Immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, military recruiters had no trouble getting New England high schools to offer an aptitude test used to screen promising candidates.

Three years later, in the midst of a controversial war, things have changed dramatically.

Even as the armed services have stepped up recruitment efforts, a test called the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), traditionally given to high school juniors, is coming under increasing scrutiny by school administrators and parents, in New Hampshire and elsewhere.

“It’s much more difficult right now to get into schools,” said Petty Officer Jason Lowe, ASVAB testing coordinator at the Military Entrance Processing Station in Boston, which handles enlistment processing for most of New Hampshire from the Lakes Region south, as well as Rhode Island and portions of the Bay State.

“People aren’t happy, I guess . . . They just don’t like the military in there right now with everything going on in the world. It makes it real tough.”

Administrators at Nashua High School North this year reversed a long-standing policy of giving the three-hour test to the entire junior class, which usually numbers around 500.

R. Patrick Corbin, the school principal, said an increasing number of students were opting not to take the test; 60 parents last year sent in letters to exempt their children from taking the test. And another 100 students schoolwide were absent on testing day, he estimated.

“I would say the major variable that is different is obviously the war,” Corbin said.

“I know the recruiters are under great pressure and I know there’s a war going on, and they’re trying to recruit people, but you can see the attitude of many parents and students has dramatically changed towards this thing.”

In fewer schools

Lowe said his test administrators were in 30 New Hampshire schools during the 2003-04 school year, but this year only 19 are scheduled to offer the ASVAB.

Lowe said participation in the test has been dropping steadily since the Iraq war began, “but this is the biggest one.” He said he’s trying to get into new schools to meet annual quotas that are ever more difficult to reach.

His region is the worst in the country right now, Lowe said. They’ve only reached 40 percent of this year’s quota of testing 9,500 students in 11th grade or above.

That’s in sharp contrast to what happened right after the 2001 terrorist attacks. “The year of 9/11 it skyrocketed,” he said. “Everyone wanted to take it. We had like 10,800 take it. They didn’t even have to try.

“But right after that, in a year, it just dropped. It steadily dropped about a thousand students a year.”

Anti-military bias?

Lowe’s theory?

“Honestly, I think it’s because it’s a John Kerry area,” he said. “This place is very highly liberal and they don’t like the military.”

So Lowe said his office has changed its approach in selling the program to schools. “Really, we try to leave the military everything out of it,” he said. “We pretty much focus on that it’s a career exploration program that we’re doing for the schools. Which is what it is.”

But that approach makes some uneasy.

Corbin believes some of those promoting the ASVAB to New Hampshire schools “have probably been disingenuous about the test.”

“They clearly gave the impression they weren’t doing this to recruit people into the armed forces, that that wasn’t the motivation behind the test.”

But he said, “I believe they obviously were.”

All or nothing?

Corbin said the test had been “a pretty valuable tool” as part of his school’s career planning efforts. But in the end, he said, the poor participation was the deciding factor.

“To tie up and disrupt the entire school for the benefit we get back from it, in terms of the number of kids who take it seriously and use the information in a meaningful way, it just hasn’t worked. We can’t justify it anymore.”

Corbin said the school did suggest an alternative: “We offered to the ASVAB people that we would give it to students who voluntarily wanted to take it, and that was unacceptable to them. They said it’s all or nothing.”

But many New Hampshire schools do make the test optional for students.

Parental permission

As director of the Region 14 Applied Technology Center, Chester Bowles coordinates ASVAB testing at Con-Val High School in Peterborough, Conant in Jaffrey and Mascenic in New Ipswich.

For each school, Bowles said, he sends home letters asking parents to sign permission forms if they want their children to take the ASVAB. “I think it was maybe just a sense that we didn’t want to force something like that on people, particularly coming from the military as it does,” he said.

Of the 300 or so juniors at Con-Val, he said, about 50 students signed up to take the test last December. And he estimates about the same percentage do so at the other two schools.

Bowles said students who have taken the test have found it very useful. “I think many of them have used it for planning courses they would take or maybe solidifying their perceptions of interest in careers.”

But he does get calls from some parents about the test. “They are concerned about who has the information and what could be done with it, and the issue about the draft. And our response is that’s your decision. The military assures us that doesn’t happen, but if you’re concerned about it, then obviously don’t have your kid take the test.”

A recruiting tool

Actually, military officials say they do use the test results in recruiting calls. Lowe said information from the ASVAB test is entered into a database, where it is kept for two years, and used by recruiters to discuss possible military occupations with students who’ve taken the test.

“But also of course, the school can opt not to do that, and they do that sometimes,” he said.

Lowe said he occasionally gets calls from parents, upset to learn their children took the ASVAB; if they ask, he agrees to destroy the test results and keep the student out of the database.

And sometimes, he said, the students themselves ask him if the military will use the test scores to “draft” them. “No, we can’t,” he tells them. “Don’t worry about it. Not in this day and age.”

Master Sgt. Blake Trimarco, the Army liaison at the Boston military station, said the ASVAB scores are used to generate “leads” for recruiters. He said students who score at the 50th percentile or above on the AFQT, the qualifying section of the test, will be the “priority” calls, and he estimated 30 percent of high school students score in that range.

“At that point, once we call them, we can see what their interests and scores are,” he said. “We’re looking at the ASVAB score when we’re talking to the kids.”

Michael Dolphin, president of the New Hampshire Association of Guidance Directors, said school administrators need to ask explicit questions up front about how the ASVAB scores will be used by recruiters. And he said they have to be equally frank with students: “Once they get the scores, they’re going to call you and talk to you about the armed services.”

Pro-military position

Some school administrators fully support the military purpose behind the test.

Michael Henderson is principal at Hillsboro-Deering High School, where all juniors take the ASVAB.

“We’re the type of community where for many of our young people the military is a great way to begin,” he said. “It provides lots of positive things. They get out and see a lot of the world and a lot of them use it so they can afford to go on to further education.”

He said his community heartily supports the military; he doesn’t recall any parent objecting to a child taking the ASVAB in his eight years as principal.

“It’s one hand washing the other,” Henderson said. “From our point of view we like to use that to help them in career choices.”

He noted 12 out of last year’s 100 graduating seniors went into the military; he said they entered the gymnasium on graduation day accompanied by flags and military hymns. And he said a bulletin board prominently displays photos of local residents currently serving.

“People are very proud of that,” he said. “And I think it’s the culture of our community.”

Missed opportunity

One New Hampshire school that’s considering dropping the ASVAB is John Stark High School in Weare, where last Wednesday, 220 juniors were taken out of their classes for the test.

“We had the entire gymnasium set up with tables and chairs. Everybody’s ready to go at eight o’clock and they don’t show,” said Suzanne Sauer, the director of guidance. “Somebody forgot to call the (testing) administrator to come in and do it, even though we had written confirmation it was a go.”

She did get a telephone apology from a supervisor for the ASVAB testing program. And she said her guidance department will discuss whether to reschedule the test.

Sauer said she was comfortable giving the test in the past because she had signed a form several years ago that the students’ test scores and personal information could not be given to recruiters. But that process seems to have changed. Released or not?

“At one point, somebody told me two years ago that unless I agreed to do this, they would not come and administer it,” she said.

Sauer stuck to her guns, and thought that would end the program at her school. “But they kept showing up every year.”

However, last week, when Sauer checked with the school counselor who now oversees the test, she realized that there is no longer a form to sign to keep all student information from recruiters. So she called Lowe, who she said assured her that students could still indicate they do not want their information shared with recruiters.

Sauer said if she does let the ASVAB testers back in, “I would make that known to the kids and they would have the right to either take it or not. It’s their choice. I am not going to violate anybody’s privacy.

And she said, “I would never consider redoing it unless we had some kind of understanding about what they’re going to do with these names.”

Copyright © 2005 Union Leader

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