TAKE ACTION: Protect Maryland Student Privacy from Military Recruiters

Submitted by andrewr on Wed, 02/03/2010 - 1:20pm
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Delegate Sheila Hixson, Chair of the Maryland House of Delegates' Ways and Means Committee, has introduced legislation (HB 176) to ensure that only students and their parents or guardians may release to military recruiters the results of a military test taken in the state's public schools. Send a message to your delegates asking them to support this legislation.

The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) is the military's entrance exam that is given to fresh recruits to determine their aptitude for various military occupations. The test is also used as a military recruiting tool in public high schools throughout Maryland. According to the Department of Defense, during the 2006-2007 school year, the last year for which such data is available, 6,816 students in 156 public schools across Maryland took the ASVAB, and 91% of them had their test results and private information (including social security numbers) forwarded to military recruiting services without parental consent and often without parental knowledge.

The Family Educational Rights Protection Act (FERPA) and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) both contain requirements for opt-out notifications in releases of student information, but there are no such requirements in the ASVAB student testing program.

Although military regulations allow schools to administer the test while precluding test results from reaching recruiters, it appears that fewer than one-quarter of school administrators in Maryland have selected the information-release option (Option 8) that prevents students' test results from being forwarded automatically to military recruiters. In at least one school district, school officials were not made aware of the existence of Option 8; and in another, the selection of Option 8 may not have served to prevent the disclosure of ASVAB results to military recruiters.

These and other circumstances reinforce the need for statewide legislation to guarantee across-the-board protection of student privacy in relation to the ASVAB.

This legislation does not discourage the use of the ASVAB in the public schools or preclude the subsequent release of ASVAB results by individual students and their parents who are interested in exploring a career in the military. HB 176 closes a loophole in the 2008 Maryland law that the legislature overwhelmingly passed to ensure that parents may opt out of having their children's contact information passed on to military recruiters.

Click here to send a message now to your delegates in support of the legislation.