswire.php?story_id=447


Buried deep within Bush's "No Child Left Behind" Act is a provision requiring public high schools to provide military recruiters with contact information for every student—or face a cutoff of all federal aid.

The military has complained 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."

Students and parents have the right to withhold their records. However, 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.

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."

[bostonbabs]

1. "No Soldier Left Behind Act"

...they are preying....hunting...children to fight a war that should never have taken place. FH 9/11 touched on this but I had no idea that it was written into the "no child left behind act".

[OldVlad]

11. Lets give the kids some credit here people

I remember all the branches coming after me agressively when I was a kid, but I never considered it. I have my own things to deal with and I come first. I think most teenagers think the same way. Let them try.

[seemunkee]

2. Funny you should post this

I just finished writing an email to my daughters counselor asking about getting her name off the list they had out.

We didn't do it for my son but since he graduated early and is off to college they missed him.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. Are you suggesting that parents don't have a say in this at all if they

come knocking?

[LiberalEsto]

4. A Marines recruiter call us this morning

wanting to speak with my 18-year-old daughter. I told him she was in college and he rang off. Probably made a little mark next to her name to call back in 3 1/2 years.


Unless they decide to do like Putin just did, and drag college students from their dorm beds in the middle of the night.

[trogdor]

5. This is old stuff.

But it bears repeating.

I'm sure if Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY-24th District) got enough nastygrams from constituents, he might get up off his well-upholstered ass and do something...or maybe not. He hasn't gotten a significant challenge from the Democrats in a long time, and the one close-call he did have, in the 2002 GOP primary, had nothing to do with NCLB, but with the degree to which GOP congresscritters were expected to vote "baaaaa" in support of Bush.

[kdmorris]

6. And they are NOT kidding!

My children are home schooled (no, I'm not a fundie. It's a long story), and my oldest daughter is a Senior this year. Even though she isn't subjected to the long rallies, etc, that the kids at regular high school get, she still gets at least something every other day offering her all kinds of crap to join the military.

Luckily, she's got some critical thinking skills (and even more persuasive parents), so she figures that the $10,000 the Army offered her to join up isn't worth getting her ass shot off. But the stuff they send her...it's so persuasive, all glossy and geared straight to teenagers.

It's the kind of "See the world, have a great adventure, don't get stuck in your home town" kind of crap that many teenagers will respond to. Throw in that "bonus" of $10,000 and they may actually end up snagging a whole generation of poverty stricken kids who don't know any better.

[Larkspur]

12. I'm waiting for some parent to sue the military for false advertising

That would be a fund case to watch, especially if it was a Jehovah Witness type Christian.

[seemunkee]

7. Counselor Called and said they can't prevent it

He talked to the career counselor and was told that do to some FOIA request that they can't stop it. Anyone know about this??

[IndianaGreen]

8. Blame Congress, they voted for it

and some of them were supposed to be on our side!

[gratuitous]

9. The Portland School District resisted for years

But NCLB threatened the cut-off of federal funds if schools didn't become open markets for recruiters, and Oregon just doesn't have that kind of money.

So, instead of local people making local decisions about what's best for themselves, we had a new policy dictated to us under threat of penury by a bunch of Republicans 3,000 miles away. Tell me that one again about how Republicans are for less intrusive government, local control of schools and leaving people to make their own decisions? That one always cracks me up!

[Sgent]

10. I'd have to look at the law...

But doesn't the law merely provide that the military be given the same access and information that colleges and potential employers are given?

[PA Democrat]

13. There's a little difference between a college wooing your child to attend

their institution of higher learning and the military wooing your child to become cannon fodder in Iraq. If different people were in power, this wouldn't bother me as much. But the truth is, that most young high school kids who sign up these days are going to be shipped off to Iraq, or Bush's NEXT war ASAP.