Directory Listing Or

Marketing Database?

To the Editor:

The No Child Left Behind Act was passed soon after 9/11, when our country faced a period of great uncertainty. Certain clauses were inserted, including Section 9528, which requires secondary schools taking federal money to report a “directory listing” of their students to the US Armed Services.

Like most Americans, I have great respect and admiration for our military men and women, who have behaved most honorably for years, and have really earned our trust. But like most Americans, I am also concerned about all the personal data that is in circulation, and the potential unintended uses of it.

What first caught my attention was a series of mailings last year (and continuing) from third-party entities that seemed to reveal that they had obtained access to my child’s name and address and knew him as a secondary school student. When I inquired of the current schools administration, I got vague and inaccurate answers about where our students’ data has been going, and in what form, and even about what data items are permitted, versus required, to be released.

As I looked further, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery immediately raised its head. ASVAB is now the most widely used vocational aptitude test in the world. (This is kind of a compliment to our excellent military, but also a sign of a lapse of our civilian educational system. There are fine alternative tests, but schools often view ASVAB as the path of least resistance.)

Newtown High School will be offering the ASVAB on May 28, and taking it is optional.

What I found was that ASVAB is primarily intended to help military recruiters, and yet is given a sheen as ostensibly a way for students to learn about career choices.

What is important to see is how this feeds into a giant database that the military has constructed called the Joint Advertising Marketing Research Studies. JAMRS is currently suctioning data from multiple sources in order to make the Armed Services more efficient at recruiting high school and college students. The detailed records go way beyond a “directory listing.”

I was not reassured when I learned that, like a lot of things these days, the military has subcontracted the operation of this database to a private firm (Equifax).

Parents should be made aware of their ability to “opt-out” of these databases. I don’t feel there has been full and fair disclosure. There is merely a page in the back of the student handbook giving the opt-out check box for No Child Left Behind with very little explanation. There is a way for an individual to opt-out of ASVAB data being used in recruiting, but it is not mentioned by our school system, and it requires a separate letter for each student.

But there is a remarkably simple procedure that would cover the entire school. The principal merely needs to check “Option 8” when submitting the ASVAB. Many school administrators (and certainly parents) may be unaware this option exists.

David A. Shugarts

19 Wendover Road, Newtown                                           April 7, 2009