Atttention: parents of high schoolers. Please read this.

[bif]

Did you know this about the No Child Left Behind Act. unless you sign a form, your child's records are available to military recruiters? They snuck that little clause in.

Here's the official word.

> "In January 2002, President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act
> (NCLB) into law. No Child Left Behind reauthorized the Elementary and
> Secondary Education Act (ESEA) - the principal federal law affecting education
> from kindergarten through high school. Buried within the 650 pages of the No
> Child Left Behind Act is Section 9528, which requires secondary schools to
> release student directory information for juniors and seniors to military
> recruiters upon request. Directory information consists of a studentâ??s
> name, home address, and phone number. Under the Elementary and Secondary
> Education Act of 1965, high schools were only required to give military
> recruiters the same access to campuses that was given to professional and
> educational recruiters. The recent change in the law mandates that high
> schools give military recruiters access to campuses even if those campuses do
> not open their doors to professional and educational recruiters.
>
> This provision applies to any local education agency (LEA â?? i.e. the local
> school district) â?? public or private - receiving federal funds under the No
> Child Left Behind Act. Schools refusing to provide studentsâ?? contact
> information to military recruiters do so at the risk of losing federal
> funding. However, private secondary schools that maintain a religious
> objection to service in the Armed Forces, such as the Quakers for example, are
> exempted from this part of the legislation.
>
> The law does contain an option for an individual student or parent of a
> student to request that the studentâ??s directory information not be released
> without the parentâ??s prior written consent. Without this express
> â??opting-out,â?<caron> the information will be released by the local education
> agency. Local school districts are responsible for informing parents about
> the â??opt-outâ?<caron> provision, although in practice many donâ??t.

[T Wolf]

1. Last year, I told my daughter's school

to keep her name from the military vultures, and they did so.

I also asked them to include that option in their newsletter home about the No Cannon Fodder Left Behind law, but they did not do that. So, it was by word of mouth that parents learned of the threat and the response to that threat.

Hopefully, your school will be more cooperative.

[bif]

2. We just had our daughter taken off the list

They said it was in a packet of info they sent home before school started. It must have been burried, because we missed it. Apparently so did almost everyone else. Only 37 kids from a very big high school have had their names taken off the list.

[bif]

3. kick

[amandae]

4. Since when did you have to sign a form to NOT have info released??

This is rediculous!! What happened to privacy? Why should you have to go out of your way to make sure our military doesn't receive our children's information(and most American's wouldn't make the effort - some not through any fault of their own, assuming that information about their children would be kept PRIVATE by the schools in an effort to protect them)??

My oldest child is 6 right now and only in first grade. Is there any end noted to this particular "reauthorization"??