TESTIMONY for State Board of Education Open Topics Hearing

September 21, 2005

Elizbeth Lipschultz, OYE OYE
Montclair New Jersey 07042

Good afternoon, Honorable members of the NJ State Board of
Education.  I am here today to voice my support for the establishment
of a resolution on No Child Left Behind section 9528. This is vital for
protecting the privacy of all New Jersey students. As you have already
heard, this section requires that all high schools release their
students' personal information to the military. Part of this section
also allows for a parent or student to notify the school and request
that their information not be released. Doing this is called "opting
out". At Montclair High School, other students and I created a policy
that was unanimously passed by our town's Board of Education. The
policy mandated several things. 

First, parents and guardians of all students going into grades nine
through twelve must be informed of section 9528's policy through a
written notice at the start of each school year.

Second, with this notification, all parents are to receive a simple
check-off form to indicate whether or not the parent or guardian wishes
to withhold their child's personal information from the military. It
requires that this check-off form is included in the summer packet, or
at the beginning of the school year along with the other "required"
district forms. In addition, these forms and notices must be in the
students' parent or guardians' primary language.  

Third, our policy made it so that the option to withhold student
information from the military is treated separately from the option to
withhold information to institutions of higher education. 

The year prior to the passing of the policy, only thirty-three percent
of parents chose to have their child's information kept from the
military. One year later, after the passing of the policy in August of
2003, eighty-five percent of our student body had "opted out" of having
their information sent to the military. There is a 52 percentage point
difference between the response in 2003 and the response in 2004,
accounting for 1,000 students.  

This indicates that the majority of parents, when properly informed, as
required by the Montclair policy, wished to keep their child's personal
information private. Without such a policy, hundreds of students'
information would have gone to the military without their consent, or
even knowledge.  

This is just Montclair. All over the state of New
Jersey, and the entire United States, millions of students' personal
information is being handed out for recruitment purposes without their
knowledge. The New Jersey school board must do something to protect
students' right to privacy. The success of Montclair's policy
illustrates how incredibly important it is for this resolution to be
passed.

Thank you.