MILITARY RECRUITERS IN HIGH SCHOOLS

Andrew Morgan was happy that the military had a presence in his high school.

Morgan attended Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn, which was named one of the lowest-performing schools in New York City. But Morgan was the “commanding officer” of the Marine Reserves Officers Training Corps (ROTC) program in the school, and, as he wrote to InsideSchools.com, “it gave me the motivation to excel in school and to work hard at everything I do.”

There are at least 60 such programs in high schools throughout New York City. In some ways, these ROTC programs are the least controversial of the efforts by the military to recruit high school students in New York.

But critics have been complaining loudly about the direct presence of military recruiters in city high schools especially in poor neighborhoods.

“Recruiters are taking advantage of these students and making a lot of claims about the military that do not hold true,” charges Ari Rosmarin, coordinator of The New York Civil Liberties Project On Military Recruitment and Students’ Rights. Its Web site says that parents, students and educators have been complaining that “recruiters are using heavy-handed tactics to harass students, violate students’ privacy rights, and target poor students and students of color.”

The federal education law No Child Left Behind requires that military...

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