DC schools slap the hands of military recruiters, ban ASVAB test from public schools...
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| Also listed in: SVVSD Concerned about Military Recruitment | Veterans for Progress |
Got this email this morning from the VVAW news net, and thought it might be important to those of you who would rather not have your children fighting the oil industry's wars for them. It doesn't seem like a lot, but its a lot more official than standing on a street corner with signs and facing the possibility of illegal assembly charges. It read:
"The District of Columbia Public Schools, apparently responding to multiple requests by city residents and recent experiences in neighboring jurisdictions, has taken the extraordinary step of banning the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test from all public schools in Washington, DC.
In a letter dated February 29, 2008, Sara Wilson, of the Critical Response Team of the Office of the Chancellor wrote to DC activist John Judge, "After speaking with Kimberly Hood-Berry, the Deputy Chief for Academic Support Services and the Head Counselor, Merita Carter, they have decided to look for an alternative career exploration test to be used in place of ASVAB. While they are searching for the best alternative, counselors will be informed not to use ASVAB."
Last week, officials from neighboring Prince George's County, Maryland were outraged when they discovered the military had not informed school officials of their option to withhold private information, including social security numbers and ASVAB test results, from military recruiters. Federal regulations require the military to inform school districts of their right to withhold test information from recruiters.
The ASVAB is administered to 605,000 public school children every year. Although internal military documents identify the ASVAB as a recruiting device, it is marketed in schools as a "career exploration program".
This development has the potential to bring down the ASVAB across the country. That's how angry school officials are becoming.
This form, provided by military representatives to Prince George's County, MD School Officials, omits Option 8:
http://dc.indymedia.org/media/anti-warwar/display/35882/index.php
School officials in Montgomery, Maryland were also unaware of the option to withhold test results from military recruiting services. When they learned of Option 8 two years ago, Montgomery officials changed their policy by requiring parental permission to take the test and selecting Option 8 in schools across the sprawling district.
See USMEPCOM Regulation 601.4 Personnel Procurement Student Testing Program 25 July, 2005, pages 12 & 13 for an explanation of the various options available to public school systems:
http://www.mepcom.army.mil/publications/pdf/regs/r-0601-004.pdf
Have you contacted your school system about the ASVAB release option they select? Have you downloaded the form that has ignited this firestorm of controversy and do you understand its volatile contents? This is not a spectator sport. We have school officials in one, and possibly two major districts, who are making calls to fellow administrators across the country, to warn them about the military's deceptive practices. We can kill this insidious recruiting tool if you would make a call or send an email to your superintendent.
- Pat Elder
Bethesda, MD
"The District of Columbia Public Schools, apparently responding to multiple requests by city residents and recent experiences in neighboring jurisdictions, has taken the extraordinary step of banning the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test from all public schools in Washington, DC.
In a letter dated February 29, 2008, Sara Wilson, of the Critical Response Team of the Office of the Chancellor wrote to DC activist John Judge, "After speaking with Kimberly Hood-Berry, the Deputy Chief for Academic Support Services and the Head Counselor, Merita Carter, they have decided to look for an alternative career exploration test to be used in place of ASVAB. While they are searching for the best alternative, counselors will be informed not to use ASVAB."
Last week, officials from neighboring Prince George's County, Maryland were outraged when they discovered the military had not informed school officials of their option to withhold private information, including social security numbers and ASVAB test results, from military recruiters. Federal regulations require the military to inform school districts of their right to withhold test information from recruiters.
The ASVAB is administered to 605,000 public school children every year. Although internal military documents identify the ASVAB as a recruiting device, it is marketed in schools as a "career exploration program".
This development has the potential to bring down the ASVAB across the country. That's how angry school officials are becoming.
This form, provided by military representatives to Prince George's County, MD School Officials, omits Option 8:
http://dc.indymedia.org/media/anti-warwar/display/35882/index.php
School officials in Montgomery, Maryland were also unaware of the option to withhold test results from military recruiting services. When they learned of Option 8 two years ago, Montgomery officials changed their policy by requiring parental permission to take the test and selecting Option 8 in schools across the sprawling district.
See USMEPCOM Regulation 601.4 Personnel Procurement Student Testing Program 25 July, 2005, pages 12 & 13 for an explanation of the various options available to public school systems:
http://www.mepcom.army.mil/publications/pdf/regs/r-0601-004.pdf
Have you contacted your school system about the ASVAB release option they select? Have you downloaded the form that has ignited this firestorm of controversy and do you understand its volatile contents? This is not a spectator sport. We have school officials in one, and possibly two major districts, who are making calls to fellow administrators across the country, to warn them about the military's deceptive practices. We can kill this insidious recruiting tool if you would make a call or send an email to your superintendent.
- Pat Elder
Bethesda, MD
It's a counter-productive tactic that diverts energy from the true campaign against the offenses of the civilian decision-makers who start wars. Instead this tactic seeks to criticize and punish the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who uphold the US Constitution and fulfill their duty.
There's been a well documented decades-long decline in population of officers and enlisted members of the US military identifying themselves as Democrats. I openly describe my 26-years of active and National Guard service as living in purgatory along side some of the most radical conservatives ever created.
The damages of boycotts like those in DC are two-fold: the military community has fewer liberal-progressive-Democratic members, and the Democratic Party is increasingly ignorant on military and defense matters. Little wonder that the "Foreign Policy" magazine and the Center for the New American Security (CNAS) poll of 3,400 senior members of the military shows politicians and civilian leaders with deplorably low approval ratings. This is self-inflected damage that does very little towards the described objective.
Boycotting and barring recruiters will have absolutely no effect on the policies of the current occupant of the White House and the US Defense mis-administration. But, it will virtually guarantee that the young-people of that school have a much higher probability of living their lives ignorant of US Defense Policy and the military. And, that the members of the military will never have the benefit of serving alongside a citizen-soldier holding liberal-progressive-Democratic ideals. So much for the legacy of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
In your own posts you have repeated quoted articles polling officers and former senior NCOs on the lack of America's own ability to defend the homeland due to repeated deployments. It would seem to me this would be job one, and it has been made abundantly clear by the continued instability in Iraq that our presence has not calmed the unrest that began with our invasion, that we do not have the financial or human resources to sustain an occupation force, and that the only thing keeping us in this war is the intractable unwillingness of the administration to see the reality of the hopelessness of their position.
It is a good thing that the Nixon administration was not as intractible on its position on Vietnam, otherwise Mr. McCain would still be languishing in a Vietnamese POW camp... a prospect that given his campaign position on Iraq is not too distasteful to this blogger.
The tragedy of the current occupant's military adventure in Iraq is not the fault of the rank and file GI. The mis-administration will just keep raising the enlistment bonuses and kids in other communities will take the cash and sign-up.
Local school district prohibitions are "feel-good" protests for a few activists. But, they often result in the district being targeted with the loss of Federal education funding and denied access to grants.
The intractability, lies and hidden agendas of the mis-administration have kept the US on the track of an occupying force in Iraq. The only assured course of action to change that is to elect a Democratic President and improve the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate (maybe even different leadership in the next Congress).
You seem to be advocating a policy that would keep SVVSD kids out of the Colorado National Guard Signal Company in Boulder or the Maintenance Company in Longmont. I worked on the force design of those Colorado units and led the decison-making process to select their armories. A good friend is the First Sergeant in Boulder. How does keeping hometown people from serving as Citizen-Soldiers improve Homeland Security Readiness in Colorado?
I have no issue with persons who have reached their eighteenth birthday, who must register with Selective Service doing so, or choosing to take the bribes offered by the military to make it seem more palatable. They have have reached the age of voting and majority in every way but alcohol consumption. They make the choice to join freely... as did I... and sign the enlistment contract for their own reasons, well thought out or blissfully naive. But to cultivate schools as a resource for harvesting in lieu of and in replacement to conscription is dead wrong....
You and I both know signing on the bottom line doesn't always give you the 'experience' you think you're going to get or that your recruiter is telling you are going to have. You can always serve the nation when you graduate by becoming an Agricultural Agent, Postal Worker, Social Security Case Worker, FBI Agent, Policeman, Fireman or anything other than something that will put you in harms way in a hostile foreign nation with your only justification for being there being an enlistment bonus... that is truly a disservice to parents and communities that lose these fine young people... for what?
What I don't understand is why the military has a test that dictates whether or not a school gets funding and these other government agencies don't? Hmm? Could it be that if the military didn't have this budget string they wouldn't get anyone at all? Remember the bumper sticker about the bake sale for Air Force bombers?
When the moron in charge (MIC, for us former military types) charges off into battle half cocked, has to lie to get the votes to do it, and then has to continually lie even after the intelligence is made public about every excuse he used holds no water, should our young people pay that price with their lives. No... no... and no.
At some point, somebody's got to stand-up to someone in authority and confront the BS 'stay the course' mentality that is costing us lives, tax dollars, and our freedom.