No Child Left Behind As a Military Recruitment Tool
Did you know that a little know provision (Section 9528) of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 ("NCLB") entitles military recruiters to receive information about students in junior and senior high schools?
These provisions apply to public and private schools both, although private schools may not comply if it is objectionable to their religious principles.
A side note here: One of the school principals we talked to in the spring when we were looking for a new school for Julian insisted on referring to the No Child Left Behind Act as "No child left untested!"
Leaving aside the hypocrisy of NCLB, which is really intended by the conservatives to help gut the public education system by saddling it down with useless testing obligations, everyone who cares about privacy in the age of Google should be worried about the Pentagon's use of this data about kids.
The exact data that is released to the military depends on the school district. In addition to name and address, it probably includes a photograph, date and place of birth, major field of study, participation in sports, height and weight for members of athletic teams, awards, degrees, and so on.
In theory, parents can opt their kids out of this information gathering effort by the Pentagon (see Leave My Child Alone and a position paper from the National PTA organization for more information).
In practice, depending upon the school district, opting out is sometimes discouraged by using the opt-out request to deny information to colleges as well as the military.
The "Pentagon" is nomenclature for the Department of Defense, which uses the provision of the NCLB I've cited along with Section 544 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2002 as the justification for compiling an immense database on more than 25 million American children. This JAMRS database includes the information I've already mentioned as well as things like GPA and college intentions ("if documented").
The administration of JAMRS has been outsourced to a private contractor, BeNow, Inc. Here's the official description of what BeNow does with JAMRS:
BeNOW is a Mullen subcontractor that provides database marketing services. Specific to JAMRS/Mullen, BeNOW manages, from a technical standpoint, its direct marketing relational database. This JAMRS Consolidated Database is arguably the largest repository of 16-25 year-old youth data in the country, containing roughly 30 million records. It also serves as the primary platform for processing JAMRS' core DM deliverables. BeNOW helps to produce the High School Masterfile (HSMF), Selective Service System (SSS), Joint Leads Fulfillment (JLF), and College and Permanent Suppression releases for the Services to use in their respective marketing/recruiting efforts.
Let's make the corporate interests here even more confusing. Mullen is an advertising agency, and a prime Pentagon contractor. Mullen subcontracted with BeNow to handle database management and mining. BeNow, based in Wakefield, MA, is now part of Equifax, a leading credit information outfit publicly traded on the NYSE.
Here's Equifax's boilerplate description of itself:
Equifax Inc. is a global leader in turning information into intelligence. For businesses, Equifax provides faster and easier ways to find, approve and market to the appropriate customers. For consumers, Equifax offers easier, instantaneous ways to buy products or services and better insight into and management of their personal credit. Equifax. Information that Empowers.
If that description doesn't tell you much, it probably wasn't meant to. But if you've ever had to finance a car or house, you probably know what Equifax does. Certainly, if you've been the victim of identify theft, you'll understand that the security of consumer credit databases leaves something to be desired.
What on earth would move us as a country to hand significant information about our children over on a platter to an abhorrent combination of the Pentagon and a private credit reporting agency? Even apart from concerns about how the information might be used - or abused - can you really feel that this arrangement secures the privacy of the kids involved?
Posted by Harold Davis at September 22, 2005 02:39 PM
