SOMETHING ELSE FOR THE REST OF ‘EM?
MILITARY RECRUITING, SCHOOL MISSION AND POSTSECONDARY
TRANSITIONS IN PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS
By
Kenne Ann Dibner

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Educational Policy - Doctor of Philosophy
2013

ABSTRACT
SOMETHING ELSE FOR THE REST OF ‘EM?
MILITARY RECRUITING, SCHOOL MISSION AND POSTSECONDARY
TRANSITIONS IN PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS
By
Kenne Ann Dibner
Military recruiting is thoroughly integrated in American public schools. Federal
legislation mandates that every public school receiving federal funding open its doors to
military recruiters in the same capacity as any postsecondary university or job
organization, lest that school risk losing all federal funds. This investigation examines the
military recruiting policy at work in the large, diversified contexts of the New York City
Public Schools. Through interviews with 56 students, administrators and teachers at five
separate school sites combined with school-based documentation of school mission, this
study pursues insight into the research question: How do students and administrators
understand the purpose and practice of military recruiting in their high schools,
particularly as informed by local context?
This study pursues two primary pathways for inquiry. First, how do students and
administrators understand students’ post-graduate trajectories, specifically in light of
military recruiting policy in schools? Second, what are students’ and administrators’
conceptions of the larger purpose of schooling in light of military recruiting in schools?
Positioning schools’ missions as mediating factors, this study considers how students and
administrators understand military recruiting in their schools.
By classifying data across two axes, this project categorizes each of the five
schools in this project. Schools are categorized according to whether or not school

missions identified specific purpose: mission-specific schools are designed or structured
in pursuit of a specific postsecondary outcome, i.e. college attendance or technical
competency, whereas mission-diffuse schools identify the purpose of their school as
general preparedness for postsecondary life without one specific outcome in mind.
Concomitantly, schools are classified according to the extent to which students selected
to attend the institution in question. As such, “zoned” schools, where students are
eligible for attendance based on their residence, are considered nonselective, whereas
schools where students opt into attendance based on an explicit theme or program are
considered selective.
Through exploration of interview data, these classifications help mitigate how
students and administrators understand military recruiting. Several findings emerge,
including (1) though all interviewed administrators and students possess awareness of a
societal anxiety around military recruiting in schools, the tenor of that anxiety shifts
across schools according to school mission and is nuanced by family influence and
personal experience; (2) though students tend to speak about military recruiting in terms
of their individual experiences, administrators across schools group students by type in
accordance to respective schools’ missions and (3) each school’s nuanced relationship to
the postsecondary college attendance option informs the majority of study participants’
understandings around recruiting within their respective schools. In contextualizing these
findings within the framework of the scholarship surrounding the problems and tensions
American high school, this investigation positions the relationship between school
mission and students’ and administrators’ understanding of military recruiting in schools
as a practical example of the problems of the American high schools.

Copyright by
KENNE ANN DIBNER
2013

For Deedee, who made difficult, pioneering choices and founded an entire family’s
commitment to Education. Because my Momma saw it in you, I saw it in her.

v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wrote an early draft of these acknowledgements a few months ago in a moment
of frustration and inability to focus. I had no idea in that moment that my entire frame of
reference would shift dramatically – that I would be so humbled by my chosen family
and that my loved ones would carry me so graciously across the finish line of this project.
This draft is only possible because my community is more than the sum of its parts: I am
deeply indebted.
First, this project would not have been possible without the sustained and directed
support of my advisor, Dr. Gary Sykes. Throughout this experience, I have been struck
by your ability to break down the processes of research; that is, at each step you have
been able to help me understand where I’m headed and how what I’ve already done will
be important. This refined and certain sense of direction was a buoy afloat in an ocean of
anxiety, and I am grateful to be able to depend on both your counsel and your friendship.
I hope we get to do it again, Sir.
To Dr. Suzanne Wilson, a towering scholar, phenomenal teacher, and trusted
friend. I can say without reservation that I would not have completed this program
without your guidance and assistance in the most critical moments. You have shepherded
me through this process with both keen vision and kindness, and I am lucky to have you.
Also, I’m not sure how you manage to be so right about stuff – really, all the stuff – all
the time, but it’s very impressive. Thank you, Suzanne, for every facet of your support.
To committee members Dr. Dorothea Anagnostopoulos and Dr. Annelise
Halvorsen, thank you for your thoughtful suggestions at the outset of this project. I

vi

attempted to carry your prescient observations with me throughout this work. Thank you
also for your flexibility around the completion of this project.
To Michael Sedlak and the Educational Policy Program at Michigan State
University, for sustaining generosity, feedback, and kind advice. This degree truly would
not have been possible without your continued assistance and confidence. If at any point
in the future I can help you out of (innumerable) jams, please do not hesitate to call. I am
so very deeply indebted. Thank you as well to Joni Burns, who saves me all the time.
To Dr. Melinda Mangin, who mentored me in my early stages of graduate school,
exposed me to qualitative research in action, and became a friend.
To Jamie Mikeska and Patti Bills for being the kind of colleagues you want as
friends, and Sarah Winchell for linking arms with me on day one.
To my undergraduate mentors at Skidmore College, who I am privileged to now
count among my friends. To Dr. Linda Simon, who taught me how to write. You bear the
warmest, wisest counsel, and have offered me a glimpse into what it means to mentor. To
Dr. Mason Stokes, who is a magical amalgam of grace and irreverence and laser-sharp. I
hope one day I might emulate your gift, Sir. To Margo Mensing, who taught me the
technical skills I’m proudest of, rescued my hand from certain disaster, and whose work
continues to delight.
To Ms. Sylvia Tapley, Mr. John Lewis, Mrs. Donna Jackman and Mrs. Joyce
Jensen -- great American teachers. When folks are talking about good teaching and they
invoke the old adage “you know it when you see it,” they’re talking about you.
To the Honorable Justice David Cohen, who graciously offered his assistance at a
critical moment. Thank you, Sir.

vii

To Mary Mitchell Friedman, Harold Friedman and Sara Mintaha Friedman, who
consistently define family. I am never more sure of myself than I am in your home.
Thank you for raising me and for always showing up.
To Natalie Blum-Ross, my dearest friend, partner in life steps, and impeccably
appointed life raft. Three sentences in an acknowledgement section of a dissertation
cannot sum up what you have done for me in the last two months, and so I won’t
minimize it. You really are the best, hon, you are the very best.
To Joanna Fax, two acknowledgement sections and counting! Jo, who gets me
and makes me better. To Mikey Ovaska, who makes data beautiful every day, and listens
well. You two and Nats – you’re my three.
To the village that raised me, including Buddy and Harlee Chandler, Charlie and
Ellie Miller, Janis Cohen, Debby and Peter Murray, Chuck de Sieyes and Cricket Ward.
To Katherine Bateman, who engaged with my work and became a dear friend in
the process.
To my family of friends whose support in the last two months has meant the
difference between this and something else: Jenna Weiss-Berman, Emmeline Kwon,
Nickie Huang, Becky and Clare Cecil-Karb, Josh Friedman, Mark Recker, Matthew
Duffy, Joshua Riegel, Jim Noonan, Carolyn Patty Blum, Kira Garcia, Sophia Hoffman,
Devon Kirkpatrick, Jane McCarthy, Mara Boyd, Eric Owens, Brian Lobel, Arjun Sethi,
Kymberlie Quong-Charles, Anais Mitchell, Matt Irwin, Logan Casey, Julia Pistell, Katie
Garcia, Gautam Hans, Aaron Tung, Sara Jane Stoner, Julia Heim, Nicole Lee, A Popkey,
Emily Kazyak, Jamie Brunton, Jonah Siegel, and Amy Carvel.

viii

To Sarah, Katie, Racheal, and James Egan, Traci Gutierrez-O’Hearn, Vickie
Egan, Selby Abraham, Necia Egan, Colin Caprara, Jim and Michelle Egan, Heidi
Gutierrez-Wills, Austin, Abby and Scott Baker, Tristyn and Nyleah Gabrielli, and the
entire Egan Dynasty, with wide-eyed respect. Family First.
The independent punk-rock coffee-slinging radicals of these fine institutions who
have become my coworkers and office mates: Outpost in Brooklyn, Big Bear in DC,
Artifact in Baltimore, and Zingerman’s and Sweetwaters’ in Ann Arbor.
And Family: Joel Silberman, Jeremy Smith, Joshua Smith, Randall Smith, Bob
Schwartz, Hart Dibner, Trudy Dibner and Willa Dibner.
To Grandma Esther, for each afternoon.
To Aunt Sara, a fine teacher herself, who offers me important perspective and
takes care of me in all ways.
To Aunt Mauri, for making her home a place of respite, teaching me about hard
work, and keeping me close.
To Deedee, who is worthy of a dedication. The last few years with you have
taught me what it means to show up for someone and what strength in action looks like. I
love you.
To my parents, Eddy Ann Dibner and Charles Dibner. Thank you for supporting
me at every turn, valuing each of my commitments, and giving me a reason to work hard.
Your constant interest and loping questions have allowed me the space to explore and
grow, and your boundless patience has made this work eminently possible. I love you
both so very much.

ix

To Jenny, my love. Though we are not defined by the last two months, they have
certainly underscored a profoundly important point: I am very, very grateful for you.
Thank you for your selfless engagement with my ideas, for taking the time to learn what I
need and how I need it, and for sparkly things along the way. With all my love.
And finally, to my sister Paulie, my gal. How lucky we are to have found each
other, Niczie! I adore you, I am so proud of you, and wouldn’t be doing this without you.
Thank you for being my little and my best.

x

TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES …...…………………………………………………………………xiv
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION …...…………………………………………………………………...1
CHAPTER 2
REVIEW OF LITERATURE.....………………………………………………………….8
Advocacy-Oriented Recruitment Role Research………………………………….9
Recruitment rhetoric…………..………………………………………....11
Experience of recruitees………………………………………………….17
Counter-recruitment organization………………………………………..20
Enlistment Propensity Research………………………………………………....22
Prevalent themes in enlistment propensity research……………………..23
Discussion………………………………………………………………………..29
CHAPTER 3
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK..……………………………………………………...32
James Burk’s Institutional Presence: The Military in Different School
Contexts………………………………………………………………………….32
Labaree’s Educational Goals: Navigating Contending Ideals…………………...36
Democratic equality……………………………………………………...38
Social efficiency………………………………………………………….39
Social mobility…………………………………………………………...40
Discussion………………………………………………………………..42
The Problems of the American High School: The Market, Purpose and Military
Recruiting………………………………………………………………………...43
School Mission: Shaping Individuals’ Experiences in Schools………………….50
Discussion………………………………………………………………………..52
CHAPTER 4
PROJECT METHODS………...…………………………………………………...……54
Preliminary Research…………………………………………………………….54
History of Federal Military Recruiting Legislation……………………………...56
The National Defense Authorization Act of 2002……………………………….58
New York City Public Schools…………………………………………………..61
School Selection in New York City……………………………………………...63
Participant Sampling……………………………………………………………..70
Coding and Analysis……………………………………………………………..74
Advantages and Limitations of Study Design…………………………………...77
CHAPTER 5
COLLEGE OR BUST AT PAULIE HIGH SCHOOL ……………………………….... 80
The College Gold Standard………………………………………………………85
xi

Targeting Poor and Minority Students…………………………………………...88
Discussion………………………………………………………………………..91
CHAPTER 6
NEUTRAL COUNSEL AT NORTH DECO HIGH SCHOOL…..…………...……….. 94
Administrator “Neutrality” – A Place for Every Student………………………101
“Other People Think”: The Removed Perspective……………………………..106
Discussion………………………………………………………………………108
CHAPTER 7
DISCORDANT TONES AT TAPLEY HIGH SCHOOL…….………………………..113
Administration and Recruiters: Defined by Tension…………………………...115
Pushups and College Prep: Discordant Tones………………………………….119
A Concerned Captive Audience………………………………………………...121
Unintended Consequences: Recruiting and Academic Ambition………………123
Discussion……………………………………………………………………....125
CHAPTER 8
JROTC AT FLORENCE LUSCOMB HIGH SCHOOL…………………..……...........128
Preparing Students to Have and Make Choices………………………………...133
“We know why they’re here”: JROTC and Familiarity with Recruiters……….136
Discussion………………………………………………………………………138
CHAPTER 9
INSIDER KNOWLEDGE AND TRUSTED GUIDANCE AT MARITIME HIGH
SCHOOL…………………………………………………………………………...…..143
Counseling Students with Insider Knowledge………………………………….148
“They’re here for me”: Recruiting for Specific Skills………………………….151
Discussion………………………………………………………………………153
CHAPTER 10
RECRUITING ACROSS SCHOOLS ………………………………………..…….… 157
Awareness of Angst and Recruiting: Protecting Students or Dismissing
Anxiety………………………………………………………………………….157
The college gold standard and anxiety over recruiting…………………158
Acknowledging while dismissing critiques: ensuring recruiter access…165
Students Across Schools: Family Influence and Initial Interest in Service…….169
Initial interest and military recruiters…………………………………...172
Administrators Across Schools: Types of Students and Outcomes…………….176
Problems of the American high School: The Market, Purpose, and Military
Recruiting……………………………………………………………………….182
Postsecondary Trajectories: Military Recruiting, Mission, and the Path
Ahead…………………………………………………………………………...193
POST SCRIPT……………………………………………………………………….... 196

xii

APPENDICES …………………………………………………………...………..…...202
APPENDIX A
Section 9528 of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001………………………..203
APPENDIX B
New York City Chancellor’s Regulation A-825………………………………..204
APPENDIX C
School Principal Interview Protocol...………………………………………....207
School Administrator Interview Protocol………………………………………211
Student Interview Protocol……………………………………………………..215
District Official Interview Protocol…………………………………………….217
APPENDIX D
Student Recruitment Flyer……………………………………………………...220
APPENDIX E
Interview Codes………………………………………………………………...221
REFERENCES……………………………………………………….………….……. 224

xiii

LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: John Eighmey’s Integrated Typology of Youth Goals…………………………25
Table 2: James Burk’s Types of Institutional Presence………………………………….33
Table 3: 2010-2011 Study Sample Demographics by School…………………………...68
Table 4: Descriptive Information on Administrator Participants………………………..71
Table 5: Descriptive Information on Student Participants……………………………….73
Table 6: Participant Schools by Category………………………………………………..76
Table 7: Paulie High School Demographic Information………………………………...81
Table 8: Paulie High School Interviewee Information…………………………………..82
Table 9: North Deco High School Demographic Information…………………………...95
Table 10: North Deco Interviewee Information………………………………………… 97
Table 11: Tapley High School Demographic Information……………………………..114
Table 12: Tapley High School Interviewee Information……………………………….115
Table 13: Florence Luscomb High School Demographic Information……………...…129
Table 14: Florence Luscomb Interviewee Information………………………………...130
Table 15: Maritime High School Demographic Information…………………………..144
Table 16: Maritime High School Interviewee Information…………………………….145

xiv

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
When you are in a low-income environment, like for me, I grew up in a
low-income neighborhood. So what I’ve seen, when I was younger, it’s
either you go to school, you stay really really serious, and you go straight
to college, or some of the teenagers, they run around in gangs because
they’re not doing well in school, they don’t have the support at home, and
then some of them… one of them is dead that I know and the others are all
in jail. The military is like Jesus. It’s a savior. It’s like Rapunzel. You’re
trapped in a situation all of your life, like Rapunzel is just trapped in a
castle, and then Prince Charming, the military, comes along and sweeps
you off your feet and can give you a new life if you just do what you have
to do.
– Mara, age 17
I was never recruited by the United States’ military. I never received a brochure in
the mail telling me I was “Army Strong” or could be one of “The Few. The Proud.”
Military recruiters never came to visit my high school, never set up camp in our
lunchroom, never told me about the G.I. Bill and, as far as I know, no one ever told my
friends either. In my graduating class of 185 students in suburban southern Maine, not
one of us enlisted. Ninety-two percent of us went on to four-year colleges. At my high
school graduation, when we walked across the stage to get our diplomas from the
principal, our college counselor announced our post-graduation plans. I was headed to
Skidmore College in “charming Saratoga Springs, New York.” My best friend went to
Boston College. Kids who hadn’t done so well went to the University of Southern Maine.
A few kids, mostly from the voc-tech programs, were “joining the workforce.”
But not one enlistment. It’s hard to know why: maybe it was about location,
maybe it was about income, or maybe the military wasn’t hard-up enough to send a nice
upper-middle class Jewish girl a leaflet. Maybe it was because at the time that I was
making decisions about my postsecondary future, U.S. public high schools were not yet
required by law to allow recruiters into their buildings and not yet required to distribute
1

directories of student information. Whatever the reason, one thing is clear: unlike Mara
and many of the student participants in this study, when this 17-year-old college-bound
kid imagined her future, the military was nowhere in sight.
Every year in the U.S., hundreds of thousands of people have a very different
experience. In 2010 alone, 160,510 Americans decided to make their futures with the
military, and roughly 45 percent– just over 72,200 young people – enlisted at age 19 or
younger (Population Representation in the Military Services: Fiscal Year 2010 Summary
Report, 2010). They hail from all over the U.S.: men and women, urban and rural,
minority and non-minority, low-income, middle class, and wealthy. Regardless of
background, they have one thing in common: they all enlisted for service by working
with one or more military recruiters.
At its core, military recruiting is the organized act of attracting and enlisting
individuals to serve in the U.S. all-volunteer force. This practice, however, carries
complex and layered meaning, invoking associations that range from the patriotic, dutiful
protection of American democracy to the brutal occupation of other countries and waging
war on innocent civilians. Some see recruiters as uniformed agents, dangling promises in
front of naïve youth before shipping them off to war; others see them as the vanguards of
American liberty, serving their country by giving young people an opportunity to develop
leadership skills and earn a college degree. Whatever one’s perspective, one part of the
practice of recruiting is clear: one of the primary carrots recruiters have to offer potential
enlistees is a result of the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944. Colloquially known as
the G.I. Bill, the law subsidizes the cost of college attendance upon satisfactory
completion of one’s service commitment with the military. Though there are many

2

reasons to join the military, the G.I. Bill’s promise of free education is central to the
recruiting enterprise in public high schools.
In 2012, military recruiting in the U.S. is an over $1.8 billion dollar enterprise,
including an extensive advertising portfolio aimed at reaching American youth through
varied media: electronic and print advertising, television and film commercials, and
embedded advertising in first-person shooter video games such as Call of Duty
(Operation and Maintenance Overview: Fiscal Year 2013 Budget Estimate, 2013). Faceto-face recruiting does not generally begin until students are 16 or 17 years old. At 17,
students may enlist in the military with parental permission and at 18 students are free to
enlist of their own volition. The early stages of the recruitment process may run
concomitantly with the last year of schooling, and students may leave for boot camp
weeks after graduating from high school.
Up until departure for boot camp, recruiters serve as the singular point of contact
between students and the military, shepherding potential recruits through the enlistment
process from beginning to end. Recruiters help students schedule their Armed Services
1

Vocational Aptitude Battery exam , draft and negotiate enlistment contracts, schedule
their mental and physical exams, and train for boot camp activity. Students in American
high schools may be recruited for service in the any of the active duty branches of the
2

3

military as well as the Reserve Corps . Each active duty branch maintains its own

1

The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery exam, known as the ASVAB, is the
entrance exam for applicants to the military. Student scores dictate their placement and
pay grade, as well as other details specific to the enlistment contracting process.
2
The active duty branches of the military include the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air
Force and Coast Guard.
3

distinct recruiting enterprise, although all (save the Coast Guard) are funded through the
Department of Defense’s military recruiting budget.
Military recruiting is thoroughly integrated in American public schools. Federal
legislation, most recently articulated in both Section 9528 of the No Child Left Behind
Act (NCLB) of 2001 and Section 503 of the National Defense Authorization Act
(NDAA) of 2002, clearly delineates the extent to which the U.S. military may pursue
access to schools. That legislation mandates that every public school receiving federal
funding under either law open its doors to military recruiters in the same capacity as any
other postsecondary university or job organization, and military recruiters are guaranteed
access to student information including name, home address and phone number, except in
cases where parents or students opt out of inclusion in such a directory. Recruiters
interact with high school students at college fairs and in guidance offices, set up tables in
hallways and cafeteria, and, in urban areas, are stationed in recruiting offices in widely
trafficked areas often near schools. Schools that deny recruiters access to students and
student information risk losing all federal funds.
Given the considerable investment of both financial and human capital resources
on the part of federal and state governments, local schools and districts, and the students
themselves, it behooves us to consider the myriad implications of the presence of a
recruitment institution in public schools. Yet despite its ubiquity, there exists little
research on military recruiting in public schools, or on its consequences. Extensive
searches of peer-reviewed journals yielded surprisingly scarce and outdated results, and
so it seems that there are many areas for scholarly curiosity about military recruiting in
3

The Reserve Corps includes the Army National Guard, Army Reserve, Navy Reserve,
Marine Corps Reserve, Air National Guard, Air Force Reserve and Coast Guard Reserve.
4

schools. The research that does exist is frequently politically driven and based on highly
ideological assumptions: advocacy research with an anti-recruiting-in-schools focus, for
example, or research aimed at increasing recruiting/recruiter efficacy.
I aim to extend this scholarship by exploring the question: How do students and
administrators understand the purpose and practice of military recruiting in their high
schools, particularly as informed by local context?
Using the scholarship that does exist as a guide for potential inquiry, two
questions surface as the most salient. First, how do students and administrators
understand students’ post-graduate trajectories, specifically in light of military recruiting
policy in schools? Second, what are students’ and administrators’ conceptions of the
larger purpose of schooling in light of military recruiting in schools? This project
addresses these research questions through an exploration how the targets of federal
military recruiting policy understand its consequences.
This investigation examines military recruiter policy at work in the large,
diversified contexts of the New York City Public Schools (NYCPS). Through interviews
with 56 students, administrators and teachers at five separate school sites, this study
pursues insight into the experiences of school-goers and school-workers as they interact
with the institution of military recruiting. As my analyses will demonstrate, this
investigation suggests that how administrators and students understand their respective
school’s mission/purpose frames how they understand the institution of military
recruiting and the postsecondary military enlistment option.
The following chapter reviews relevant literature and sets forth this study’s
conceptual framework. Several theoretical lenses inform the work: James Burk’s (2001)

5

characterization of the military’s institutional presence in communities, David Labaree’s
(1997) competing goals of American public schools, salient literature on the problems
surrounding the American high school, and relevant scholarship about the import of
school mission. After brief summaries, I explain how these theories will help interpret
participants’ perspectives.
The next chapter describes the study’s methodology: How was this investigation
structured and pursued? This chapter carefully parses different phases of the
investigation, explaining the process of making both structural and analytical decisions
Additionally, I use this opportunity to construct the study’s backdrop: What is the history
of military recruiting in U.S. high schools, and what is the policy landscape undergirding
military recruiting in high schools today? This history will contextualize the most current
iteration of federal legislation governing military recruiting in public schools, and explain
how military recruiting policy is enacted in NYCPS. I also briefly describe the five
schools participating in this study.
The following five chapters contain case studies of each school. In each, I
highlight salient trends in how study participants understand military recruiting in their
schools, offering interpretation of how schools’ distinct missions and objectives may
inform participants’ understandings of military recruiting and the postsecondary
enlistment option.
In the final chapter, I pursue cross-school analyses in order to return to this
study’s primary research question: How do students and administrators understand the
purpose and practice of military recruiting in their high schools, particularly as informed
by local context? Synthesizing data across schools, I identify and interpret trends in how

6

school mission informs study participants’ understandings of military recruiting and the
postsecondary military enlistment. Further, I contextualize these findings within the
broader discourse surrounding the American high school in order to offer critical insight
into the practice of recruiting in public schools. Finally, I attempt to look to the future of
the scholarship: what do we know now that we did not before, and what new questions do
we have? This discussion attempts to illuminates the significance of this project, as well
as provide suggestions for what the work might mean going forward.
In the end, the animating questions of this study are about more than military
recruiting. How do we learn what we can do with our lives? Who tells us what is ahead
of us? What role does the military serve in our collective understandings of who goes
where and does what? How do these narratives play out in American high schools? I
went to college, with not a shred of consideration for what a future with the military
would look like. Mara did not have the luxury of not considering the military, and several
students in this study have committed their immediate futures to service, bound to the
strict codes and mores of the U.S. military. The stories of Mara and the other participants
provide insight into how, in these five schools, military recruiting and enlistment unfolds
and shapes the futures these students imagine for themselves.

7

CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Though the institution of recruiting public high schools students to enlist in the
United States’ military was not formalized until 1916, controversy over whether the
military should be involved in American public schools has existed since the birth of the
nation. Beginning with President George Washington’s incipient attempts to establish a
national university for American men to train for service in the military, a discordant tone
has dominated public discussions about the extent to which the military should be
appropriately engaged in public schooling. This section reviews all available scholarly
4

literature on military recruiting in public schools.

In the process of preparing for this literature review, a broad attempt to cull
scholarly research from a variety of sources yielded surprisingly meager results. While I
initially attempted to limit this review to research that has undergone some kind of
scholarly peer-review before its publication, the field has been expanded to consider
research published in other academic journals so as to shed as much light as possible on
the recruitment enterprise. Along those same lines, it should be noted from the outset that
the scholarship that does exist tends to be divided along two distinct lines – advocacyoriented recruitment role research and enlistment propensity research – both of which are
continually investigated throughout this section. As does almost all of the scholarship in
4

There is an entire stream of research conducted by the Department of Defense (or
private contractors) dealing with individuals’ likelihood to enlist based on demographic
characteristics and market factors. This field of market research is designed to help shape
a larger recruiting system and inform advertising plans and recruiter tactics. In the
interest of keeping research reported here relevant to this project, I look only at
scholarship dealing with students and postsecondary decisions, rather than all potential
possible recruits. I make this distinction in order to focus on how this stream of research
conceptualizes recruiting as part of schools.
8

this field, these two strands of research both have distinct political flavors and I strive to
uncover what those political dispositions mean for the fields’ findings. This chapter
critically reviews the available scholarship on military recruiting in public schools with
the goal of identifying salient themes and dominant perspectives in the research. I
conclude by identifying how this project may serve as an initial attempt at expanding this
field of scholarship.
Advocacy-Oriented Recruitment Role Research
Despite a relative dearth of scholarly literature concerned with military recruiting
in public schools, two clear topical strains have emerged within the existing research.
Though there are a few other issues engaged by interested scholars, researchers’ attention
to military recruitment and schools generally revolves around two distinct themes: an
advocacy-based analysis of the role of recruiters in schools and the propensity of students
to enlist in the military. While acknowledging that the size of the literature base around
military recruiting in schools in general is quite small, it is notable that a little less than
half of all of the work reviewed for this paper fits into a category that might be termed
“advocacy-oriented recruitment role research.” Focused broadly on both the technical
and symbolic function of military recruiters in public schools, this research seems aimed
at investigating the character of the institution of military recruitment as evidenced
through its stated objectives and observed practices. On the whole, research falling under
this umbrella approaches its subject with a relatively clear political agenda vis-à-vis the
ethics or appropriateness of military recruiter presence in schools. Given that academia
tends to maintain a somewhat liberal political slant relative to the population at large, it
should come as no surprise that this advocacy-oriented research assumes an anti-recruiter

9

position from the outset. Though that orientation is rationalized and explained in the text
of the research in a variety of different ways, the distilled message is unwavering
throughout the field: military recruiters and, by proxy, the institution of the military, has
the potential to do profound damage to American students. The “advocacy” component,
then, is an ancillary feature of the research product, and functions to either convince its
audience that military recruiting is indeed bad for students or to assist those already
enlisted in the struggle to curtail the effects of recruiting in schools. Given this
ideological bend, the research field is led by a few scholars known as much for their
political outspokenness as much as for their work. In considering the findings in this
strand of recruiting scholarship, it is critical to bear in mind the explicitly stated
conceptual point of entry for these scholars.
In designing and performing research intended to investigate both the functional
and symbolic roles of military recruiters in schools, scholars have trained their analytical
eyes squarely on the ethos of the institution of recruiting. In various iterations,
researchers have sought to uncover the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs,
assumptions, and practices of military recruiters and, relatedly, how students interpret
that ethos or sentiment. That pursuit has generated research that falls into three subcategories of advocacy-oriented recruitment role research: recruitment rhetoric,
experience of recruitees, and counter-recruitment organization. All three of these subcategories are poised to address the technical and symbolic elements of recruitment from
various perspectives, and considering these themes in relationship to one another will
illuminate the full range of available advocacy-oriented scholarship. In reflecting on the
analyses presented by the various researchers cited here, it is critical to keep in mind the

10

aforementioned political bias latent within this kind of advocacy research. Many of the
conclusions reached here are heavily influenced by the political persuasions of the
researchers discussed, and thus the themes emerging in the research have a distinctly
political bend.
Recruitment rhetoric. As researchers have grappled with how to best consider
the various roles recruiters serve in public schools, one of the predominant investigable
issues revolves around the tenor of the rhetoric used by the military recruitment
institution. Rhetoric in this sense refers to ways in which ideas and concepts are
communicated between relevant parties in order to frame the institution of the military
and military service in specific and desired capacities. Interested researchers, then, have
sought to parse what exactly it is that gets communicated to students and how. A few
chief questions have emerged here, including how recruitment rhetoric is constructed to
influence specific student attitudes toward military service and what kind of rhetoric has
helped facilitate the institutionalization of military recruitment in schools.
In terms of how recruitment rhetoric is designed to attract students toward
military service, both Bigelow (2005) and Ayers (2006) find evidence that military
recruiters engage in recruitment tactics designed to take advantage of the ways in which
teenagers are behaviorally motivated within organized social strata. Using promotional
materials obtained through various military recruitment branches stationed in high
schools, Bigelow (2005) unpacks how imagery (i.e. a poster of a Marine who appears to
be part-human and part three-dimensional blueprint) might be used to motivate
contemporary teenager’s affinity for technology. In a more sinister interpretation,
Bigelow also references interviews with students who say the imagery such as this

11

evokes association with sexy pop-culture references such as The Matrix, and has the
effect of making a student feel as though they could “stand up for [themselves] and no
one will hurt [them]” (p.5). A poster with an image of Marines in uniform grimacing
through pull-ups yielded a similar result, with students noting that Marines could “help
you rise above pain” (p. 5). Ayers’ (2006) research finds a similar kind of intention on
the part of recruiters. Lifting language directly from a military-sanctioned recruitment
guide called the “School Recruiting Program Handbook,” Ayers notes that recruiters in
schools are encouraged to participate in schools in a variety of posts. According to the
handbook, recruiters are supposed to “contact athletic coaches to volunteer to lead
calisthenics… donate coffee and donuts to the faculty on a regular basis…and target
“influential” students who, while they may not enlist, can refer others who might” (p.
598). This kind of recruitment tactic relies on more subtle social cues than the advertising
evidenced in Bigelow (2005), but it suggests a more insidious kind of communication:
the goal here is one of endearing the military to influential faculty and students with the
intention of framing the objectives of recruiters as non-threatening and integral to a
school’s culture. Indeed, Ayers’ observations serve as further evidence of the idea that
recruiters trade in rhetoric that appeals to typical teenage motivational schemas such as
popularity hierarchies and athletic competitiveness.
In Bartlett and Lutz’s (1998) analysis of JROTC curricular material, the
researchers find a more subtle kind of rhetorical tactic aimed specifically for influence in
traditionally disenfranchised communities. As demonstrated in the aforementioned
summary and analysis, the researchers point to the ways in which citizen-status is
reinforced and validated through military service. American Indians are praised for their

12

participation in information exchange in World War II, black soldiers are lauded for their
willingness to sacrifice pay and working conditions in order to “prove they could be good
soldiers” (p.132). Race, and racial difference, is transcended by military service. Bartlett
and Lutz argue that the uniform, in effect, erases difference. Given the disproportionate
presence of JROTC units in largely poor and minority schools, the insinuation that full
citizenship can be achieved by enlisting is potentially intended to position service as an
attractive option that could facilitate a way out of the disenfranchisement of minority and
lower-class status (Bartlett and Lutz, 1998, p. 126).
Scholars are also interested in the ways in which military recruitment has become
an expected and institutionalized presence in American public schools. Given the
controversy that has often greeted military presence in civilian spaces, scholars have tried
to identify the rhetoric that various entities (the federal government, the U.S. military,
school and district administrators) have employed in order to facilitate the continued
presence of recruiters in public schools in spite of publicized public disapproval. In terms
of how the federal government and the U.S. military have framed the process of
expanding JROTC program presence in schools, several researchers point to historical
evidence of government officials juxtaposing JROTC against the extensive media
coverage of race-related youth violence in urban spaces in the early 1990s. Quoting
General Colin Powell, Berlowitz and Long (2003) suggest that both the federal
government and the military sought to rationalize the 1990’s dramatic increase in federal
funding for JROTC by suggesting that the military could provide an alternative to drugs
and gang activity for urban youth (p. 169). Bartlett and Lutz (1998) cite militarypreparedness research suggesting that the military began to change the tenor of its

13

JROTC sales-pitch during that period of time in order to frame itself as a “self-esteem
generator” and as good preparation for all vocations - specifically the middle class jobs
that might be attractive to “at-risk” students (p. 125). Anderson (2009) notes that JROTC
coursework is often taken up by “students falling behind to pick up easy credits for
graduation and for physical education,” providing a path for students who otherwise
might fail in a traditional academic curriculum. All of this research is circling around the
idea that JROTC and, by proxy, military service can serve as an “alternative” to the bleak
options available to underprivileged youth. By framing military service as a job-training
enterprise or furnishing easily-obtained course credits through JROTC programs, this
research suggests that the military is able to cast itself as a clear, acceptable pathway for
students who otherwise might turn to drugs, gangs, welfare or other undesirable options.
This framework allows the military to defuse criticism by keeping the conversation on its
role as “good alternative” rather than an institution that sends young men and women to
war. In order to court reticent school administrators or parents, this strategy casts service
as a life option akin to attending college or joining the civilian workforce. By convincing
potential detractors that military service might be in the best interest of students, the
military is able to maintain a continued presence in schools and continued access to
students. Furumoto’s (2005) research uncovering communications between former
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Department of Education officials further
confirms this analysis. Furumoto (2005) cites Rumsfeld arguing that recruiters should be
present in schools because military service can provide “scholarship opportunities… For
some of our young people, this may be the best opportunity they have” (p. 205).

14

Of course, it is not merely the rhetoric alone that keeps recruiters stationed in
schools. Several researchers are interested in the rhetorical implications of the federal
and local policy in place that formally installs military recruiters in schools. The current
federal law governing military recruiter access to public school students all but forbids
local schools from barring recruiters on campus, providing activist-researchers with an
easy entrance point into an investigation of formal recruitment-in-schools policy. The
current law, located under Section 9528 in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB),
states that any public high school receiving funding under NCLB must furnish military
recruiters with a directory of student information including names, home addresses and
phone numbers. Lest they risk losing their federal funding, schools must provide student
directories to military recruiters, and must provide military recruiters with the same
access to students as is typically afforded to colleges or other postsecondary alternatives.
Though parents may “opt out” of including their child’s name in a directory for military
recruiters, the regulatory policy around opting out is opaque, leaving schools to determine
how to best handle these parents. Understandably, scholars have shown considerable
interest in the rhetorical implications of Section 9528 insofar as they are concerned what
this kind of comprehensive policy decision means to schools and students. Anderson
(2009) suggests that even though most schools furnished directory information to
recruiters before 9528, the act of making the requirement a law yielded a “generalized
acceptance of the inherent right of the military to have a strong presence in public
schools” (p. 276). Furumoto (2005) notes that the lack of transparency around opting out
serves to maximize the number of recruitable students, while Ayers (2006) points out that
for many school districts that have policies in place barring organizations that

15

discriminate on the basis of race, gender or sexual orientation, 9528 overrides local
control. These findings all hint at a similar rhetorical message latent within 9528’s policy
design: the needs of the federal government and the U.S. military supersede local
jurisdiction. By highlighting the various ways in which the federal government has
asserted its dominance over resistant local entities through 9528’s explicit policy
demands (tying compliance to funding, leaving opting out unclear, etc.), this research
illuminates the message intended for schools and districts. Again, Furumoto (2005) cites
Donald Rumsfeld to the Department of Education, “The support by our Nation’s
educational institutions on behalf of the U.S. Armed Forces is critical to the success of
the All-Volunteer Force” (p. 204). In this way, it is clear that 9528 is deliberately
intended to subjugate the priorities of local schools and districts in favor of military
needs.
Overall, research suggests that the rhetoric around recruitment is carefully
calibrated to present military service as a desirable, positive opportunity for students.
Boyer (1964) unpacks JROTC curricula with an eye toward chronicling the increasing
presence of militarism in school contexts, while Surrey (1984) finds that students are
increasingly hearing only one pro-military perspective from schools around enlistment.
Evidence of that message can be witnessed in all facets of recruiting, from the texts of
JROTC curricula to the military’s promotional materials to the design of the policy that
installs recruiters in schools. The consideration with which this message is constructed
and relayed is made abundantly clear in the available research, which seeks to actively
distinguish between the reality of recruiting and the picture painted by the military.

16

Experience of recruitees. Explorations of the various rhetorical implications of
military recruiting in schools make up the bulk of advocacy–oriented recruiter role
research, but several researchers have also devoted analytical attention of the actual
interaction occurring between recruiters and recruited students. For the most part, this
research is focused on the experiences of recruitees, and uses qualitative methodologies
to better understand how recruiting efforts impact students. The research is designed to
both expose the various myths propagated by recruiters for the purposes of swaying
students as well as to illuminate students’ intellectual and emotional responses to being
the objects of recruitment. It is important to note here that this research is necessarily
distinct from the “enlistment propensity” research this paper will later discuss -- the
scholarship presented in this section considers the entire student experience vis-à-vis his
interactions with recruiters, while enlistment propensity research specifically uncovers
what motivates a student to pursue military service in order to increase recruiter success.
The subject of “recruiter myths” is one of the primary topics in this literature, as
researchers are compelled to identify what specifically is told to students in the
recruitment process. Of course, the discrepancy between recruiter narratives and the
reality of military service is what qualifies these common conversations as “myths” and,
given the political persuasions of the researchers considered here, it is clear that one of
the foremost objectives in this brand of research is success in debunking these myths. On
that note, many of the researchers arrive at similar findings regarding frequently cited
recruitment fabrications. Berlowitz and Long (2003), Furumoto (2005), Bartlett and Lutz
(1998) and Ayers (2006) all find that recruiters often tell potential recruits that military
service will increase their lifetime employability. Bracketing the stark reality that

17

“employability” is contingent upon one’s physical and psychological survival of wartime
service, available research is dubious as to whether or not military service enhances a
resume or makes an individual more attractive to potential employers (Profile of
American Veterans: 2011 Data from the American Community Survey, 2013). Ayers
(2006) and Bigelow (2005) both find that students are often told in the process of
enlisting that they can de-enlist at any time, should they choose. In fact, once a soldier
signs an enlistment contract (a copy of which is included as an appendix in Bigelow), his
exit options are remarkably slim. Furumoto (2005), Berlowitz and Long (2003), Bigelow
(2005), Ayers (2006) Bartlett and Lutz (1998) and Funk (2002) all find that military
recruiters promote enlistment as an opportunity to develop “leadership skills.” All five of
these articles present evidence suggesting that while military training does indeed instill a
specific kind of leadership training, that leadership is meted out with strict discipline and
functions in a rigid social hierarchy. In reality, leadership may take on a number of
different forms, and frequently does not entail the military cultural edict of “just
following orders.” Undergirding all of these myths are clear endeavors to make service
appear to be a palatable, desirable option for students. By dangling highly attractive
carrots (promise of limited service, increased employability, paying for college, etc.) in
front of students who may feel like other options are just out of their reach, the military is
able to bolster recruitment numbers. This research investigates those myths with the
intent to expose truths that may prove otherwise influential.
Both Ayers (2006) and Bigelow (2005) – perhaps the two most recognizable antiwar scholars considered for this paper – attempt to dig slightly deeper into the
experiences of recruited youths by interviewing students about their interactions with

18

military recruiters. Both researchers quoted a number of students who felt they had been
relentlessly and aggressively pursued by recruiters, occasionally to the point of
harassment. Bigelow (2005) recounts the story of one high school senior with college
plans who had been continually hounded (on her home phone) by recruiters asking her
how she intended to pay for college. Another student is quoted as saying, “when I see
[military recruiters] talking to high schoolers, they remind me of a pack of lions going in
for the kill. They try to get them into a corner or up against a wall.” Ayers’ (2006)
interviews yielded similar results, with one student saying that his school hosted military
recruiters from all branches of the military over six times a year, with a recruiting station
located very close to his school building. Students report that this constant proximity to
military officials has the dual effect of making them feel both “used to” military presence
and overwhelmed by it. Additionally, both Bigelow (2005) and Ayers (2006) quote a
number of students who confess to feeling a great deal of confusion about the military in
general. Because students know that military service often accompanies tours of duty in
war zones, recruiter claims regarding the myriad positive opportunities accompanying
enlistment serve to bewilder students that do not have strong guidance from a trusted
adult. These conflicting narratives, combined with often aggressive presence of
recruiters on school campuses has the effect of enervating individual resistance to
recruitment – enabling military recruiters to more readily meet enlistment quotas.
Perez (2006) uses ethnography to investigate how Chicago’s Puerto Rican
students make decisions around participating in schools’ JROTC programs. While this is
not specifically related to recruiting enterprises, Perez’s work does demonstrate how
researchers envision the experiences of students interacting in military contexts in

19

schools, and reveals a kind of scholarly concern about schools’ “increasingly militarized
educational context”. Perez’s research uncovers a complicated intersection of values
between Puerto Rican students’ gender-specific ideas around of autonomy, kinwork,
honor, and respectability and JROTC ideals. In this sense, Perez discovers that the
overlap of values between the Puerto Rican and military communities offers students an
entrée into military environs.
Counter-recruitment organization. The third and final sub-category of
advocacy-oriented recruiter role research that this paper will discuss concerns the role of
counter-recruitment efforts in schools and districts. Several researchers have looked into
the ways in which conscientious objectors to the federal government’s recruiter-access
mandates have organized and sustained themselves in recent years. Their findings suggest
that without a clear and cogent target as well as sustained leadership, these efforts tend to
achieve only moderate success. Though both Anderson (2009) and Tannock (2005)
consider the importance of having a well-defined strategy in order to effectively resist
military recruitment in schools, their analyses arrive at quite different conclusions.
Anderson (2009), reflecting on the experience of counter-recruiting efforts in one large
urban school district in New Mexico, concludes that the best way to permeate school
communities with an anti-recruitment message is to find a trusted and not-too-polarizing
(read: neither outspokenly anti-military or pacifist) local organization to facilitate
partnerships with school administrators in order to combat the myths propagated by
recruiters. After reviewing the successes and failures of a number of counter-recruitment
efforts, Tannock (2005) finds that trying to find a “legitimate” venue into schools
ultimately belies the truth of military service. He states unequivocally that after a

20

considering a number of counter-recruitment efforts, he concludes that while challenging
the myths of recruitment may be valuable, it misses the overarching point. He argues,
“What if these “myths” were “truths”? Would that turn U.S. military service in the U.S.
from a social bad into a social good?” (p.169). Given what Tannock believes are the
“illegal and unjust” circumstances behind the United States’ current wars and the
undeniable life risk that accompanies enlistment, it is his belief that objecting to
recruitment without objecting to the act of service is unethical (p. 168). Findings from
Hagopian and Barker (2011) ultimately support Tannock’s conclusions: the authors
investigate the work of a Seattle-based parent-teacher organization working to limit
recruiting students under age 18 and argue recruiting in schools should be curbed because
service represents serious health risks for younger recruits.
Another theme that emerges in this literature is that even despite effective
organizing with tremendous community support, the current policy standard tying federal
funding to recruiter access has the power to severely cripple counter-recruitment efforts.
Furumoto (2005) points to a number of attempts to organize around opting-out that were
forced to halt their work due to local interpretations of the vague opting-out
specifications included in Section 9528. In response to this, both Bigelow (2005) and
Anderson (2009) have noted that a smaller-scale approach – that of targeted classroom
lessons about critical interpretation of military promotional materials and advertising –
has the potential to equip students with the skills to analytically interact with the
recruitment sales pitch. Though both note that the effects of this kind of counterrecruitment approach are indeed smaller in scope, they also have the secondary benefit of
helping students better understand the concept of advertising generally. Though this sub-

21

category of advocacy-oriented recruiter role research is much more limited than the
“recruitment rhetoric” and “experience of recruitees” themes, the opportunity to critically
reflect on the efficacy of counter-recruitment activism in schools enables researchers a
chance to modify their own work so as to make broader and deeper impacts.
Enlistment Propensity Research
In considering the broader field of military recruiting research, another topical
theme emerges that is notably distinct from advocacy-oriented role research. Enlistment
propensity research, or research specifically geared toward uncovering what motivates a
student to sign up for military service, is the second major subject considered in this field.
While this research is often concerned with the technical aspects of what is
communicated between recruiters and students, it is important to draw a definitive line
between enlistment propensity research and advocacy-oriented role research focused on
student experiences with recruiters or investigations into recruitment rhetoric. Just as
advocacy-oriented research has an explicit political agenda, so too does enlistment
propensity research – except that enlistment propensity scholarship is often performed
with the unequivocal goal of trying to ascertain what factors influence a student’s
decision to join the military so as to use that information in improving recruitment
efforts. As such, the political persuasion at work here is actually directly counter to the
intentions of advocacy-oriented scholars. In this vein, the sub-themes that emerge in
enlistment propensity research tend to revolve around questions of what factor in the
recruitment process changes a reticent student’s mind, or what social or demographic
characteristics mean about a student’s likelihood to enlist.

22

A second important distinction between these two themes is that while the bulk of
the advocacy-oriented research was qualitative in nature and relied on student interviews
and archival materials for data, enlistment propensity research is largely quantitative and
makes use of large survey data or enlistment records. This difference understandably
changes the tenor of the analyses, yielding a research field that deals less with recruiting
as a conceptual institution and more with recruiting as a live practice with measurable
outcomes. Whereas it is both the symbolic and functional meaning of recruiting that is
the object of inquiry in the advocacy research, it is the success of the recruiting practice
that is the object in enlistment propensity scholarship. I consider the various sub-themes
that emerge in a comprehensive reading of enlistment propensity research so as to better
understand the field’s findings and conclusions. By examining these findings in
relationship to one another, this chapter moves toward a fuller understanding of how
recruiting effectiveness is assessed and evaluated.
Prevalent themes in enlistment propensity research. Given that the ultimate,
stated goal of enlistment propensity research is to help improve the design and
effectiveness of military recruiter programs with intention of maximizing efficiency in
enlistment, it is understandable that the two most important considerations within this
research are what factors matter and how those factors can be targeted in potential
recruitees. The findings in enlistment propensity research mirror those concerns, as
researchers devote attention to how demographics (geographical location, class, race, sex,
etc.) impact likelihood to enlist as well as what specific individual goals (employment,
skills) motivate the decision to enlist. In general, research in this field tends to conclude
with recommendations for how advertising and recruiters might use relevant information.

23

Unlike the broad variety of emergent themes on display in the findings of advocacyoriented researchers, enlistment propensity scholars seem to be almost myopically
focused on isolating these motivational factors. Because of this concentration, the
dominant thematic findings in the field are somewhat narrow.
In terms of what factors impact a decision to enlist, there seems to be little
consensus as to what specific demographic characteristics influence enlistment
propensity. Though there is widely accepted data published by the Department of
Defense regarding the demographic breakdown of recently enlisted recruits, this data
does not in and of itself effectively get at whether or not a specific characteristic makes
one more or less likely to enlist. Sackett and Mavor (2003) do not find a direct link
between demographic characteristics such as race or class and propensity to enlist.
Instead, the researchers look at what attitudes and aspirations impact propensity, and then
look at what impact race or class status has on the identified attitude or aspiration.
Additionally, the researchers are able to use data charting enlistment trends among
demographic groups and make predictions about what future enlistment trends might
look like given available fertility and immigration data. The result of this analysis show
that two factors, parents’ educational attainment and future educational aspirations
(college-bound status), have strong negative influence on propensity to enlist. Given the
fact that parents’ educational attainment is on the rise, Sackett and Mavor predict it will
be increasingly difficult to recruit. Though both of these factors are in various ways
associated with race and socioeconomic status, Sackett and Mavor stop short of making
those connections.

24

Using data from the 2001, 2003 and 2004 Youth Polls conducted by the United
States’ Department of Defense that chronicle enlistee demographics and rationale,
Eighmey (2006) develop a clear typology of youth goals to identify the themes
undergirding youths’ attitudes toward military service.) He finds seven factor themes
among the various stated goals included in the 2001, 2003 and 2004 youth polls: benefits,
dignity, challenge, adventure, fidelity (goal measures here include “making a difference”
and “doing something positive”), risk, and family. Further, Eighmey classifies these
factors into two categories: occupational, which are seen as extrinsic, market-driven
benefits such as pay or skills training, and institutional, which are “intrinsic benefits
derived from the distinguishing core values of the organization” (p. 323). Based on the
participant ratings of goal measurements, Eighmey suggests that the primary factors
influencing enlistment were institutional or “value-driven”, while occupational factors
such as material concerns found to be of secondary importance. Using the results of his
analysis, Eighmey (2006) proceeds to use the top three rated factors (fidelity, benefits and
dignity) in a contingency table to develop an “integrated typology” of youth goals (p.
324) with the idea of unpacking individual enlistment motivation in order to better target
recruiting resources (see Table 1).
Table 1 - John Eighmey’s Integrated Typology of Youth Goals
Tangible
Self Oriented

Other Oriented

Intangible

Benefits to Self:
Good pay
Good lifestyle
Prepare for future
Benefits for Others:
Protection
Assistance
Democratic systems

Dignity:
Personal achievement
Respect for self
Respect for others
Fidelity:
Duty to country
Leadership
Teamwork

25

Teachman (1993) uses data from the High School and Beyond longitudinal
database in a multivariate analysis that pays attention to the effects of school, work and
family roles on enlistment in the military, and how these effects differ by race.
Teachman attempts to test the prior assumptions that an individual’s plans for school
and/or work and commitments to marriage and/or family decrease his likelihood to enlist.
Further, he looks to complicate those tests by adding race as a related variable. The
findings show that work and school commitments do indeed reduce enlistment propensity
for white men, but this is not the case for black men. Marriage and parenthood show no
effect for either race. It is notable here that this study does not consider socioeconomic
status or races other than white or black in its analysis. Those oversights, specifically the
lack of control for class, make it difficult to trust that it is specifically race that changes
enlistment propensity vis-à-vis work and school participation.
Kleykamp (2006) is after similar answers to Teachman (1993) but takes a
different conceptual and methodological approach. Interested in what factors are
associated with (not necessarily motivational in) military enlistment rather than attending
college, joining the civilian workforce or doing something else (including remaining
idle), Kleykamp looks at three primary areas of influence based on previous research:
5

educational goals, institutional presence of the military , and race or socioeconomic
status. Using data from the 2002 graduating cohort in the State of Texas, Kleykamp
employs multinomial logistic regression to find what factors correlate with what afterhigh school choice. She finds that higher military institutional presence increases odds of
5

Institutional presence (a concept developed by Burk [2001] in a paper also considered
for this review) signifies the overall saturation of military culture in a given community
as measured by presence of military bases, recruiters, and other outcomes.
26

enlisting relative to other choices. College aspirations, interestingly, are associated with
the decision to go to college rather than enlist, but also increase the likelihood that an
individual will enlist rather than work or remain idle. Kleykamp finds no racial or ethnic
differences.
Owens (1992) uses six spheres of influence (family contingencies, family and
peer influences, school performance and experiences, attitudes toward self and society,
ambitions and planfulness and other) to discuss teenage boys’ likelihood of selecting one
of three postsecondary pathways or “social contexts” – full-time employment, military,
or college. He finds that boys who select the military share similar characteristics to boys
who select the workforce: they generally express disinterest in college, hail from larger
families from less-privileged financial background, often pursued a vocational track in
high school, and tended to have less successful academic records. He also found that
military-bound boys were more likely to have failed a grade, and expressed the belief that
their parents would support them if they served in the military.
Notably, Segal et al. (1998) employ an intersectional analysis to see how race
bears on gender for high school students in the enlistment process. Using the Monitoring
the Future surveys to measure “military propensity” based on survey participation, the
authors investigate how race has differential impacts on male and female students.
Though the results suggests a weaker relationship between what the authors call
“propensity to serve” and actual enlistment in women than in men, they also find higher
race and ethnicity effects among women: blackness, in particular, seems to strongly
inform propensity to serve in women.

27

As these results suggest, there is little consensus as to what specifically matters in
the process of enlisting. Where race or socioeconomic status matters clearly in one study,
they seem to be unimportant factors in another. That said, it does appear relatively
consistently that college plans (known as “aspirations” in Kleykamp, “college-bound
status” in Sackett and Mavor, “school plans” for white men in Teachman) act as the
largest deterrent to enlistment, while disinterest in college seems to motivate enlistment
(Owens, 1992).
In light of these findings and the factor findings in Eighmey (2006), it is
interesting to consider the ways in which different recommendations emerge in respect to
the scholarship. Sackett and Mavor (2003) offer the only truly comprehensive
recommendations for how the military should use its data to proceed with advertising for
recruiting. The researchers make a number of observations. Given their findings about
the ways in which college-bound status and parent educational attainment serve as two
chief negative influences on enlistment, Sackett and Mavor suggest that recruiting efforts
should focus on individuals who already have a high propensity to enlist (students
without college plans, etc.) in lieu of trying to convert unlikely candidates. This approach
should maximize efficiency in the recruiting process as will as minimize defection, a
problem correlated with a recruit’s initial uncertainty in the enlistment decision. The
researchers talk about doing more in recruiting versus doing differently, and suggest that
one way to do more would be to try and capture the college dropout/stopout population,
while another way to do differently would be to better balance the intrinsic vs. extrinsic
rewards in advertising. Bachman et al. (2001) offer counter-advice, using results from
the Monitoring the Future survey to suggest that effective recruiting efforts can take

28

advantage of college-bound population for minimum service commitments prior to
college attendance. Eighmey (2006) takes a brief stab at offering recommendations,
suggesting that recruiters use his typology in considering how to better advertise. He
suggests that while advertising has often focused on the self-oriented and tangible goals
(the “benefit to self” factor), his analysis reveals that it is indeed the intangible goals that
correspond to the leading motivational factors, fidelity and dignity. Additionally,
Kleykamp (2006) noted the importance of focusing recruiting energies in places with a
higher military institutional presence given the higher rates of success. Taken together,
these recommendations offer insight into how military recruiting might train its efforts in
order to maximize its effectiveness going forward.
Discussion
Given the United States’ current financial and political investment in military
recruitment in public schools and the protest that often accompanies the introduction of
recruiters into those schools, it would seem that both the U.S. government and the
university would have a vested interest in investigating the institution of military
recruiting. In this context, the scarcity of relevant scholarly research is quite surprising.
In the process of reviewing the available scholarship in preparation for this paper, it
became clear that not only is the amount of scholarship quite small, but also the amount
of research published without a discernible agenda is even smaller.
All that said, the ability to juxtapose the dueling political agendas at work here
does provide an interesting context in which to consider the institution of military
recruiting in schools generally. Indeed, there are a few small moments in which the
findings from both sides of the work seem to corroborate each other. For example, even

29

though one of the enlistment propensity scholars found that race did not impact
likelihood to enlist, all of the scholars (in both fields) took note of the ways in which
people of color are overly represented in the service. In the advocacy-oriented research,
this fact was generally taken to indicate that the military is culpable of some kind of racist
predation on students of color, while in the enlistment propensity research, the general
findings seemed to show that overrepresentation did not necessarily indicate that people
of color were more likely to choose to enlist. In this way, both sides of the field agree
that more accurate representation of national racial (and socioeconomic) breakdowns is
desirable. Advocacy-oriented researchers see this as a move toward equity in service
burdens, while enlistment propensity scholars see this as maximizing efficiency in
recruiting, but in either case, the end goal is the same.
One thing is certain about the field of research on military recruiting in America’s
public schools: more research is certainly warranted. Regardless of explicit agendas, the
most notable trend across all research in this field is that the scholarship is conducted
specifically with the idea of making impact: that is, results of research are reported so that
policy (local or federal) may be changed, shaped, altered in order to improve someone’s
efficacy. What the field lacks, however, is rigorous scholarship that investigates the state
of military recruiting in schools, from investigations into the impact of federal policy
choices to the experiences of administrators, students and families. What the existing
research does not answer are questions about how military recruiting is integrated in
schools, and how school-goers understand the institution of recruiting. Given the serious
consequences of military service, the increasing presence of the military in schools in a
variety of capacities and the controversy over the relationship between the military and

30

American schools throughout history, careful research that explores the nuances of the
role of recruitment in schools is a scholarly imperative.
The research questions guiding this project emerge from this chasm in the field:
How do students and administrators understand the purpose and practice of military
recruiting in their high schools, particularly as informed by local context? I attempt in
this project to begin the process of developing a comprehensive picture around what the
practice of military recruiting looks to high school students and their administrators. I
seek to chronicle their understandings, and I attempt to use theory to help explain them.
As I will detail in the methods section of this paper, I use the themes explored in the
research reported above to sensitize me to what I might find: I look for evidence of
recruitment rhetoric present in study participants’ responses, and I use the motivational
factors explained in the enlistment-propensity research to help explain students’
decisions. By using themes from both sides of the existing scholarship in this field, I
seek to begin investigation that may bridge a divide to create deeper understanding of
how students and administrators understand the practice of military recruiting in
American high schools.

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CHAPTER 3: THEORETICAL FRAMERWORK
The process of identifying theory that might help explain this study’s data proved
somewhat challenging. In this chapter, I chronicle the evolution of this project’s
theoretical underpinnings so that I may address two distinct concerns: first, I attempt to
describe how and why my thinking around these ideas changed over the course of this
research, and second, I introduce the ideas that will prove most central in interpreting this
project’s data. Four sources emerged as valuable in this project, and I will describe each
roughly along with chronology of their development. I begin with Burk (2001), who
serves as the initial frame for this project and proved eminently valuable in the school
selection process. I continue with Labaree’s (1997) essay about the contending goals of
American schooling and then continue with the more general literature on problems of
the American high school in order to explore how Labaree’s tensions have played out in
practice. Finally, I look to some literature about the function of school “mission” as a
key concept in determining how students and administrators understand experiences in
schools. This chronology sets the stage for this project’s analyses, enabling a dynamic
theoretical backdrop that assists in answering this project’s research objectives.
James Burk’s Institutional Presence: The Military In Different School Contexts
In James Burk’s (2001) chapter “The Military’s Presence in American Society,
1950-2000,” the author invents and pilots a typology for measuring and characterizing
the ways in which the military is present in society. Calling this phenomenon the
military’s “institutional presence,” Burk develops a practical measurement for
considering the ways in which the military is both “materially salient” (i.e. the degree to
which social contact with the military is likely) and “morally integrated” (i.e. the degree

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to which the military is considered an “important actor… in our understanding of what
6

constitutes a good society”) in any given community (p.250) . By using a contingency
table to evaluate high or low material salience against high or low moral integration,
Burk is able to characterize the military’s relationship with society (see Table 2). Using
archival materials and available demographic data to assign whether or not the military is
morally integrated or materially salient in any given area, Burk uses his typology to
illustrate the military’s institutional presence. For example, if the military is highly
materially salient in a community (perhaps due to a high concentration of military
recruiters in local schools) but not morally integrated (potentially because the community
espouses unfavorable political ideas), Burk’s typology would classify the military’s
institutional presence in this community as “predatory” (p. 251). Conversely, if the
military is not materially salience in a community (low opportunity to interact with
military representatives, no nearby military base) but highly morally integrated (favorable
local climate), it would be considered “peripheral” in this typology. In this way, Burk is
able to characterize the tenor of the military’s institutional presence in any specific
iteration.
Table 2 - James Burk’s Types of Institutional Presence

Material Salience

Moral Integration
High
Central
Peripheral

High
Low

6

Low
Predatory
Alienated

It should be noted here that Burk (2001) intends for this typology for “institutional
presence” to be extended to all social institutions, not merely the military. Though this
chapter deals exclusively with the institutional presence of the U.S. Military in American
society between 1950 and 2000, the same logic can be applied to any social institution.
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At the outset of this project, this conceptual framework was useful for considering
the role of military recruiters in public schools. The author defines “society” broadly,
meaning a social network has a “central value system that informs expectations about
how institutions should conduct themselves” (p. 250). In any given society, there exists a
large number of ways within which to classify discrete groups that meet Burk’s definition
of a “central value system.” I initially intended to extend this definition to conceptualize
school communities – the groupings of administrators, teachers, students, parents
associated with individual schools - as small, discrete “societies” that define missions,
develop value systems and within which members of a community share collective
understandings around experiences. Why school communities rather than neighborhoods?
My decision here was based on two-fold logic: first, in the City of New York, high school
choice policies are designed such that students from any corner of the city might,
theoretically, attend high school in another part of the City, if desired, suggesting some
level of buy-in to the schools’ goals or values. In this case, high schools are seldom
comprised of students exclusively from the surrounding neighborhood. Beyond this,
because military recruiting related issues are necessarily linked to parents (i.e. parental
consent vis-à-vis the opt-out, parental consent for student enlistment, etc) and parents are
referenced so frequently by both students and administrators as being influential in how
military recruiting is understood, it seems critical to include parents as part of our unit of
analysis, even though parents may live and work far from their child’s school’s
neighborhood. To these ends, I entered into this work expecting “school communities” to
act as Burk’s “societies” and, as such, attempted characterizing the military’s institutional

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presence within each school community/research site by offering a brief snapshot into
each school’s community context.
This theoretical approach began became less and less helpful as study data
became available. Though I knew that I each of the five schools in this study would not
fits neatly into each of Burk’s (2001) boxes, I sought to extend the use of Burk’s
framework to be able to characterize the schools in this study to explain the how
administrators and students understand the recruiting enterprise in their schools. I
hypothesized that characterizing school communities as having the same properties as
Burk’s “societies” would enable analyses that used Burk’s distinctions to help detect the
nuances of a relationship between a school context and study participants’ understanding
of military recruiting in their schools. As my analyses began to materialize, however, it
became increasingly clear that Burk’s axes - “material salience” and “moral integration” were not working as explanatory signposts. Ultimately, I found that the analytic language
Burk arrives at in his typology (i.e. “predatory”, “peripheral”, “alienated”, and “central”)
did not map onto this investigation’s data in meaningful ways. Emerging patterns in the
data yielded complex, multifaceted narratives surrounding how participants understood
recruiting in their schools, and Burk’s framework proved too essentializing for the
nascent analyses.
To be clear, Burk’s (2001) typology offers one avenue for assessing and
characterizing how a community of individuals may experience and understand the
military in the context of that community. In this study, Burk’s framework was duly
helpful in the school selection process, and the tangible measures for each of the “moral
integration” and “material salience” were valuable in helping identify schools that were

35

diversely situated in relationship to the military. As such, Burk’s language served a
sensitizing function, allowing a certain access to the hallmarks of a military presence in a
public institution. In the school selection process, I attempted a similar approach as Burk,
marshalling data that provided insight into both the material salience and moral
integration of the military in each school. Before the interview process began, the
material salience category was easiest to identify tangibly, and I used both publicly
available data such military bases nearby (often indicative of military presence in the
lives of students living close or recruiters stationed close to the school building) or the
presence of JROTC programs as well as information about how each school handles
military opt-out and school visits to this effect. So, while his framework falls short for my
deeper analytical purposes, these sensitizing characteristics enabled a school selection
process that yielded an importantly diverse sample of schools.
Labaree’s Educational Goals: Navigating Contending Ideals
As Burk’s (2001) typology began to recede in the initial phases of data analyses, a
pattern emerged in early analytical memos around the larger themes at work in my
interviews. As both students and administrators reflected on military recruiting in their
schools, conversations circumnavigated broad themes about the purpose of schooling. In
an attempt to deconstruct these narratives, I turned to Labaree’s (1997) seminal treatise
on the competing objectives of American public schools to gird the complicated tensions
arising in interviewees’ understandings of military recruiting in public schools. Indeed,
Labaree’s insight into the competing objectives besetting education policy provides a
useful roadmap for traversing the complicated landscape of students’ and administrators’
conceptions of the role of military recruiting in schools. As this framework outlines,

36

Labaree’s three goals (democratic equality, social efficiency and social mobility) offer
remarkably useful scaffolding for analyzing this study’s qualitative data.
In his essay “Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle Over
Educational Goals,” Labaree partitions the aims of the United States’ educational system
into three main goals: democratic equality, social efficiency and social mobility (Labaree
1997). Here, Labaree constructs a convincing article as to how various interests are
served by pointing education in each of those three directions. Arguing, “schools, it
seems, occupy an awkward position at the intersection between…political ideals and
economic realities,” Labaree posits that the lack of a coherent objective lends itself to
even further questions about relationships at play among students, schools and society
(p.41). How the individual responds to these concerns is indicative of his own vested
interest in school, as well as his conceptions of what schools should do. Each of these
goals can be trumped by the logic of another as all have obvious failings, and successful
policy hinges on policymakers’ ability to balance those goals in relationship to one
another. Failures arise, Labaree notes, when the competition between objectives yields
unclear policy that manifests flaws inherent in all the goals.
The policy governing military recruiting in public schools is by no means exempt
from this conflict. How a respondent understands military recruiting is shaped by which
of Labaree’s goals s/he is speaking to in any particular moment, and which goal is
privileged may change from moment to moment, depending on the conversation. This
framework offers insight into how each goal manifests specific to military recruiting
policy, suggesting how analyses may take care to unpack these themes as they arise.

37

Democratic equality. According to Labaree, the democratic equality goal
approaches school as preparation for adult participation in a democratic society.
Contending that, “We all depend on this political competence of our fellow citizens, since
we put ourselves at the mercy of their collective judgment,” Labaree sees the democratic
equality objective as a way to ensure the continuation of a democratic system (p. 42).
Also incorporated here is the notion that democratic equality is contingent upon social
equality, and schools must work to promote both. In this case, school is a mechanism for
perpetuating a democratic, equal society.
The inclusion of military recruiting in school perhaps speaks most directly and
clearly to Labaree’s democratic equality goal, as part of the mission of public schooling
is about imparting the necessity of participation in democracy. In this sense, participation
may extend to any action that sustains a functioning democratic society. Military service,
then, falls comfortably into this schematic, acting as both a kind of participation in a
public service as well as a commitment to defending this democratic society. In pursuing
the democratic equality goal, then, it follows that schools would include a recruiting
component so as to participate in that vein of civil service.
Further, Labaree notes that another specific component of the democratic equality
goal is about shared experience in a citizen corps as being fundamental to the health of a
democratic society. As Labaree (1997) notes, this ideal emanated from the founders of
America’s common school movement, who “fearful of the social differences and class
conflict that arose from the growth of capitalism” believed that a shared schooling
experience could foster a “common culture and sense of shared membership in the
community” (p. 45). Service in the American military, as it were, is grounded in this kind

38

of ideology: soldiers enter into the service and experience difficult early training, which
bonds them to one another. This connection builds a kind of camaraderie that aims to
facilitate a kind of commitment to one another, the service, and the country. This “shared
experience” ideally becomes part of the fabric of a soldier’s narrative, binding them to
the overarching goals of their service. It follows that, in the pursuit of a democratic
equality goal, schools could be implicated in facilitating this shared experience for young
citizens-to-be.
Social efficiency. Rooted in an inherent faith in the Market, the social efficiency
goal seeks to provide students with appropriate skills to take their place in a capitalist
economy. In order to adapt “students to the requirements of a hierarchical social structure
and the demands of an educational marketplace,” social efficiency serves as a kind of
educational stratification, guaranteeing that the products of public education are equipped
with the kind of practical training necessitated by today’s job market. Schooling then
perpetuates a functional marketplace, producing citizens capable of filling in the existing
slots in a working economy and transitioning students into the various places in the
vertical structure.
Outlining the implications of a social efficiency-geared education system, Labaree
points to the ways in which higher education is now stratified to reflect the job market it
precedes – those students from “better” colleges are in turn more likely to get higher
paying positions. High schools, as a result of social efficiency rhetoric, now feed directly
into this system, with wealthy high schools significantly more likely to place students in
well-ranked colleges (Labaree, 1997). This approach readily benefits those already on

39

course to attend exclusive schools and achieve generous salaries, and keeps turning the
cogs of a capitalist marketplace by providing labor at all levels.
Military recruiting in schools fits comfortably into a social efficiency schematic in
that it already exists as a functioning part of our capitalist economy: the American
military provides employment opportunities, offers funding for education to ostensibly to
help find employment post-service commitment, and in some instances builds lifelong
careers. Indeed, research on the Military Industrial Complex confirms this idea, as part of
military recruiting rhetoric is that service commitments offer vocational training that, at
least in principle, may be used for later post-service employment (Giroux, 2007). So, in
addition to offering one kind of career route in and of itself, military enlistment may also
be viewed as offering some kind of preparation for other employment. In this sense, the
military offers several routes for sustained employment in a working capitalist
marketplace, and in the pursuit of a social efficiency goal, schools have a responsibility to
perpetuate the system as it exists. Schools, then, are implicated in the recruiting
enterprise, just as they are responsible for creating citizens equipped to take on any other
role.
Social mobility. Finally, Labaree’s third goal, social mobility, combines a
capitalist spirit with a truly American approach. In essence, a social mobility aim seeks
to provide students with the tools necessary to better their social position. Whereas social
efficiency maintains the economic status quo by providing skilled labor at all levels of a
capitalist marketplace, social mobility aims to provide students with a “competitive
advantage in the struggle for desirable social positions” (Labaree, p.42). The approach
commodifies education, turning academic performance and, in turn, educational degrees

40

into currency to be exchanged for a well-ranked higher education and then a
competitively salaried job. Though the social mobility approach is as inextricably tied to
a capitalist marketplace as social efficiency, mobility is entrenched in the American ideal
that hard work will lead to achievement, regardless of other factors.
This commodification of education puts tremendous emphasis on the product,
rather than the process, of learning, turning an educational degree into a credential
instead of a true marker of learnedness or skill acquisition. Known as credentialism, this
process of accruing a portfolio of academic degrees is rooted in the desire to achieve a
higher earning potential (Fallows, 1985). Top jobs (accompanied by top salaries) are
competitive, and those with the most accolades and highest-ranked college degrees are at
a significant advantage in the job market. In this proposed social mobility schematic,
however, the more people holding high school or bachelors degrees, the less the market
value of the degrees in question.
The social mobility objective relies on the assumption that the educational
credential equates to competitive advantage in the Market. The traditional high school
degree offers a credential that is now standard and is therefore necessary in the Market,
but does not necessarily provide competitive advantage. In a contemporary social
mobility schematic, increased education offers the best advantage and, as such, college
attendance is viewed as the single best, most desirable postsecondary option to obtain that
advantage. Indeed, just as the Market is hierarchically organized, so too is the array of
postsecondary options in a social mobility frame. College attendance offers the best
chance to enter a capitalist economy at the upper echelons, and therefore tops the list.

41

In that social mobility frame, the military enlistment option emerges as less
desirable on the vertical hierarchy. By offering to finance college education in exchange
for service through the G.I. Bill, the military attempts to seize on social mobility
American ideals around advancing one’s social status through education. Further, the
rhetoric around military service is filled with social mobility talk, suggesting that young
people can “be all that they can be” by serving in the Army, and that the act of service
itself gives life meaning for potential recruits (Bailey, 2007). By providing employable
skills while offering a chance to obtain a college education, the military sells itself as an
escalator up the vertical hierarchy of a capitalist economy while simultaneously
defending the public good and providing stable employment. In this sense, the military is
able to fully integrate itself into all three of Labaree’s goals, thus billing itself as fully
relevant to the basic premises of American schooling.
Discussion. The policy governing military recruiting in public high schools in the
United States is, like all education policy, subject to the contestation among the
educational objectives outlined by Labaree (1997). In each of these explanations, I have
attempted an example of how the relationship between military recruiting and schools
might be cast or framed in pursuit of each respective goal. This research study is aimed at
uncovering how students and administrators understand the purpose of recruiting schools,
as well as how recruiting in schools interacts with ideas about students’ post-graduate
trajectories. As such, it is clear from preliminary analyses of participants’ responses that
conversations about military recruiting in schools inevitably revolve around the process
of preparing students for the world outside of school and how administrators’ and
students’ understand the practical realities of transitioning into those next steps, be it

42

college, the military or the workforce. As Labaree’s (1997) work is, in essence, about
how we navigate what schools are preparing students for in the world beyond high
school, there emerges a distinct affinity between students’ and administrators’
conversations about recruiting in schools and the larger function of Labaree’s theory. In
this case, I have sought to provide a framework that will serve to decode and sensitize my
analyses to the major themes in interviewees’ responses. This will serve as a kind of
roadmap, allowing for an interpretive lens through which to explain this study’s
qualitative data across individuals and, then, across schools. The examples explicated
above are here to provide launching pads for the specific ideas respondents espouse,
allowing us to tether deeper analyses to which goal is privileged in any given moment,
and why. As such, Labaree’s frame offers us a girding mechanism through which to
pursue the nuanced themes emerging from the data.
The Problems of The American High School: The Market, Purpose, and Military
Recruiting
In the process of writing memos across interviewees, several additional themes
emerged that required explanatory attention. Labaree’s (1997) goals, though helpful in
the larger characterizations of the relationship between military recruiting and the
purpose of schools and schooling, exist at a larger grain size than some of the more
specific understandings expressed by administrators and students in this study. In this
section, I synthesize some of the classic scholarship surrounding the tensions and
problems specific to the American high school in order to explain administrators’ and
students’ ideas about military recruiting in their schools. I choose to focus this synthesis
on a thread of scholarship addressing the history of secondary schooling and how shifting

43

priorities around the purpose of schools have illuminated complicated tensions between
the public nature of high schools and the private values of a capitalist economy. I use
these seminal texts to help construct a framework within which I might situate this
study’s larger findings. By describing the scholarly trajectory of these arguments, I then
seek to explain how this study reflects and refracts these debates.
I turn first to Cohen and Neufeld’s (1981) analysis of the history of the American
high school and contemporary cultural beliefs around the institution’s failure to actualize
social ideals. The authors chronicle the evolution of the high school institution, taking
care to connect changes in societal views around the purpose of secondary schooling with
the constant emergence of new high school reform movements. The result is an evermorphing institution, and the authors chart the high school’s slow shift from a force for
social unity to a purveyor of educational capital that might be traded for status and class
in a capitalist marketplace. Alongside that shift, the authors argue that Americans seeking
economic and social advancement pursued increased access to high schools as a way to
gain competitive advantage through educational capital. The reality of increased access,
however, worked to devalue the high school degree: once everyone had it, it no longer
offered competitive advantage in the marketplace and pushed Americans to compete for
capital at a higher level in the American education system. The authors observe,
One example of this…has been the persistent tendency to greet the approaching
achievement of equal access at any level of the school system with fevered
enthusiasm for more education at the next higher level. Upward expansion
protects competitive advantages for those who can purchase more schooling, but
it also reduces the value of the soon to be universally held lower diploma, thus
creating a relative disadvantage for those who cannot afford more schooling.
Inequality, reduced at one level, is simply moved up a notch. (Cohen and Neufeld,
1981, p. 73)

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In order to address near-universal attendance, high schools have adapted to meet the
needs of a diversely resourced student population, resulting in a loss of academic rigor
and waning purchasing power in a marketplace. In order to ensure that all students could
achieve the degree (regardless of capability) the meaning behind the degree expanded to
include programs that were accomplishable by a broad diversity of students. The
overarching consequence of this predicament is a degree with decreasing value. The
authors conclude, “the high schools have moved far in the direction of equal access, but
because these steps occurred in the context of fierce social and economic competition,
advances for equality have been accompanied by the gradual debasement of secondary
education” (Cohen and Neufeld, 1981, p. 86).
Scholars Thomas Green, David Ericson and Robert Seidman (1980) make a
similar argument in their analysis of the educational system. Among the numerous
observations included in this broad structural analysis of the shifting currents of the
American educational system, the authors identify distinct tension between constant calls
for increased expansion of the public system and the simultaneous demand for efficacy in
educational program. The result, the authors argue, is an ever-expanding hierarchical
system, where the call for growth is always necessarily focused precisely at the level of
the first selective rung of the system. In 2013, that focus hinges on postsecondary
education, where the importance of selectivity is matched by calls for increased access.
In The Making of an American High School: The Credentials Market and the
Central High School of Philadelphia, 1838-1939, David Labaree (1988) uses archival
research to chart the evolution of one high school in Philadelphia. Closely mirroring the
historical trajectory outlined in Cohen and Neufeld (1981), Labaree chronicles Central

45

High School’s transformation from an elite institution designed to produce civic leaders
to a “common school” offering a credential to be obtained for value in a capitalist
economy. Labaree argues that this process of commodifying the education at Central
High ultimately devalued the degree: as more and more students demanded access,
increased enrollment meant the curriculum changed to accommodate its new clientele.
This shift hollowed out the meaning behind the credential, and unable to maintain
selectivity, Central stratified its curriculum to meet students’ needs. Labaree sees his
account of Central High School’s transformation as a result of tension between the
private and public purposes of high school: as with Cohen and Neufeld (1981), increased
expansion and equal access undercut the specialness of attending Central High.
Powell, Farrar and Cohen (1985) attempt to describe and assess what actually
happens in high schools when the institution attempts to educate a universal clientele. In
The Shopping Mall High School, Powell et al shine a spotlight on the how the American
high school has expanded its scope in order to keep students in school while providing an
education that is accomplishable so that students can exit with a degree. In order to
maximize both these objectives, high schools have expanded curricula both horizontally
(breadth of course offerings) and vertically (level of academic rigor of course content) in
order to keep students in school while providing those students who seek it with
increased purchasing power in a postsecondary economy. These accommodations give
students a “choice” about what kind of high school education they pursue, but in order to
continue to advance students through schools, administrators claim a kind of “neutrality”
about students’ choices by allowing those students who want more rigor to pursue it. The

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result of this “comprehensive” approach to high school is an institution of hybrid
purpose, whose degree may have any number of associated meanings.
Though this seminal study offers several poignant observations, two primary
findings emerge as potentially relevant to this project. First, Powell et al (1985) critique
the “neutral” stance through which administrators interact with students in schools. By
forcing students and parents to be the sole agent in pursuit of education, the authors
argue, administrators are enabling students who enter the high school with capital to
pursue educational routes that will reproduce their social standing in a capitalist
economy. Powell et al note, “…in leaving choice to students and their families, schools
unintentionally perpetuate the distinctions that high school is supposed to eliminate.”
Though neutrality is undertaken in order to accommodate the diverse spectrum of student
ability and interest so that the majority of students may obtain the degree, schools’
unwillingness to intervene results in gradations of the degree that are stratified in a way
that reflects a vertical economy and reproduces existing inequalities.
Additionally, Powell et al (1985) observe that the breadth of offerings available to
high school students actually work to undercut the common experience that was the
initial idea behind high schools. Analyzing students’ and administrators’ experiences in
private schools with a “common purpose” juxtaposed with public comprehensive high
schools, the authors see a distinct advantage for both faculty and students in schools with
a singular vision or goal. The identification of a distinctive purpose or mission, they
argue, allows students and administrators to own a kind of “specialness” associated with
the selection of one’s school. In this way, the authors suggest that opting into schooling
works to mitigate the devaluing effects of universal attendance. They note, “a common

47

purpose makes the institution itself an active factor in the educational process rather than
merely a neutral physical setting in which education goes on” (Powell et al, 1985, p.
201). The authors call for increased focuses on “purpose” in conjunction with “push” and
“personalization” in order to counteract the negative impacts of neutrality: they argue that
by increasing rigor in more special, individual programs, schools can both address the
diversity of students by capturing students’ attention while renewing the value of the
degree by leveraging that interest in favor of added rigor. These approaches, applied in
concert, require that schools abandon neutrality in favor of directed attention to the
individual so that rigor might be restored to the curriculum. In this way, the authors
believe the impacts of the comprehensive high school can be softened and ameliorated.
Bryk, Lee and Holland (1993) also see how a common purpose can influence
school-going for the better. In a comprehensive analysis of the country’s Catholic school
system, Bryk et al seek to explain why Catholic high schools perform better on certain
assessments. The reasons, they argue, are fourfold: first, Catholic schools practice
adherence to a strict college-preparatory curriculum with few exceptions. Second,
Catholic education emphasizes a high standard for behavior and discipline – a standard
upheld and agreed upon by students. Next, administrators invest in whole students by
being largely responsible for the delivery of extracurricular activity. Finally, Catholic
high schools work to inculcate “community” values, ensuring that students feel a sense of
belonging in their schools. These four factors combine to create an environment rich in
purpose that, counter to public schools, enables individual investment in education that
can both strengthen scholastic standards and individual performance.

48

Finally, apposite to these arguments is Labaree’s (2012) contemporary analysis of
the mismatch between the public value of high schools and the private economy of the
United States. In “School Syndrome: Understanding the USA’s Magical Belief that
Schooling can Somehow Improve Society, Promote Access, and Preserve Advantage”,
Labaree continues work on the cross-purposes of schools. He identifies an “education
market” at work in American high schools as “the sum of the actions of all educational
consumers as they pursue their individual interests through schooling” that acts to keep
public schools alive as a credential system (Labaree, 2012, 148). Reform efforts fail
because reformers continue to look to schools as a solution to public problems, while
education consumers continue to pursue schools for private benefit. This incongruence
yields barren ground for growing a system capable of addressing problems rooted in
inequality: though we continue to look to schools to achieve social justice ends, our
cross-cutting beliefs in individualism and meritocracy undermine our other ideals. The
author notes, “One way of thinking about this is that education may not be doing what we
ask, but it is doing what we want” (Labaree, 2012, p. 154).
Looking across these texts, a clear critique emerges: inside a capitalist economy
that views a high school degree as private capital, the American high school is like a
juggler traversing a high-wire on a unicycle. Balancing the competing values of
universal attendance with the need to maintain competitive advantage, the high schools’
attempts to diversify in order to meet divergent needs enervates the strength of any one
program. The result is a fierce competition for credentials, where individuals pursue as
much as their capital enables, and the existing capitalist economic structure is
reproduced. While the high school degree was once a symbol of education that could be

49

traded upon for competitive advantage in the marketplace, these scholars agree that it is
now the college degree that occupies the de facto, desirable competitive ticket for
individuals in a capitalist economy. How schools interact with that reality –more
specifically, how schools choose or do not choose to structure themselves in order to
accommodate or capitalize on or circumvent that reality – becomes necessarily central to
a school’s mission. It is those missions, then, that throw students and administrators’
understandings of military recruiting and military enlistment into such sharp relief. In the
following section, I highlight some of the scholarly findings about school mission in
order to construct a framework in which interviewees’ understanding of school missions
shapes their respective relationship to military recruiting and enlistment.
School Mission: Shaping Individuals’ Experiences in Schools
As project analyses emerged, the relationship between interviewees’ reported
understandings of military recruiting and their respective schools’ missions became
increasingly evident. In order to better describe the framework of school mission and its
importance in school-goers’ experiences in schools, I turn to the scholarship surrounding
school mission. As it turns out, there is an entire field of research devoted to this topic,
concerned with the various impacts of school mission on administrator and teacher
behavior, school reform efforts, student achievement, and school culture. I focus here on
literature that offers insight into why interviewees’ understanding of recruiting may be
informed by school mission.
Davis, Ruhe, Lee and Rajadjyaskha’s (2007) analysis of ethical content in
business school mission statements samples students at 16 universities in order to assess
the importance of schools’ explicit commitment to an ethical orientation. The researchers

50

find that in universities highlighting character development in their mission statements,
students tend to identify character development as important in their education. Further,
students that could identify the faculty in their schools as explicitly reinforcing the values
of their school’s mission were more likely to identify character development as important
for themselves. The researchers suggest that mission statements serve to “unify actions
toward a common end…and influence behavior of those within the organization” (Davis
et al, 2007, p. 108).
Hallinger and Heck (1996) in a comprehensive review of the literature on
principal effectiveness find that one of the most significant factors underscoring a
principals’ effective leadership is the identification and communication of a set of school
goals or mission. A school’s focus on a set of goals, they argue, augments principal
effectiveness. Brewer (1993) argues that a principal’s setting of academic goals has a
positive impact on student achievement. Goldring and Pasternak (1994) find that the
identification of a mission is a more important predictor of principal’s effectiveness than
instructional or managerial decisions.
Weiss and Piderit (1999) conduct an analysis of 304 schools’ mission statements
and find that the nuances of schools’ diverse missions have an impact on school
performance. Mission statements were coded along four dimensions: content, focus,
clarity, and activist tone. The authors find considerable variation across schools’
missions, and note that the adoption of an activist tone has a positive relationship to the
schools’ subsequent academic performance. Controlling for a variety of demographic
factors, the researchers also find that several specific inclusions (i.e. focus on self-esteem
or life development) are related to increased performance.
51

Finally, Hallinger and Heck (2001) in a review of all available literature on school
mission find that school mission is critical to the development of school-specific cultural
values. Included in their comprehensive synthesis are a number of important findings
revolving around one clear takeaway: school mission serves as critical variable in effective
schooling. Additionally, the review finds a clear theme that where a school mission exists,
staff is more likely to make decisions within a set of established norms and mores.
Discussion. This oeuvre of research offers critical insight into this study’s
findings around school mission and military recruiting. The research cited above clearly
documents the extent to which school mission impacts a wide swath of issues including
principal effectiveness, student achievement, student commitment to ethical orientation
and school culture. I aim to extend these findings by presenting evidence to suggest that
the different school missions represented in this project differentially inform
interviewees’ understanding of military recruiting and the postsecondary military
enlistment option.
I argue that these schools’ missions diversely position and privilege Labaree’s
(1997) three goals in accordance with different values surrounding the larger purpose of
the American high school. These varied formulations of goals and commitments are
manifested in these respective missions, and military recruiting enterprises in schools
interact with students and administrators inside of these backdrops. It is these interactions
that become the lived experiences upon which students and administrators base their
understandings of military recruiting in their schools. In this way, how schools articulate
their individual missions differentially mediates students’ and administrators’
understandings of military recruiting in schools.
52

In describing how study participants understand recruiting in their schools, I
observe that different schools’ understandings of military recruiting enterprises leverage
Labaree’s (1997) goals and the tensions of the American high school differently in order
to key into school’s varying missions/purposes. Indeed, how participants understand the
integration of a military recruiting enterprise into their school community hinges on its
ability to maximize these complex issues in a way that resonates for students and
administrators. Tensions emerge when there is a mismatch and participants articulate
understandings of military recruiting that do not map onto their schools’ respective
missions.
As the methods section of this project explains in depth, I classify schools in this
project based on these missions, and then offer analyses within these categories.
Throughout this paper’s discussions, I have attempted to draw upon the tenets of the
scholarship cited here to build a framework in which the seminal tensions besetting the
American high school can be identified in how schools’ frame and position Labaree’s
goals. These complex amalgamations of goals and values become the school-specific
missions that mediate interviewees’ understandings of military recruiting and military
enlistment.

53

CHAPTER 4:PROJECT METHODS
This dissertation investigates how students and administrators at five high schools
in New York City understand military recruiting in their schools. Using interviews
combined with analyses of demographic data and school mission documentation, this
study design uncovers understandings and experiences in five distinct school contexts.
All interviews occurred during the Spring of 2012 in New York City schools and district
offices. In Fall 2011, I obtained approval from Institutional Review Boards at both
Michigan State University and the New York City Department of Education to work with
human subjects including district and school administrators, and students age 17 and
above.
In this chapter, I explain the military recruiting policy at work in public high
schools and detail this study’s research methods. I begin with a brief description of my
entrance into this research, and continue with a chronology of the policy behind military
recruiter presence in public high schools. Then, I turn to research methods, describing
how I approached school selection and participant sampling, interviewing procedures,
and analyses. Taken together, these descriptions set the stage for this dissertation project.
Preliminary Research
I began this research by accident. In the Summer of 2010, I spent a few months
creating a database of nongermane riders to federal education legislation. At the time, I
was interested in the practice of adding these oftimes controversial amendments to
seemingly harmless, likely-to-pass legislation, and I wondered about the consequences
for education bills. In the process, I happened upon an amendment added to the early
Senate version of No Child Left Behind that detailed the necessity of integrating and

54

institutionalizing military recruiters in public high schools. The amendment was unusual:
unlike the others I was cataloguing at that time, this amendment was structured like a
geometry proof, justifying in clearly demarcated steps exactly why military recruiting
belonged in high schools and making the case for tying the practice to federal funding for
education. My curiosity was piqued.
In the following months, I familiarized myself with every aspect of school-based
military recruiter policy in the United States. I wrote an extensive legislative history,
tracing the evolution of school-based military recruiting policy into its most current
iteration (for a brief summary of this paper, see following section). I delved into the
available research on military recruiting in schools and school-based recruiting policy
(see Review of Literature). I became deeply interested in the consequences of federal
military recruiting policy for districts, schools, students and their families. Eventually, I
parlayed this curiosity into a dissertation topic and an idea for a study.
In the process of doing this preliminary research, I gathered archival material
using the legislative tracking database LexisNexis Congressional. I searched for
legislative material dealing with the issue of school-based military recruiting going back
to its first appearance in federal legislation. I gathered documentation for each of these
occurrences including the text of original bills, amendments, and conference versions of
bills; transcriptions of congressional floor debates specific to this issue; voting records
and executive regulatory and non-regulatory guidance provided by Department of
Education. I synthesized these materials into a paper chronicling the evolving history of
school-based military recruiting policy, which I have summarized below. This history

55

serves as the federal background for the school-based military recruiting policy that the
New York City Department of Education currently implements.
History of Federal Military Recruiting Legislation
Though federal funding for military training can be traced to the advent of the
United States, the military did not fully enter public schools until the urgency of World
War I prompted the passage of the National Defense Act (1916) establishing both the
Senior and Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC and JROTC, respectively).
JROTC is the high school branch of this program, and the organization states its mission
as “providing a quality citizenship, character, and leadership development program, while
fostering partnerships with communities and educational institutions” ("United States
Army Junior ROTC," 2012). Military recruiting is not an explicitly stated part of the
JROTC agenda, although their institutionalized programmatic presence in public schools
7

may have the effect of normalizing military service for students . In 2001, the passage of
National Defense Authorization Act authorized unlimited program unit expansion.
Outside of JROTC programming, military recruiting stayed out of secondary
schools until 1982, when Congress passed Public Law 97-252 in order to address longstanding recruiting concerns (Burrelli & Feder, 2009). Known as the Department of
Defense Authorization Act of 1983 (DDAA), the law allowed the Department of Defense
(DoD) to “collect and compile directory information on each 17 year old or 11th grade
student in the United States for military recruiting and related national security purposes”
(DDAA, 1982). Under DDAA, the military was allowed to collect up to three years of
information for any individual including: name, address, telephone listing, date and place
7

Later chapters will explore the role JROTC programs play in student and administrator
understandings of the military and military recruiting in schools.
56

of birth, level of education, degrees received, and most recent educational agency or
institution attended. The law specified that the information, kept in a directory database,
was to be kept confidential (DDAA, 1982). Administered through the DoD, the passage
of the law detonated a series of ongoing controversies over what constitutes directory
information and who exactly should have access.
When recruiting challenges associated with DDAA were not immediately
resolved, Congress took steps to bolster enlistment numbers by further compelling
secondary schools to furnish contact information to military recruiters. In 1999,
Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000 (NDAA
2000), which amended Section 503 of Title X of the U.S. Code requesting that publicly
8

financed secondary schools provide student directory information to the Department of
Defense. Schools were asked to provide the DoD the same access as would be
traditionally afforded to “postsecondary educational institutions or to prospective
employers of those students” (NDAA 2000, 1999). When the passage of law was met
with resistance by school boards and administrators, Congress passed the Floyd D.
Spence National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001 (NDAA 2001), and
with it supplanted the language of request with “each local educational agency
shall…provide to the Department of Defense, upon a request made for military recruiting
purposes, the same access” to students and directory information (NDAA 2001, 2000,
emphasis added). This legislation was the first in history to detail a series of sanctions
(designed to swiftly rectify the problem) that secondary schools would be subjected to
8

By 2001, the passage of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) had
limited the fields considered under “directory information” to student name, home
address and telephone number. (The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, 1974)
57

should any entity deny access. In essence, while military access to student directory
information entered mainstream consciousness in 1982 when Congress declared that
schools could dispense information to recruiters, by 2001 that discretion was no longer in
the hands of schools and school boards. It was this battery of legislative action that led
up to the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2002 (NDAA 2002),
which introduced the most contemporary legislative language on this issue, effectively
mandating that schools turn over directory information to military recruiters.
The National Defense Authorization Act of 2002
Despite the strength of the 2001 authorization, recruiters continued to report
instances of schools denying recruiters access to both students and directory information.
In the Congressional hearings leading up to the passage of the National Defense
Authorization Act of 2002, recruiters from all branches of the military expressed similar
dismay over lingering enlistment concerns (Department of Defense Authorization for
Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2002, 2001). Though the 2001 Authorization had been
intended to supersede these local concerns, recruiters still struggled to obtain access to
directory information. Though technically granted the same access to students as other
organizations (i.e. colleges or prospective employers), recruiters found that they were
continually met with resistance (and, in some cases, outright denial) and often relegated
to “last resort” status by school professionals. Data from around that time supports these
claims, showing that in 1999 alone, branches of the Armed Forces were denied access to
student directory information on nearly 20,000 occasions. In 2000, nearly 25 percent of
American high schools denied directory information to military recruiters (NCLB, S.1.).

58

Responding to those reports, Congress sought to strengthen the language around
secondary school access. Again using an Authorization Bill (NDAA 2002) to amend
Section 503 of Title X of the U.S. Code, Congress reinforced the request for student
directory information by adding a critical component to the legislation tying compliance
with the law to federal funding for schools under the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act. Whereas all previous attempts to gain access to student directory data
had been on good faith, the NDAA changed the terms. Under NDAA, Section 503 was
amended to read:
Each local educational agency receiving assistance under the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act of 1965… shall provide to military recruiters the same
access to secondary school students as is provided generally to postsecondary
educational institutions or to prospective employers of those students (NDAA
2002, 2001).
By locating local educational agencies within the context of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Congress took a landmark step towards associating
federal dollars with military access to high school students.
Perhaps to counter the inevitable onslaught of controversy, Congress added
another noteworthy provision: an opt-out clause. Aware of potential right-to-privacy
litigation, the NDAA ordered local educational agencies to notify parents and students
that they have the right to decline providing recruiters with directory information.
Congress stated:
A local educational agency may not release a student’s name, address, and
telephone listing … without the prior written consent of a parent of the student if
the student, or a parent of the student, has submitted a request to the local
educational agency that the student’s information not be released for a purpose
covered by that subparagraph without prior written parental consent (NDAA
2002, 2001).

59

Notably, Congress put the onus on local educational agencies (LEAs) to inform parents
of their opt-out rights and, furthermore, holds the LEA accountable for any breach of that
information -- irrespective of who accesses it. The inverted sentence structure here adds
confusion to the legislation: a cursory read of the legislative language suggests that an
LEA may not release directory information without parental consent, but that provision is
contingent upon a parent or student having already requested his removal from a
directory, in other words, a parent has already opted-out in some capacity. Despite this
confusion, the opt-out component of this policy is critical: it means that any parent or
student has the right to opt-out of receiving recruiter information, thus officially
protecting individuals’ right to privacy.
As Congress took steps to mandate LEA compliance with military recruiter access
though defense legislation, legislators working in both the House and the Senate began to
craft language that would institutionalize the presence of recruiters in secondary schools.
Using language and structure nearly identical to NDAA, the conference report of NCLB
essentially indicates that all schools receiving funds under ESEA will, upon request,
furnish student directory information to military recruiters and provide the same access to
students as is provided to postsecondary educational institutions and prospective
employers lest they lose their federal funding. The end product is Section 9528 of the No
Child Left Behind Act of 2001, a provision that like the NDAA before it also includes an
opt-out provision for students and parents choosing to refrain from receiving overt
9

recruiting offers . The No Child Left Behind Act was signed by President George W.
Bush and enacted on January 8, 2002.
9

See Appendix A for full text of Section 9528, the final language used in NCLB.
60

New York City Public Schools
In the years following the passage of No Child Left Behind, policy entities at all
levels of the United States’ public education enterprise were left to figure out how to
interpret and manage the myriad changes associated with the legislation. New York City
Public Schools were subject to these new policy realities, and the mandates surrounding
military recruiters in schools required action on the part of the district to inform
administrators about their new responsibilities. Like many cities nationwide, New York
experienced tension in its first few years of implementing NCLB’s changed recruiter
policy. Organizations aimed at countering new recruiter access to students and schools
formed, and in the years following the passage of NCLB the Students or Soldiers?
Coalition (helmed by the New York Civil Liberties Union) began to put pressure on the
New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) to adopt a Chancellor’ Regulation
to deal with recruiting-related issues. In 2009, the NYCDOE formalized the district wide
policy regarding military recruiting in high schools with Chancellor’s Regulation A-825,
“No Child Left Behind Disclosure of Information to Institutions of Higher Learning and
10

the Military” , addressing some but not all of the Students or Soldiers? Coalition’s
concerns.
A-825 offers schools guidelines for dealing with the No Child Left Behind
recruiter mandates, primarily offering a centralized structure within which schools can
handle the opt-out process, as well as some regulations for managing recruiter visits.
Before A-825, schools lacked clarity around their responsibilities to the military, and had
no official policy to rely on when interacting with recruiters. Schools were responsible
10

See Appendix B for full text of NYC Chancellor’s Regulation A-825
61

for handing their directory lists directly to recruiters, leading to some tension between
administrators and recruiters. After A-825, schools deal with opting-out centrally: at the
beginning of every school year, schools distribute an opt-out form to all students. Forms
are later collected and the names of those students opting-out are entered into a central
database. Lists of contactable students are then distributed to each branch of the military,
which deals internally with assigning recruiters to schools and neighborhoods. Matthew,
a district official whom I interviewed, explained that this was done in an attempt to
streamline the process, and control the nature of visits to schools so that if a recruiter
visits the school it is to meet with students or administration, not to visit to collect lists of
student names, which ensures that schools are not disrupted. Now, Matthew says, data
goes from the district’s central office to the military’s central office, which makes the
entire process more efficient. Outside of those requirements, schools are free to deal with
11

opting-out in whatever fashion works best for their needs.

A-825 also lays ground rules for how schools must structure school visits with
military recruiters by mandating that administrators must “give military recruiters the
same access to students as is given to other educational institutions and prospective
employers” (Chancellor's Regulation A-825: No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Disclosure of
Information to Institutions of Higher Learning and the Military, 2009). That access,
however, should not be “unfettered”, and “each principal … must designate a staff
member to serve as a point person on issues relating to military recruitment and requests
for information from institutions of higher learning who can provide guidance to students
11

We will discuss how schools’ decisions around structuring their opt-out processes bear
upon student and administrator interactions with military recruiters and recruiting in later
chapters.
62

who request it regarding these issues.” Schools are also required to answer questions
about their plans for dealing with military recruitment related issues on their annual
12

School and Youth Development Consolidated Plan , including “(1) a summary of the
school’s plans and procedures for access by military recruiters, postsecondary
educational institutions and prospective employers; (2) a plan for ensuring that students
understand their opt-out rights and receive opt-out forms; and (3) the name of the staff
member designated to oversee the plan” (Chancellor's Regulation A-825: No Child Left
Behind (NCLB) Disclosure of Information to Institutions of Higher Learning and the
Military, 2009). Matthew notes that these requirements were put in place because “there
is a realization that we’re submitting directory information to another agency and there
are certain rights that individuals have in protecting their privacy. A-825 outlines and
protects those rights inside school buildings by ensuring that schools are prepared to
handle recruiting related issues.
School Selection in New York City
The City of New York is home to over 430 separate high schools and programs
and approximately 243,000 high school students ("New York City Department of
Education Website," 2013). In order to better understand the policy and practices
surrounding military recruiting in New York City high schools, I conducted two
informational interviews prior to sample selection. In winter of 2011, I conducted my
first informational interview with an ex-military recruiter who had worked in several
12

Every public school in New York City is responsible for filling out an annual School
and Youth Development Consolidated Plan, which addresses macro and micro planning
issues from curriculum to school mission to attendance policies and beyond. The plan is
completed online each year by school administrators, and includes targeted questions
related to recruiting issues as indicated above.
63

Brooklyn High Schools. Our conversation was audio recorded, and lasted approximately
one hour. This interview facilitated a broad understanding of the practice of recruiting in
schools, and I was able to gain some familiarity with the general procedures and
guidelines for recruiters working with students. I met this recruiter through a friend, and
he agreed to participate in this study for informational purposes in order to help me
understand the basics of recruiting procedures in schools.
Next, I conducted internet research in order to identify several district officials in
the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) that might be involved in
military recruiting-related policy issues. I contacted Matthew, a director in the district’s
policy and planning office, via email and telephone in order to establish which district
officials might be able to provide insight for this project. Matthew proved difficult to
reach initially, but agreed to an informational interview to help me establish a grasp on
district procedures and school requirements specific to military recruiting. He identified
that he is the singular district employee charged with dealing with military recruitingrelated issues in New York City public schools. Our conversation helped build familiarity
with both the rules governing the military’s presence in schools as well as how New York
City expects schools to handles recruiting issues. Additionally, the interview helped me
understand the history of military recruiting policy in New York City, specifically the
City’s centralized opt-out procedures and equal access requirements. This conversation
occurred over the course of two separate meetings due to Matthew’s schedule, and lasted
about 45 minutes in total. Matthew declined audiotaping on both occasions. Appendix C
contains all interview protocols used throughout this study.

64

I used a snowball sample for school selection based on suggestions from my
district level contact. Initially, I intended to pursue schools that would offer a
representative cross-section of New York City’s public high schools, sampling on such
dimensions as student demographic breakdowns by race, class and sex, school size, and
school location so that I might achieve a complete picture of military recruiting
enterprises in New York schools. Using Burk’s (2001) measures of material salience and
moral integration to sensitize me to different measures that could impact the military’s
institutional presence in a school, I attempted to find schools near military bases and in
differently resourced neighborhoods. I also attempted to include at least one high school
with a JROTC program, with the idea that a JROTC presence serves as an extension of
material salience (Burk, 2001). Along those same lines and because I am familiar with
the breadth of schooling options in New York, I also attempted to incorporate both
comprehensive and specialized high schools. My contact at NYCDOE suggested one
possible school site (North Deco High School) based on that school’s responses to
military recruiting questions in its annual School and Youth Consolidated Development
13

Plan . Beyond that singular recommendation, my NYCDOE contact was unwilling to
provide any other contact suggestions and informed me that no one else at the district
level would be able to help me. At the time, I understood Matthew’s reluctance to help
(and his general attitude of anxiety in discussing military recruiting with me) as a sign of
some tension surrounding the topic, at least at the district level. I believe this experience
13

Every public school in New York City is responsible for filling out an annual School
and Youth Development Consolidated Plan, which addresses macro and micro planning
issues from curriculum to school mission to attendance policies and beyond. The plan is
completed online each year by school administrators, and includes targeted questions
related to recruiting issues as indicated above.
65

worked to sensitize me to tensions surrounding my conversations throughout the rest of
my interviews: indeed, my post-interview notes regularly remark on whether or not a
participant seemed “tense” or “uncomfortable” in the interviews. In general, my
experience with Matthew proved anomalous: though my interviewees often discussed
anxiety around the practice of recruiting, none of my participants expressed discomfort
talking about recruiting with me. In fact, my experience was quite the opposite:
participants seemed happy to share their thoughts and feelings. Upon reflection, it is
possible that my own greenness with interviewing (Matthew was one of my first
interviews for this project) made Matthew uncomfortable, or perhaps the issue of
recruiting is tense at the district level. In either case, Matthew’s message to me was clear:
he was willing to discuss military recruiting in New York City on very limited terms. I
did end up pursuing his one suggested lead: I scheduled a meeting with North Deco’s
principal Diane where we discussed the possibility of North Deco’s participation in my
project and planned a convenient time for interviews in her school.
I then wrote a request to the NYCDOE’s Research and Policy Support Group in
order to obtain opt-out data for every high school in New York City for (the only
available years) 2010 and 2011. I downloaded demographic data from the NYCDOE’s
website for every high school in New York City, which included student demographic
breakdowns by race, class, sex, English language learning status, and enrollment by
grade. I then merged those statistics with the district’s opt-out numbers in order to create
a demographic database for the high schools in New York City. Using this data, I ranked
City high schools by opt-out percentage, with the idea that my sample could benefit from
incorporating one high school with a particularly high rate of opt-out across multiple

66

years because I hypothesized that a school with a large student opt-out percentage might
create or contribute to a particularly anti-military environment. I identified four high
schools where over 90% of students opted out in both 2010 and 2011, and contacted all
four principals via email and follow-up calls. The secretary at Paulie High School in
Manhattan suggested that I come into school to meet with principal Evelyn, and I
obliged. Evelyn agreed to participate and we scheduled a good time to conduct
interviews.
14

I began conducting interviews at Paulie and North Deco High Schools.

Simultaneously, I attempted to locate other schools willing to participate in my study by
reaching out to high schools with diverse student demographics and varying sizes and
locations. Principal Diane at North Deco recommended I reach out to Paul, principal of
Tapley High, for two reasons: a) she worked with him for many years at Tapley and
considers him a friend and b) Tapley’s location is proximal to a large Army base, which I
had mentioned was desirable for my study. Capitalizing on this entree, I scheduled a
meeting with Paul, who subsequently agreed to participate in my study.
I initially intended to work only with four schools and at this point in the school
selection process I wanted to find a school with a JROTC program because I
hypothesized that exposure to JROTC might alter how students and administrators
experienced military recruiting. I located a list of all JROTC programs in New York City
on the Army JROTC’s website. At this point, I had already contracted with three schools
in at three of NYC’s five boroughs. Again aiming for diversity in my sample, I merged
the list of JROTC schools with my demographic/opt-out database in order to identify
14

For details about interview procedures, see following section.
67

target schools in the two remaining boroughs, ordering schools by preference based on
enrollment size and race and class breakdowns. I reached out to eight schools and was
able to schedule two informational meetings on the same day with Maher at Florence
Luscomb and Don at Maritime, both of which are located in different neighborhoods in
Queens. Both agreed to participate, and after touring Maritime’s facilities, I believed my
study would deeply benefit from its unusual curriculum. I decided to go ahead with five
sample schools as opposed to four, believing more data would strengthen my study.
Table 3 - 2010-2011 Study Sample Demographics by School

School

Total
Enrollment

2010
Opt-Out
%

2011
Opt-Out
%

Postsecondary
Enrollment
%

Military
Enlistment %

JROTC

Paulie High
School

413

94.6%

95.8%

78.7

0

No

North Deco
High School

2476

17.0%

29.5%

52.8

4

No

Tapley High
School

1297

38.0%

13.5%

72.1

0

No

Florence
Luscomb

4211

15.8%

17.2%

78.6

N/A*

Yes

Maritime
High School

2119

13.7%

14.0%

56.6

8

Yes

NYC High
School
Average

734

34.74

36.40

46.6

N/A*

--

68

Table 3 (cont’d)
School

Free and Reduced
Lunch %

Asian %

Hispanic %

Black %

White %

Paulie High
School

67.0

10.9

41.6

36.3

6.8

50.9

6.9

26.1

12.9

53.8

79.7

18.4

54.9

10.3

15.9

57.4

51.6

24.1

8.3

15.8

77.4

25.3

58.0

6.1

9.2

74.4

8.8

43.6

39.3

7.6

North Deco
High School
Tapley
High School
Florence
Luscomb
Maritime
High School
NYC High
School
Average

*Incomplete/Unavailable data.
All data comes from the New York City Department of Education.
Table 3 displays demographic data for the five schools participating in this study.
This sample offers diversity in three critical criteria necessary for answering the research
question: school size and location, and military opt-out percentages. Though the average
size of NYC high schools is 734 students, this number reflects the proliferation of small,
specialized schools that enroll approximately 500 students as well as the large
comprehensive high schools that can enroll as many as 5000 students. This study offers
insight into schools on both ends of that spectrum as well as several schools of varying
intermediate sizes. Further, this study offers diversity of location, another measure of
material salience, which might impact school communities’ relationship to the military.
The schools in this study are both urban (Paulie) and suburban (North Deco), close to
military bases (Tapley) and close to military industry (Maritime) (Burk, 2001).
Additionally, I achieved two schools with JROTC programs, located in four of the five
69

boroughs of New York City. Finally, these schools represent a broad diversity of opt-out
percentages, offering some insight into how the military might be received in each of
these distinct school communities. For the purposes of designing a sample that would
result in a diversity of experiences specific to military recruiting, this sample offers broad
representation on dimensions that are important for this study’s research questions.
A few limitations: though the schools in this study offer broad racial diversity,
two race categories offer some concern. First, none of the schools in this study match or
exceed the average percentage of black students in New York City high schools (roughly
39.3% in 2010). Because the research on military recruiting is deeply concerned with the
impact of recruiting on students of color, the small percentages of black students in these
five schools is noteworthy. It is possible that, because of this problem, this data in this
study may not represent or my analyses may fail to key into some of the larger concerns
specific to that population. Additionally, the schools in this study overrepresent the
number of Asian students in City high schools. In this case, Asian students are far more
likely to pursue postsecondary education than their counterparts of other races ("National
Center for Education Statistics," 2013). Overrepresentation of this population in this
study may impact study participants’ understandings of postsecondary planning, and
impact the number of students pursuing postsecondary alternatives to college. Finally,
the schools in this study are transitioning more students into postsecondary education
plans than is average in New York City schools. This may impact study participants’
understandings of military recruiting. As this study will explain in subsequent chapters,
military enlistment is often understood as an alternative to the de facto postsecondary
option: college attendance. In this case, schools that are sending more students to college

70

may be less likely to consider the military and may discourage students interested in
service. Conversely, these numbers may indicate that the military recruiting enterprises in
these schools are less successful. In either case, the higher percentage of students
pursuing college in these schools limits the generalizability of this study’s findings.
Participant Sampling
Participant sampling procedures were the same at every school in this study. Both
administrator and student participants were selected purposefully in pursuit of
“information-rich” cases that would yield the most data about military recruiting in each
school context (Patton, 2001). Each school’s principal identified between four and seven
administrators with experience relevant to military recruiting related issues. At all five
schools, I interviewed the school principal, the assistant principal in charge of
pupil/personnel-related issues and at least one college counselor. Other interviewed roles
varied across schools, depending upon school structure and administrative decisions
surrounding school-specific military recruiting policies. These roles included guidance
counselors, special education teachers, JROTC instructors, and other personnel the
principal felt could offer particular insight into military recruiting in his/her school. Table
4 shows the demographic characteristics of administrators in the interview sample..
Table 4 - Descriptive Information on Administrator Participants
Administrator

School

Role

Sex

Rocco
Gino

Maritime
Maritime

M
M

Sonia
Don
Floyd

Maritime
Maritime
Maritime

Assistant Principal - Guidance
Assistant Principal – Maritime
Maintenance
College Counselor
Principal
Electricity Teacher,
Attendance Coordinator

Military
Service
Y
Y

F
M
M

N
N
Y

71

Table 4 (cont’d)
Darren
Jack
Chelsea

Maritime
Maritime
Florence Luscomb

Senior Guidance Counselor
Teacher - JROTC
Assistant Principal - Guidance

M
M
F

N
Y
N

Andrea

Florence Luscomb

F

N

Scott
Maher
Roger
Clare

Florence Luscomb
Florence Luscomb
Florence Luscomb
North Deco

M
M
M
F

N
N
Y
N

Stuart
Cheryl
Diane
Leroy
Lena

North Deco
North Deco
North Deco
Paulie
Paulie

M
F
F
M
F

N
N
N
N
N

Evelyn
Mark
Carrie

Paulie
Paulie
Tapley

F
M
F

N
N
N

Elaine
Jenny
Peggy
Paul

Tapley
Tapley
Tapley
Tapley

Assistant Principal - Pupil
Personnel Services
College Counselor
Principal
Teacher - JROTC
Assistant Principal - Pupil
Personnel Services
Attendance Coordinator
College Counselor
Principal
Assistant Principal
Guidance and College
Counselor
Principal
Teacher - Special Education
Assistant Principal - Pupil
Personnel Services
College Counselor
College Counselor
Guidance Counselor
Principal

F
F
F
M

N
N
N
N

Student participants were also selected in the same manner across schools. I
created a flyer advertising my study (see Appendix D) asking for 30-45 minutes of
student time, which administrators at all five schools were asked to distribute to potential
student participants. Interested students obtained parental consent and signed an assent
form. Each school allowed me to interview between five and seven students, and
interviewed students were selected from the pool of potential candidates by an
administrator at each school. Students were selected in order to reflect what these
administrators believed was a typical cross-section of student outcomes at their schools,
72

with care to include students of both sexes and with representation from JROTC
programs, if applicable. These selections were made with the idea of selecting a roughly
representative sample of students’ postsecondary outcomes within each school. I also
made sure to include students of both sexes in each school and, if applicable, students
with and without JROTC experience. Table 5 shows the demographic characteristics of
students in the interview sample.
Table 5 - Descriptive Information on Student Participants
Name

School

Grade

Sex

Tricia
Tucker
Caleb
Sarah
Ben
Wally
Bradley
Aidan
Cameron
Traci
Nathaniel
Timothy
Lucy
Mara
Mary
Tamara
Joshua
Sabrina
Roberto
Hannah
Miguel
Giselle
Elena
Andre

Maritime
Maritime
Maritime
Maritime
Maritime
Florence Luscomb
Florence Luscomb
Florence Luscomb
Florence Luscomb
Florence Luscomb
North Deco
North Deco
North Deco
North Deco
North Deco
North Deco
North Deco
Paulie
Paulie
Paulie
Paulie
Paulie
Tapley
Tapley

Super Senior
Senior
Super Senior
Senior
Senior
Senior
Senior
Senior
Senior
Senior
Senior
Senior
Junior
Senior
Senior
Senior
Senior
Senior
Senior
Senior
Senior
Senior
Senior
Senior

F
M
M
F
M
M
M
M
M
F
M
M
F
F
F
F
M
F
M
F
M
F
F
M

73

Postsecondary
Plans
College-Bound
Enlisted
Enlisted
Enlisted
Enlisted
Enlisted
College-Bound
College-Bound
College-Bound
College-Bound
Undecided
College-Bound
College-Bound
College-Bound
College-Bound
College-Bound
Enlisted
College-Bound
College-Bound
College-Bound
College-Bound
Enlisted
Enlisted
College-Bound

JROTC
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
Yes
No
Yes
No
Yes
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A

Table 5 (cont’d)
Dylan

Tapley

Senior

M

College-Bound

N/A

Howie
Sophie

Tapley
Tapley

Senior
Senior

M
F

Enlisted
College-Bound

N/A
N/A

Sam

Tapley

Junior

M

College-Bound

N/A

Coding and Analysis
Interviews were transcribed and then analyzed in two separate phases. In the first
cut at analysis, brief analytic notes and memos were written summarizing participants’
understandings of the purpose of recruiting in schools, notable experiences with recruiters
and (in the case of administrators) participants’ understanding of military recruiting
policy at the federal, district and school levels (Miles and Huberman, 1994). These
themes became the basis for an initial coding schematic, which also reflected potential
themes from Burk’s theory of institutional presence and Labaree’s three goals of
schooling. Initial themes emerging from analytic memos include expressions of
discomfort or anxiety around recruiters or recruiting, relationships between military
recruiting and college attendance, and factors in postsecondary decision-making
processes such as family influence and administrator guidance. Institutional presence
codes attempted to capture the ideas of material salience (recruiter face time, experience
with recruiting advertisements, proximity to military bases) and moral integration
(feelings toward the military in general and the practice of recruiting in schools). To
capture Labaree’s three goals for schooling, I used codes that assessed participants’ ideas
of the purpose of school in general as well as their individual purpose in school. These
codes could be gleaned from statements about what participants believe school is
supposed to do as opposed to what school actually does for them, how students believe

74

their school prepares them (or does not) for postsecondary life, and what administrators
see as their responsibilities specific to students’ postsecondary outcomes.
The initial coding scheme was revised to add nuance to large ideas and broaden
underdeveloped themes. Throughout the initial coding process, I wrote brief notes after
each interview, taking care to list themes that were not captured by the initial coding
schematic. These notes were compiled and synthesized to reflect additional thematic
findings and add subcodes that captured specific elements or facets of each theme. All
interviews were recoded to reflect the final coding schematic. The major area of revision
occurred around the idea of school mission and the importance of school mission in
shaping participants’ understanding of the purpose of recruiting in schools as well as
feelings about the military enlistment option. Both administrators’ and students’
responses referenced school mission in both direct and oblique ways, and I developed
codes that characterized different school missions. It became necessary to distinguish
schools according to whether or not administrators and students could identify a specific
purpose for their respective schools, and as such I developed the “mission-specific” and
“mission-diffuse” descriptors for participants’ responses. The mission-specific code is
applied in cases when participants identify that their school is designed or structured in
pursuit of a specific postsecondary outcome, i.e. college attendance or technical
competency. Mission-diffuse schools identify the purpose of their school as general
preparedness for postsecondary life, without one specific outcome in mind. Beyond this,
I also classified schools according to their selectivity, as the extent to which students
selected to attend the institution in question also emerged as a common theme. As such,
“zoned” schools, where students are eligible for attendance based on their residence, are

75

considered “nonselective” for the purposes of this study, whereas schools where students
opt into attendance based on an explicit theme or program are considered selective. In
addition to participant responses, I used school documents such as websites, school
brochures, and newspaper articles to support my classifications of schools’ missions.
Table 6 illustrates the classification of schools in this study.
Table 6 - Participant Schools by Category
Mission - Specific
Selective
Nonselective

Mission- Diffuse

Paulie High School*
Maritime High School^
North Deco High School
Florence Luscomb High
School

Tapley High School*

* College-Preparatory School
^ Vocational-Technical School
Additionally, other revisions occurred in primarily in two areas of the coding
schematic: administrators’ identification of classes or “types” of students and students’
beliefs about their administrators’ feelings surrounding recruiting. In both of these areas,
initial coding did not adequately capture participant data. In particular, administrators
understanding of students’ postsecondary outcomes were regularly framed in terms of
broad classes of students based on a variety of factors that were not accounted for by any
of the initial theory. Additionally, students regularly assigned value to their
administrators’ beliefs about recruiting based on the material salience of the military in
their schools, which was also not accounted for initially. These codes became salient in
this study as they assist in the identification of the school-specific themes that help
describe how participants understand recruiting in each school context.

76

After the final coding mechanism was created, another coder and I independently
coded four interviews that I purposefully selected so that they would cover a broad
diversity of content areas. We compared responses and discussed areas of discrepancy in
order to arrive at consensus. These efforts constitute a soft reliability check, but limited
resources curtailed more rigorous endeavors.
Interviews were coded using Dedoose qualitative research software, which
enables pattern visualization within code application across schools and among students
and administrators. After coding, I produced analytic memos probing questions specific
larger themes both within and across schools. Emergent patterns were compared against
schools’ demographics and opt-out data, participation in JROTC as well as evidence of
school mission in order to contextualize and explain findings. Appendix E includes a list
of initial codes together with those codes that emerged in the course of data analysis.
Advantages and Limitations of Study Design
There are several distinct advantages to this study design. The largest advantage
in this study involves the variety of schools selected for participation, as each of the
schools can brings something important and distinct to the sample. Paulie High offers a
small college-preparatory environment where students opt into attendance, where Tapley
offers a larger sized program aimed at college preparation but students are zoned in rather
than selecting to attend. Both North Deco and Florence Luscomb operate comprehensive
high school models, although Florence Luscomb has a much larger population and also
operated a substantial JROTC program, where North Deco is located on Staten Island in a
suburban environment. Maritime is a vocational technical high school, also with a large

77

JROTC presence. The variety in these schools offers an opportunity to delve deeply into
understandings of military recruiting in multiple school environments.
Additionally, this study benefits from the inclusion of both students and
administrators in the sample. In most literature that addresses issues of military recruiting
in schools, literature focuses on students’ experiences or policy critiques. This study
benefits from the perspectives of both students and administrators, allowing for a more
complete picture of military recruiting enterprises within a school. These complementary
perspectives allow an opportunity to compare administrators’ intentions against students’
practical experiences, which illuminates the landscape of military recruiting within each
school and facilitates comparisons across schools.
One disadvantage of this study is that the process of selecting schools was largely
reliant upon administrators’ willingness to participate in this project. Contracting
participation can be a difficult proposition for any researcher, but as I learned quickly in
this process, several administrators were deeply reticent to discuss or participate in a
project about a topic as sensitive as military recruiting in schools. This means that those
schools that did participate fall under the leadership of administrators without
reservations about the subject, potentially biasing the sample. I was obliged to work with
schools that were willing to work with me, suggesting that selection bias limits
generalizability.
Another limitation of this study is its small sample size. Because of restrictions on
administrators’ willingness to participate in this project, participant sample sizes are quite
small in the context of schools. Additionally, participant selection was contingent upon
who administrators believed would be helpful or have relevant experiences to share so

78

that selection bias is present both for the schools and for study participants within the
schools. Hence, cautions about generalizability are warranted.

79

CHAPTER 5: COLLEGE OR BUST AT PAULIE HIGH SCHOOL
We are a college prep school, so our end goal is, wherever kids come to us,
whether they be that could conceivably go to an honors school or kids that have
some pretty intense needs, we try to get them ready and into college. We’re pretty
successful with that mission. I think if that’s the mission, that’s another reason
why military recruiting isn’t as intense in here. – Mark, Special Education
Teacher, Paulie High School
The students and administrators at Paulie High School were among the first
interviewed for this project. With 2010 and 2011 annual opt-out percentages of 94.62
percent and 95.83 percent, respectively, Paulie is one of only four schools city-wide with
more than 90 percent opting out for two years in a row ("2010 and 2011 Numbers of
Students Opting-Out, By School and Year ", 2011). I approached Paulie administrators
about the possibility of conducting research primarily in response to these statistics: I
wondered why they were so high, and felt the school’s administrators and students would
offer my investigation a distinct perspective. At 413 students, Paulie is far and away the
smallest school in this study. The next largest school, Tapley High School, has nearly
1300 enrolled students.
Paulie High draws students from all over the City’s five boroughs. Principal
Evelyn notes that because school registration is lottery based (rising ninth grade students
interested in attending put their names into a lottery and are selected randomly) the
school’s racial demographics change year to year. At the time of my interviews, the bulk
of Paulie students (41.6%) identified as Hispanic, 36.3% identified as Black, 10.9% as
Asian and 6.8% as White. Paulie is identified as a grade “A” school by the New York
City Department of Education, achieving particularly high scores in both the Student

80

15

Progress

16

and Student Performance

arenas of the report card. Specific to college

enrollment, 79.6% of Paulie High School’s 2010 graduating seniors enrolled in college,
compared to 50.4% citywide. Just over half (55%) of Paulie students are female ("School
Demographics and Accountability Snapshot," 2012). Table 7, below, summarizes
Paulie’s students’ demographic information.
Table 7 - Paulie High School Demographic Information
Total
Enrollment

2010 OptOut %

2011
Opt-Out
%

Free and
Reduced
Lunch
%

Male
%

Female
%

Postsecondary
Enrollment %

413

94.62%

95.83%

67.0

45.0

55.0

78.7

Asian %

Hispanic
%

Black %

White %

ELL
%

SPED %

10.9

41.6

36.3

6.8

2.2

12.6

Paulie was founded in 2004 as a partnership with the New York City research
institution Paulie University with a focus on college preparation. Paulie High School
founder and principal Evelyn notes that Paulie “consider[s itself] an un-themed liberal
arts school which focuses on getting [students] ready for the colleges of their choices.”
In addition to ensuring the academic preparation necessary to pursue college, Paulie’s
small environment enables all students to meet with a daily advisory group that assists
with every aspect of college prep from applications to FAFSA assistance to packing lists.

15

Student Progress measures the annual progress students make toward meeting the
state's graduation requirements by earning course credits and passing state Regents
exams. (New York City Schools Progress Reports, 2011)
16

Student Performance measures how many students graduated within 4 and 6 years of
starting high school, and the types of diplomas they earned. (New York City Schools
Progress Reports, 2011)
81

Indeed, this focus on college readiness permeated throughout my interviews: all Paulie
students and administrators interviewed for this project noted at least once in their
interview that Paulie is a “college-preparatory” institution. The school’s website calls
Paulie High a “college oriented, student-centered” environment. For the purposed of this
study, I classify Paulie as a “mission-specific, selective” high school because it a)
identifies one clear postsecondary objective for its students and b) students select to
attend the institution rather than being zoned in.
In order to facilitate a college-going culture, Paulie High students are afforded
unlimited access to the Paulie University campus, where they make use of Paulie’s
technology labs, libraries and communal gathering spaces. Incoming freshman participate
in a summer welcome program on Paulie University’s Westchester County campus. The
program is designed to acclimate students to a college atmosphere and provide students
(many of whom would be the first in their families to attend college) with a tangible idea
of what a college experience could look like. Older students are required to take on
internships to assist in building competitive college applications, and are also encouraged
to take courses at Paulie University for college-level credits.
I interviewed five students and four administrators at Paulie High School. Only
one student, Giselle, maintains plans to enlist after high school. Table 8 displays
information for Paulie High School study participants.
Table 8 - Paulie High School Interviewee Information
Pseudonym

Role/Grade

Sex

Leroy
Lena

Assistant Principal
Guidance and College
Counselor
Principal

M
F

Military Service/
Postsecondary Plan
N
N

F

N

Evelyn

82

Table 8 (cont’d)
Mark
Sabrina
Roberto
Hannah
Miguel
Giselle

Teacher - Special Education
Senior
Senior
Senior
Senior
Senior

M
F
M
F
M
F

N
College-Bound
College-Bound
College-Bound
College-Bound
Enlisted

Because of Paulie High School’s unusually high rate of opt-out, students at Paulie
do not receive military recruiting information or interact with military recruiters on
school grounds. When I began to investigate why students at Paulie were opting-out of
receiving recruiter information in such high numbers, I discovered a relatively simple
explanation: military opt-out letters are included in a packet of forms sent home to
parents at the beginning of every school year, and students are required to return the
packet. In fact, in order to expedite the return process, the advisory group that returns
those required forms first wins a pizza party prize. Leroy, Paulie’s Assistant Principal,
believes that handling the opt-out process in this way is confusing. He notes,
So, once you start putting [the opt-out forms] in with a pile of other important
forms that need to be returned – required forms – then this becomes a “required”
form instead of an optional form. And so now the optional form – that’s what opt
out means – I’m opting out, it’s an optional choice, I don’t want to be in – but
instead it’s now put with our required forms… You take an opt-out form and put
in with required documents and soon people are checking off that they don’t want
the military recruiting information.
This administrative decision, he continues, means that recruiters are not allowed to
provide information to the majority of Paulie students, and thus do not attempt to visit
campus. Paulie’s guidance counselor and college advisor, Lena, agrees, noting that she
met with an Army recruiter only once in her five years at Paulie because “once we had
the opt–out it was a non-issue. [The military] never contacted me after that.” For her part,
83

Principal Evelyn expresses surprise that her school’s rate of opt-out is higher than
average, and denied making policy decisions with the intention of keeping recruiters
away from Paulie High. Evelyn chalks it up to her school’s college-preparatory mission,
noting, “We get all our opt-outs back because I think we push for our kids to go to
college first.” Regardless of the intention, the impact of Paulie High School’ opt-out
policy is clear: administrators and students never interact with military recruiters on
campus.
Of the five Paulie students interviewed for this project, none report interacting
with a recruiter at school. Students, though, attribute this to the school’s collegepreparatory focus rather than the opt-out policy. Senior Giselle, who transferred to Paulie
in the middle of the year, is planning to enlist after graduation. She notes that the military
is “not talked about at all. I think. Since this is a college prep school, you’re going to
college after high school. The teachers all expect college after high school, that’s what’s
the norm, per se.” Senior Miguel concurs,
This school’s main focus is for their students to go into college, so I think of it
more as, if a kid goes into the military that’s fine, but [administrators and
teachers] like it better if you go into a college… because they see college as a
better chance at a successful life. If you go to college, you can get anything you
want after college is done. With the military, it’s learning more, but it’s also life
or death situation.
Miguel’s suggestion that his teachers and administrators prefer college is acknowledged
by Assistant Principal Leroy, who notes that most of the faculty does not “think that [the
military] should be mentioned at all. I’ve heard and seen people try to dissuade students
who have said that they’re interested in the military.” Indeed, Principal Evelyn concedes,
characterizing the faculty at Paulie as “left” and noting that because of this the “military
has not been a good fit” for Paulie.
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Another reason why the military has not been a “good fit” for Paulie has to do
with recent headline news covering the suicide of a prominent alumnus serving in
Afghanistan. The story, covered widely in national news outlets, has hit members of the
Paulie community hard, and questions about the events leading up to this alumnus’s death
remain largely unanswered. At the time of my interviews, this alumnus’ commanding
officers were sitting trial for failing to intervene in brutal hazing situations to the point
where the alumnus felt he was without recourse. Whatever comes of the pending military
trials, Paulie administrators reported feeling that the culture of the military was at least in
part to blame for this student’s death. Instructional coach Mark suggests, “I think it was
frightening to a number of our students that, well, number one that he died and number
two the circumstances around his death are so problematic to put it lightly. And so I think
that really influenced how some of our kids see the military.” And that discomfort has
influenced how teachers and administrators talk to students about the military, Mark
notes. He continues, “I think that it’s probably hardened a number of us against you
know, really encouraging kids to look into the military.”
The College Gold Standard
I guess its like, [administrators] don’t want to outright say ‘don’t do [the
military]’ so you know, they try to show concern. You know, asking if that’s what
I want to do …but some of them still, they’re like ‘don’t do it’… like I understand
that this is a college prep school like I’ve mentioned previously and they want to
push for school and they want all the kids to go to college and make money and
do well in life, and I understand that 100% - but they do not have military
personnel on campus at all. – Giselle, Enlisted Senior, Paulie High School
(emphasis mine)
Giselle’s quote illustrates one student’s experiences navigating postsecondary
planning with administrators at her school. In Giselle’s case, she perceives a faculty
preference for college attendance, and believes that it is this preference that dictates the
85

17

absence of military recruiters in her school . All five of the interviewed students at
Paulie regularly connect the presence (or lack thereof) of recruiters in their schools to
administrative predilections, linking recruiters in their schools to a certain kind of
administrative value judgment about the desirability of college enlistment. Further, study
participants at Paulie juxtapose military enlistment against possible college attendance in
conversation, positioning military service as a kind of default, less-desirable
postsecondary option. In this way, Paulie’s college-preparatory mission is important
because it acts as a frame for study participants’ understanding of military recruiting. For
the purposes of this study, I term this stated preference for college attendance “the
college gold standard”, and this section considers what the college gold standard means
for study participants’ understandings of military recruiting in their school.
Like Giselle, interviewed students at Paulie are quick to assign ideals to how their
administrators perceive military enlistment a postsecondary option, and all five Paulie
students interviewed in this study believed that their administrators prized college
attendance over other options. Roberto agrees, observing, “If [administrators] did support
recruiters, I know I personally would see more.” Senior Miguel sought out a
conversation with a recruiter himself at a recruiting station because he could not interact
with one in his high school. For Giselle, this perception alienated her from connecting to
her administrators. She says about discussing her decision with administrators, “We don’t
really discuss it because like I said it’s not the norm.” Though she had recently had a
positive conversation with a teacher who was “understanding”, Giselle says that
17

As a reminder, Paulie High School’s administrative decision around handling the optout process is the technical reality behind the lack of recruiters on campus.
86

experience was an anomaly. She notes, “I appreciated that because I’ve also spoken to
other teachers that were like, that’s not a good idea, don’t do it, like, you know, you’re
going to end up hurt, you know, go to school…. are you sure that’s what you want to
do?” This administrative second-guessing fuels Giselle’s belief that administrators do
not support her choice, which leaves her less interested in pursuing their counsel.
Paulie’s special education teacher, Mark, confirms these students’ assessments,
noting “I’d say also a lot of the staff considers themselves progressive educators and,
generally speaking, many of them would be against the military as an option for some of
their students as well as for their own children. So, um, I think that also influences their
interactions with students.” Assistant Principal Leroy, who identifies as one of the few
staff members at Paulie who support military enlistment, finds this perspective
unfortunate and suggests that it does a “disservice” to students for whom the military
might be a good option. Relating this situation to the story of the recent military-related
death of a Paulie alumnus, Leroy posits,
“Had [Paulie alumnus] been able to be a part of a culture where he could have
talked about the military, and talked about what possibilities happen there – he
went off and joined on his own, against his parent’s wishes and probably against
the wishes of the school … so it was something that he didn’t make in a way
where we was supported and, you know, he ended up killing himself because he
was bullied. He didn’t have a support system that said ‘you can get through this’
or ‘you can do this.’”
In this case, Leroy observes that it is the singular focus on college attendance that shapes
students’ decision-making experiences at Paulie, working both to block students from
pursuing alternative options as well as potentially creating an environment in which
curious students are uncomfortable seeking counsel.

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Principal Evelyn sees counseling students toward college as a professional
responsibility emanating from her school’s stated mission. When asked about how she
works with students expressing interest in the military, Evelyn observes, “I think school
philosophy-wise and [on behalf of] parents who … tell us their concerns about their kids’
interests in joining the military, and then we sort of help support them, like, maybe these
are other options.” When asked about providing alternatives to college in a collegepreparatory environment, all four Paulie administrators cited their school’s collegepreparatory mission as a barrier for recruiters and that, for this reason, students at Paulie
had “no interest” in enlistment. In reality, four of the five students interviewed for this
study expressed interest in seeing recruiters in their school, both because they believed it
would expand opportunities for students and because they felt the presence of recruiters
in the school might impact student behavior and discipline for the positive. Despite this,
the message that students receive from their administrative mentors is clear: planning for
college negates or postpones exploring enlistment as an option, because collegeattendance is positioned as the primary choice. Alternatives to college-attendance, in this
case, are just that: second-choices to one desirable trajectory. This administrative push
toward college preparation precludes preparing students for alternative postsecondary
trajectories, leaving students who (for whatever reason) are not college-bound without
counsel.
Targeting Poor and Minority Students
I think obviously [the military] is trying to increase numbers of kids who sign up
to join the military…. the school generally receives Title I funding or other
federal funding, they’re usually working with low SES or high-need students. So,
it seems like pretty deliberate targeting to me to that population who usually are
not afforded the same opportunities or exposure. – Mark, Special Education
Teacher, Paulie High School
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Mark’s quote illustrates one of the most common ideas emerging in conversations
with Paulie High School students and administrators: military recruiters work in urban
schools in order to recruit vulnerable young people without alternative means. It is
important to note here that while this theme is certainly not limited to interviews at Paulie
(see also: Tapley High School), the lack of actual interaction with military recruiters in
school means that study participants’ ideas are not mitigated by practical experience.
Participants at other schools, while expressing similar ideas, tend to cite lived experiences
with recruiters in their buildings that complicate their understandings. At Paulie, study
participants’ understandings of military recruiting in schools remain largely speculative
and abstract.
Paulie High School’s students and administrators articulate their understandings
around the idea that military recruiters are targeting poor and minority students
differently. For administrators, observations are broad and systemic and are generally in
line with Principal Evelyn’s characterization of the faculty at Paulie as “left” (Ayers,
2006; Bigelow, 2005; Furumoto, 2005). When asked about the practice of recruiting in
schools, special education teacher Mark observes,
Kids are bombarded from a very early age with glorified military imagery and
stories and now it’s even more intensive through video games and other media. I
think that, like I said before, [the landscape of postsecondary options] is
absolutely not a level playing field, so [recruiting is] somewhat insidious within
our culture particularly working with a student population like this.
This response illustrates the “left” stance Evelyn claims is common among administrators
at Paulie: in this characterization, Mark sees recruiting systemically, identifying an
“insidious” connection between popular culture and a low-SES, high-minority student
population. Further, all four administrators interviewed at Paulie identify something

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exploitative about taking advantage of the moment of student decision-making in schools.
This discomfort results from a belief, espoused by all four administrators, that the
military is targeting recruiting efforts on underprivileged students (specifically students
of color) who may not be able to afford postsecondary schooling and for whom the G.I.
Bill may be an attractive carrot. Leroy, assistant principal at Paulie High, observes,
In urban settings people have the notion or the idea that the students are targeted
for the military because they are lower performing, lower…seemingly having
lower aptitude on SATs and ACTs and therefore are not getting into four year
programs, looking at community colleges and things…I’ve heard people say it’s
rife ground for fodder for the military.
Interviewed students at Paulie, however, tend to articulate this idea of “targeting”
a student population differently than their administrator counterparts. Rather than
articulating the practice of recruiting as targeting students, students position recruiters as
the subjects of their responses. In this case, Paulie student respondents see the practice of
targeting students in terms of questionable recruiter motivation. To these ends, three
students at Paulie identified having “suspicious” associations with military recruiter
motivation. In order to be coded as “suspicious” for this study, responses needed to
evidence concern about motivations for recruiting. For example, Roberto, a collegebound senior, notes that recruiters “have the ability to…they know that if they come to a
high school with all these young kids with immature minds…they can just, I don’t want
to say manipulate, but have an influence. And just feed them all the advertisements…that
oh, you don’t need to get a real job, just join the military and everything will be fine.”
Though Roberto stops short of specifically assigning motivation to recruiters, his quote
underscores a kind of concern or suspicion about how recruiters communicate with

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students. Hannah, also a college-bound senior, agrees with him, observing that youth
makes students vulnerable to adult influence. She says,
If you’re 18, you don’t really have a whole lot of plans, the military targets you
because I guess you’re not fully aware of what all your options are. And they’re
just like, they kind of push it on you because it’s like… ‘Here’s an opportunity,
here’s an option. If you serve for X amount of years than you can, you know,
we’ll pay for your college.’ … So, I think its more of like they target young
people A) because I would assume they’re in better physical shape and b) because
[young people] don’t really have any experience otherwise.
Even enlisted senior Giselle hints at the idea of recruiters targeting students, (“There’s a
lot of hype about that”) although she herself did not have that experience. As in Roberto’s
response, students stop short of specifically identifying recruiter motivations as predatory
or malevolent. Students see “strong influence” in providing options to “impressionable”
students, but none specifically articulated outright malevolent motivations.
Discussion
“[Administrators] see college as a better chance at a successful life. If you go to
college, you can get anything you want after college is done.” – Miguel, CollegeBound Senior, Paulie High School
Miguel’s quote is a perfect example of how Paulie High student and administrator
participants articulate the rationale behind their school’s college-preparatory mission: in
the minds of study participants at Paulie, college attendance (and the eventual college
degree) is the best way to ensure financial security and success in a capitalist economy.
In a Labaree goal framework, if ensuring students’ ability to compete in a
capitalist economy by pursuing college is viewed as the school’s foremost goal, Paulie’s
mission may be characterized as pursuing social-mobility objectives. Indeed, in this
setting that prizes college attendance precisely because it is believed to offer the best
opportunity to compete, the mission of school orients itself around students’ trajectories

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in a capitalist economy. At Paulie, the persistence of the college gold standard in
conversation serves as evidence of this practice: both administrators and students, in
pursuing their schools’ college-preparatory mission, see their school as complicit in
helping students obtain education that will help secure financial stability and advance
social stature.
The question that remains, however, is simple: how does Labaree’s goal
framework help explain Paulie study participants’ understanding military recruiting as
“targeting” students? In a social mobility orientation of a mission-specific, collegepreparatory high school, students operating in their best interests should choose college
attendance so long as they are able. Further, successful education in this framework
should ensure that all graduating students are academically able to attend college. The
logic of a social mobility framework does not have room for a student to make a choice
other than college, and the practice of Paulie High School is structured to ensure that
students are able to attend college both academically and financially. In this scenario,
there is no reason for a student to reasonably choose the military unless they were
“targeted” – that is, susceptible to the influence of an adult in a vulnerable moment. Of
course, there is another interpretation: it is possible that Paulie High School students
choosing the military (such as Giselle) might be doing so because the school has not fully
achieved its goal of ensuring that all students are able to attend college. For both
administrators and students invested in the mission of their school, the former scenario
may be much more palatable than the latter. Indeed, when asked about enlisted students
at Paulie, Principal Evelyn was quick to note that of the two graduating seniors intent on
enlisting, both had transferred to Paulie later in their high school careers. Had they been

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at Paulie for all four years, she argued, the outcomes might be different. In this way,
Evelyn is suggesting that Paulie administrators had not had the full four years of high
school to ensure these students’ eventual college attendance, which could explain why
these students made their choice.
In a school environment that is singularly so focused on college attendance as the
best possible option for a competitive edge in a postsecondary capitalist economy, any
other postsecondary options are likely to be viewed as less desirable. Administrators and
students at Paulie understand all facets of military recruiting in this context, and as such
tend to associate choosing the military with an inability to attend college. The themes
presented here offer evidence of this claim: study participants at Paulie believe that
military pursues and targets vulnerable students specifically because they may not be able
to attend college. Because of the lack of practical experience scaffolding these
understandings, there is very little counter-evidence to challenge administrators’ (and
students’) abstract feelings on this issue.

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CHAPTER 6: NEUTRAL COUNSEL AT NORTH DECO HIGH SCHOOL
We sit down and we think about that whole child. What do we want that senior to
look like so that when they walk through the doors, they can go here, here, here,
or here, and still be successful and provide for themselves? – Diane, Principal,
North Deco High School
The second of the five schools included in this project is North Deco High
School, a 2,476-student school located in central Staten Island. Originally, I approached
North Deco because the school was recommended by contacts in the New York City
Department of Education (NYCDOE), who informed me that the administrators at North
Deco had been particularly thoughtful when filling in the military recruiting-related
section of their Youth Development Consolidated Plan. Though Staten Island schools are
technically part of the NYCDOE, schools on the island maintain a distinctly suburban
feel that is quite different from any of the other schools I visited. North Deco is
particularly suburban even by Staten Island standards, abutting a large land tract with
several athletic fields, including a regulation football field complete with stadium seating
and lighting. Further, the school building itself is quite large, with several wings that
house the school’s seven small learning communities.
North Deco is a Title One school, and received an “A” from the DOE on both its
2010 and 2011 NYCDE progress reports. Students generally hail from nearby
neighborhoods on Staten Island, although a few commute from Brooklyn. In 2011, 53.8
percent of North Deco students identified as white, 26.1 percent as Hispanic, 12.9 percent
as black and 6.9 percent as Asian – numbers that generally mirror the population of
Staten Island at large (see Table 9). Just about half of North Deco’s students (50.9
percent) qualify for free or reduced price lunch, and 47.3 percent of North Deco seniors

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enroll in college compared to the NYC average of 50.4 percent ("School Demographics
and Accountability Snapshot," 2012).
Table 9 - North Deco High School Demographic Information
Total
Enrollment

2010
Opt-Out
%

2011
OptOut %

Free and
Reduced
Lunch %

SPED
%

Male
%

Female
%

2476

17.00%

29.52%

50.9

16.4

53.6

46.4

Asian %

Hispanic
%

Black
%

White %

ELL %

6.9

26.1

12.9

53.8

5.7

Postsecondary
Enrollment %
52.8

On its website, North Deco defines itself as a “comprehensive, four-year” high
school that “provide[s] an environment that enables all students including high achieving,
ELL, Literacy, and Instructional Support [students] to grow academically, intellectually,
socially, emotionally, and culturally.” Each of North Deco’s approximately 2500 students
belongs to one of its seven small learning communities, all of which maintain a specific
academic focus designed to sustain student interest and create the feeling of a smaller
school with more direct student supervision. As is common among comprehensive high
school models, North Deco boasts a battery of different student programs, including
seven Advance Placement course offerings, “college extension” courses for students on
track to attend four-year universities, partnerships with local colleges, a simulated
business venture for career-bound students called “Virtual Enterprise”, and a long list of
extracurricular activities (Powell, et al., 1985). The school’s website proudly touts a list
of alumni colleges and universities, but makes no mention of college-readiness in its
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mission. Notably, North Deco’s mission statement does not mention student outcomes at
all, and posits that the goal of a North Deco education is to “develop an appreciation of
democratic principles, and responsibility to family, community, and country, personal
integrity and the importance of life-long learning.” This wide-ranging approach to
schooling reflects the school’s comprehensive model, as it strives to meet the needs and
capabilities of its diverse student population. For the purposes of this project, North Deco
is classified as a “mission-diffuse” school because it does not identify a primary discrete
goal or objective as central to its mission.
In 2012, North Deco received some national attention due to a profile written in a
larger media outlet detailing the school’s adoption of new writing-centered curricula
across its seven small learning communities and academic disciplines. The article
presents a portrait of a large comprehensive high school that had struggled to identify the
source of its low achievement. After observing curricular approaches at nearby private
schools, Principal Diane worked with experts to adapt a back-to-basics writing-centered
curriculum that could be used across all disciplines. North Deco administrators believe
this focus has improved the school’s student assessments and saved the school from
possible closure. The exposure to national media also garnered North Deco a bit of
celebrity status: in recent months, administrators from schools and districts nationwide
have visited the school to observe its writing-centered approach.
Throughout the article, improved student success is mentioned in terms of college
readiness: anecdotes about students’ college dreams are incorporated to suggest that
stronger writing skills are contributing to increased participation in college-bound
academic tracks and increased college attendance. Several administrators are quoted

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concerning the impact of the new writing curriculum on students’ college desires. While
none of the school’s official material (nor administrators’ comments in interviews)
suggests that college attendance is a preferred postsecondary route for the school, the
extent to which this profile relies on students’ college-related data suggests that, at least
in this media context, college attendance is somewhat related to ideas about
postsecondary success. This point reflects common observations about comprehensive
high schools that materialize at North Deco: while interviewed administrators at North
Deco believe it is their responsibility to prepare students for all possible options, this
responsibility is viewed through a prism that positions college attendance as the de facto,
most desirable postsecondary option (Powell et al.).
I interviewed seven students and four administrators at North Deco High School
(see Table 10). Only one student (Joshua) plans to enlist after high school, and one
student (Nathaniel) remains undecided.
Table 10 - North Deco Interviewee Information
Administrator

Role

Sex

Clare

Assistant Principal - Pupil
Personnel Services
Attendance Coordinator
College Counselor
Principal
Senior
Senior
Junior
Senior
Senior
Senior
Senior

F

Military Service/
Postsecondary Plan
No

M
F
F
M
M
F
F
F
F
M

No
No
No
Undecided
College-Bound
College-Bound
College-Bound
College-Bound
College-Bound
Enlisted

Stuart
Cheryl
Diane
Nathaniel
Timothy
Lucy
Mara
Mary
Tamara
Joshua

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Specific to military recruiting, in 2010 17 percent of North Deco students optedout of receiving military recruiting information, while in 2011 that number jumped to
29.5 percent. Administrators at North Deco did not explain the jump, and informed me
that opting-out percentages often change from year to year, as they are completely reliant
upon students returning forms to the school’s central office that have been mailed home.
Assistant Principal for Pupil Personnel Services, Clare, credits the Department of
Education’s district-wide opt-out policy for clarifying her responsibilities around military
recruiting-related issues. She notes that before the district issued A-825, she found
military recruiters at North Deco, “incredibly aggressive and invasive in schools. I mean
they came in like pitbulls, demanding to speak to kids, demanding access to information,
demanding my attention, demanding the attention of the college and career counselor.
That has changed considerably in the last several years.” A-825, she notes, streamlined
the process, so recruiters were no longer asking her directly for student information,
which felt uncomfortable. Now, recruiters get their information “in a very prescribed
way” so “there’s not that struggle for information,” Clare suggests, which has changed
administrative attitudes towards recruiting in the building.
Another potential explanation for that change, suggests Diane -- the school’s
principal -- is that several North Deco students have returned from serving in the military
overseas, and administrators and teachers have collectively remarked on how that service
has changed these former students for the better. “Once our staff actually saw their
maturity level, their responsibility, their success, their completion of college, and career
type stuff, I think that it kind of eased our attention like we weren’t doing the wrong thing
[by supporting their decision to serve].”

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Additionally, in April of 2008, North Deco sent its Attendance Coordinator Stuart
on the Marines’ educator workshop in Parris Island, South Carolina. (North Deco is one
of three schools in my sample to send educators to the Parris Island workshop - Florence
Luscomb and Maritime Engineering also sent at least one administrator.) The five-day
retreat for teachers and administrators was designed to help educators understand what
happens to students once they enlist. Though official information about the educators’
workshop is difficult to obtain on the internet, a blog post on the Midwest Marine Corps’
Official Website entitled “Educators' Workshop: What all recruiters should know” states
that the educator’s workshop is “designed to specifically dispel all misconceptions about
the Marine Corps that infiltrate the American society” ("Ninth Marine Corps District
Website," 2004). To these ends, participants are selected by local Marine Corps recruiters
based on how they might “benefit the Marine Corps and help in its positive promotion.”
Over the course of the retreat, educators are flown to South Carolina and exposed to
several boot camp experiences that recruits go through in their first week as enlisted
Marines. Stuart notes that his time in Parris Island was “one of the greatest experiences of
my life on this job because I got to actually see what people who are serving and
defending our nation and dedicating their lives and willing to give up their lives, what
[they do to] prepare for that.” Since returning, Stuart has parlayed his experience into a
role as an unofficial liaison for Marine recruiting at North Deco, “enlightening kids and
educating students and prospective candidates for the Marine Corps of what they can
expect” by helping recruiters contact students, suggesting potential candidates, and
facilitating Marine recruiter school visits. This on-the-ground liaison has paved the way
for a permanent Marine recruiter presence on campus.

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In general, the North Deco students I interviewed report indifference to the
presence of military recruiters in their school, as if recruiters are an expected, but not
intrusive part of the landscape. Each student reported seeing recruiters stationed in the
cafeteria during lunch, roaming the hallways, or manning a booth at the school’s annual
college fair. When asked how they felt about seeing recruiters this regularly, students
universally reflect a lack of personal concern. When asked about that apathy, junior Lucy
notes, “To be honest, high school kids, it's one of those things. They really don't care. I
really don't think it makes a difference unless you want to be with that group.” Though
several interviewed students had had minor encounters with recruiters, no one expressed
discomfort with recruiter presence or any specific feelings of enthusiasm. Indeed,
according to interviewed students, military recruiting is so thoroughly integrated into the
school atmosphere that students often do not even notice they are there at all.
While the interviewed students themselves reported lack of concern for recruiters,
six of the seven interviewed students suggest that the school seems more focused on
encouraging students to attend college than enter the military. Senior Mary notes,
“Maybe the school is a little hesitant towards it or maybe they're just tolerant of just a
little exposure, or maybe they're just promoting the college more. I think I have more
college in my ear than military. I think the school is going more towards college.”
Another senior, Mara, concurs, “I don’t think that [the school’s guidance counselor]
thinks there’s anything wrong with going into the military but if you have the option to
go to a four-year school, even if it’s a CUNY or a SUNY, go. Just go to that and she’ll
get students ready and never have I heard anything about the military. She has never
encouraged the military.” Though students at North Deco stopped short of saying that

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administrators at their school explicitly preferred college attendance to military
enlistment, students felt that preparation for college was an active part of postsecondary
planning in their school.
Administrator “Neutrality” – A Place for Every Student
I don’t think anybody should play any more of a role than giving students enough
information, clear information for students and families to make their own
decision. Being more aggressive to me is just not the right thing. I think that you
need to be clear, you need to lay it all out, you need to show them options,
advantages, disadvantages in every case, and then allow the kids to really
discover, inquire, do those things until they make that decision. -- Diane,
Principal, North Deco High School
Diane’s quotation illustrates a common theme among those North Deco
administrators who were interviewed concerning how to assist students in postsecondary
decision-making: provide students (and families) with the best information available and
equip them with critical thinking skills so that they might make responsible, clear-minded
decisions. In interviews about study participants’ experiences with military recruiting at
North Deco, all four administrators in this study, unprompted, prefaced their answers to
interview questions with conversations about their neutral stance about military recruiting
and enlistment such as “I don’t have any personal feelings about the military one way or
the other.” Further, answers often ended with similar claims: administrators stated and
restated their neutral feelings about military recruiting and enlistment and declined to
explicitly place value on the practice of recruiting in schools. This insistence on
specifying a neutral stance means that, beyond logistical conversations about schoolspecific military recruiting policy, conversations with administrators about “military
recruiting” at North Deco turn into conversations about “military enlistment” as a
postsecondary option for students. In other words, the fact that the practice of recruiting

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is so integrated at North Deco combined with administrators’ distinct unwillingness to
comment on it suggests that administrators’ understandings of recruiting are tightly
bound to their understandings of enlistment. As such, this section explores how
interviewed North Deco administrators understand their role in preparing students to
make the best possible postsecondary decision for themselves.
North Deco administrators believed that they should strive for “neutrality” when
helping students navigate the postsecondary landscape. Following on that, the
interviewees believed that no one option should be deemed favorable in conversations
with students. This is not to say that administrators are actually acting in neutral ways,
merely that the administrators believed that a neutral stance is preferable. This was
accompanied by the sentiment that students should make the best decision for themselves
with as much accurate information as possible. Clare, assistant principal for pupilpersonnel services at North Deco, echoes Diane’s position, “being a guidance counselor
lends itself to them not imposing your own personal opinions on the whole military
recruitment and going into that as a potential career. They're trying to get the kids to be
more in tune with making the decisions an informed decision on their own.”
All of the administrators also offered a rationale for their behavior, noting that it
was important to remain “neutral”: North Deco houses a broad diversity of students and
these students have a variety of options available. While college is one possibility, Diane
is careful to note that North Deco’s primary objective is to be ready for any option
students may choose. This is notably different than beliefs among administrators at
Paulie High School who wanted all of their students to be college-ready. At North Deco,
administrators stress that students should be equipped to make the best postsecondary

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decision for themselves, and then they should have the necessary skills to pursue that
decision, whatever it is. Diane explains:
I just know that students should be afforded the choice of college, career or
military. They should be able to at least be given information that’s equal. Like
if I have a college recruiting here from a community college, I should have SUNY
colleges, I should have private colleges, I should have postsecondary programs
that are more related to training rather than college like beauticians, trade
programs, and computer type of things, and at the same time the different
branches of the military should be represented so that students have a full array of
options because not everything is for everyone. Everyone has their own strengths,
deficits, and interests.
Here, Diane, like the other administrators at North Deco, rejects a “one-size-fits-all”
approach to postsecondary transitions. Administrators believed that maintaining a neutral
stance would assist in the process of helping students pursue the best option for them, and
believe that exposing students to a variety of options enables students the opportunity to
drive their own train. Even Cheryl, North Deco’s college counselor, takes care to include
military recruiting literature in her office. When asked about her perspective, she says
that she includes the military in her counseling sessions with students because, “it’s a
good option for some kids. They’re not all college material. Maybe school isn’t in the
cards – there’s more to the world than Staten Island. [They may want to] get out of where
they’re living.” Assistant principal Clare agrees, suggesting that part of administrators’
responsibility at North Deco is to understand the basic logistics behind military
enlistment so as to best serve students. She notes, “since we're the ones working with the
students on a daily basis, I would say that part of that process should be also to educate
administration and staff as to what goes on [in the enlistment process], what the actual
options are, open to these students. I guess I would say that that should be one of their
roles.”

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In this sense, interviewed administrators at North Deco see themselves as
maintaining a neutral stance so as to be able to provide effective counsel for students who
may not pursue college attendance. As both Diane and Cheryl illustrate, interviewed
administrators see students headed toward a wide swath of outcomes, academic and
vocational. What that means practically for their work, Diane suggests, is that
administrators see student outcomes in terms of the kinds of skills students have when
they graduate, not in terms of where they end up after high school. According to Diane,
administrators are
not preparing a kid for city universities of New York, for military, for a private
school - we’re not. We’re providing them [with the ability] to choose and with
the skills that they need to have so when they leave here, they have some selfesteem. They’re presenting themselves and they’re physically fit, which is all
related to the stuff that’s needed for the military but it’s also the stuff that’s
needed for college and it’s also the stuff that’s needed for career. So we’re not
really focusing and we don’t feel it our responsibility to get them ready for the
military, but for life. Life is life. They have to leave with self-esteem. They have
to know how to make decisions that are clear and good.
Administrators’ roles, then, involve providing counsel for students headed in all
directions, and a neutral stance facilitates that responsibility. Clare confirms this: “I just
think the more information and options that are available to kids, I think, is a win-win
situation for the students and for the parents.” In this way, administrators decline to
intervene in students’ decisions, seeing their role as supportive rather than directive. In
this sense, administrators believe it is the students’ responsibility to choose and advocate
for their own postsecondary routes.
How students know to advocate for an option when administrators do not
intervene, though, is an entirely different matter. North Deco students believe they have
“more college in their ear than military” (Mary, college-bound senior), but that their

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administrators try to help them make the best individual decision possible. This
observation aligns with other findings about comprehensive high school environments
that point to college attendance as the de facto, standard postsecondary outcome (Powell,
et al.). Lucy, a college-bound senior, notes that administrators at North Deco believe that
the military “is an option for you college-wise…. obviously there's other choices. This is
high school. It's where you want to go in life. There are millions of different majors,
millions of different jobs out there. [Administrators] have [the military] as an option.”
Lucy’s use of “college-wise” to refer to the military enlistment option is notable. Though
I did not follow-up on this point, it is possible that Lucy’s frame of reference is so heavily
college oriented that her understanding of military enlistment is wrapped up in college
attendance. It is also possible that she was referring to the military academies, or ROTC
attendance. In either case, it is notable here that, in her mind, the military is indeed a
college-related option. In this framework, when administrators prepare students to make a
postsecondary decision, that decision is made against the backdrop of college attendance.
College-bound senior Mara agrees with Lucy’s observations, and suggests that
perhaps administrators have recruiters present at North Deco to serve students who are
not as successful in school and, as such, may not be able to attend college. She notes,
I think that they also bring them here to give… systems for those who are
definitely interested in the military. Because there are students who are just like, I
want to do the military, this is something I want to do. So for those students, and
also for the students who may not be at the top tier and this may be a
consideration that they may want to take to make things more serious for
themselves so they can grow up.
Mara is making a logical leap – she takes the presence of recruiters in her school
to mean administrative support for recruiting, and believes that this support is specifically

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meant to serve and motivate less-successful students.

18

When these assumptions are

combined with experiences of administrators’ counseling around her postsecondary
options, Mara understands that to mean tacit approval of the enlistment option.
Administrators are purposefully striving towards neutrality in order to prepare
students for all possible outcomes. When students experience this neutral stance
alongside recruiter presence in schools, it makes sense that they would believe their
administrators support enlistment as a postsecondary option; there is no evidence to the
contrary. But how is that neutrality perceived when viewed against the backdrop of de
facto college attendance? When enlistment is not discouraged but college attendance is
(at least tacitly) encouraged, who goes to college and who enlists? How do Cheryl and
her colleagues know what kind of student is “college material” and what kind of student
is not? What, then, are the impacts of this “neutrality”? I return to these questions at the
end of this chapter.
“Other People Think”: The Removed Perspective
From time to time, different schools and different districts and different
individuals…have different political views on things…I think [introducing
district-wide military recruiting policy] was a way of opening the door to the high
schools where in some areas, not so much here, but in some areas I’m sure
[military recruiters] are iced out, so to say. Where they don’t get in because
maybe that principal…doesn’t believe kids belong in the military. - Diane,
Principal, North Deco
Here, Diane identifies a phenomenon that she believes exists in other schools, but
not North Deco: the tendency among educators to harbor anti-military sentiment. In
doing this, Diane invokes the removed perspective common among study participants
18

Mara is the only student at North Deco that specifically mentioned the idea that lesssuccessful students join the military. I return to this theme in depth in the chapter on
Tapley High School, where administrators highlighted this idea throughout our
interviews.
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when discussing anti-military related ideas, suggesting that the existence of antirecruiting ideology may explain the creation of policy that institutionalizes recruiting in
public schools. Here I explore administrators’ removed perspective in discussing
critiques of military recruiting in schools, and what that perspective may mean about how
study participants at North Deco understand military recruiting in their school.
Administrators at North Deco articulate other colleagues’ disapproval of military
recruiting while simultaneously taking care to reiterate their own neutrality or approval.
When asked how teachers or administrators think about military recruiting, Cheryl
observes, “some teachers and administrators have their own opinion so they don’t
encourage it or discourage it based on their own personal opinions of it.” But for her part,
Cheryl says she thinks “every kid should do military first – learn some discipline and
respect” and so that is why she provides military recruiting information to students.
Diane’s comment that administrators are “iced out” in other places reiterates this
perspective.
Interestingly, students I interviewed specifically identified other peoples’ feelings
about the military in their comments; their comments suggest that the students are aware
of the politics in their understandings. For example, when asked about her experiences
with recruiters, Tamara notes, “I don’t think [recruiters’] main purpose is to ‘get’ kids,
it’s to tell us that they can help us. If you have no future plans, they can guide you. The
main purpose is educational, not to get kids to join.” Further, when probed about her
“great interactions” with recruiters at North Deco, she says, “they never interrogate us,
but they’re here to help – they seem so friendly, they’re on good terms. Probably just

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knowing that they’ve fought for our country makes people feel close them.” Lucy speaks
in a similar way:
Sometimes they would come around and would hand out pamphlets, but they
never like really … they didn't harass us, if that makes sense…They were there,
you knew who they were, they would introduce themselves sometimes. They
were never really like on top of you or pushy too. If you wanted information and
stuff, then they would obviously help you.
In my conversations with students at North Deco, all were quick to pair their responses
with qualifications around how recruiters were not acting in suspicious or negative ways,
suggesting an awareness of the idea that experiences with recruiters could be negative.
(Only Mara specifically referenced other, societal ideas about recruiting in our
conversation, although she had only positive experiences of her own to report.) This
quickness to refute negative experiences suggests that interviewed students at North Deco
are sensitive to negative perceptions of recruiters and recruiting in schools, even if they
do not specifically identify them.
Discussion
One of the things that we’ve looked to do throughout as administration and a
teacher body, is to really have students prepared for postsecondary options: to be
literate, to be able to use math at all different levels that will have them function
in a normal way when they leave high school, able to be responsible, make good
decisions, be able to present themselves well, to know how to go about finding a
job, and looking through a newspaper and seeing ads, to do some research
whether it be on a product that you need to buy for your family or for a paper
you need to write for college….We sit down and we think about that whole
child. What do we want that senior to look like so that when they walk through
the doors, they can go here, here, here, or here, and still be successful and
provide for themselves?
Diane’s quote illuminates her understanding of the philosophy behind education
at North Deco High School: in preparing students to be “whole”, administrators believe
they are equipping all students to do whatever they need or want to do after high school.

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Interviews with students and the administration alike suggest that schooling at North
Deco is “mission-diffuse”: that is, less focused on an ideal outcome as a means toward
success than on preparing students for a more general postsecondary transition. In this
case, the student is the outcome, and skill building around making strong and smart
choices is how interviewed North Deco administrators envision their work.
In this sense, the school may be supporting two of Labaree’s (1997) goals: social
mobility and social efficiency. Unlike at Paulie High, where administrators’ focus on
helping students succeed in the job market by obtaining a college degree supersedes all
other work, administrators at North Deco provide counsel to students that direct students
toward an array of trajectories. In this way, interviewed administrators are (consciously
or unconsciously) espousing the belief that their students will take a place in the “vertical
structure of the job market” and that their role as counselors is to guide students along
those trajectories (Labaree, 1997). Neutral counsel, then, is necessary because it
circumvents assigning of value judgment from postsecondary pursuits, which might
discourage students from pursuing (as Diane says) “their own strengths”. Moreover, in
this frame, actively not pushing students toward college by remaining neutral may work
to encourage students to take on the vocational roles that sustain a functioning economy,
thus pursuing the work of a social efficiency objective.
On the other hand, the part of the logic -- that all students should graduate as
“whole” people -- also hints at a social mobility narrative. In focusing on students’ ability
to be successful as one of the desired outcomes, administrators are positioning students as
the beneficiary of education. In one sense, students’ ability to provide for themselves is
about ensuring their ability to be competitive in a capitalist marketplace, not merely

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sustain the status quo. Indeed, in the case of the fifty percent of North Deco students that
qualify for free and reduced lunch, maintaining that status quo would not indicate the
ability to provide for oneself. In this case, framing of education as a private good
consumed by individuals so that they have capital in this economy is distinctly socialmobility related. So, while administrators at North Deco are indeed recognizing the
stratification of a social efficiency framework, some of the language they are employing
also relies on social mobility assumptions.
This balance between the social mobility and social efficiency goals emerges
from North Deco’s mission-diffuse nature. In the absence of a clear directive,
administrators and students are left to make determinations for themselves about the goal
of their schooling experiences. Administrator rhetoric serves as evidence of a missiondiffuse practice: claiming neutrality for students to pursue their own “strengths” may be
one means toward managing a diversity of student needs when there is no one clear
location (such as college attendance or technical mastery) to direct one’s efforts.
At North Deco, this mission-diffusion means that on the surface interviewees
claim that enlistment as just another postsecondary option available to students. Neither
administrators nor students indicate any feelings of hostility towards recruiters and
administrators indicate that over the past few years, any residual tensions over access to
students have been resolved because of district policy. In this frame, the option of
enlistment emerges as a fine choice for students that, to quote college counselor Cheryl,
“just aren’t college material.” Students that are college material, then, should reasonably
choose college, and the military fills a space for those who are not. In a mission-diffuse
high school attempting to meet the breadth of students’ needs, the military enlistment

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option allows North Deco to both pursue social efficiency goals by providing a place for
everyone in the vertical economy of postsecondary placement while meeting social
mobility objectives by simultaneously enabling non-college-bound students to achieve
some capital in market economy.
But interviewed administrators’ claims that they are not preparing students for
one specific outcome belie an environment that values college attendance as the de facto
postsecondary option. In this case, characterizing military enlistment as “just another
postsecondary option” fails to fully capture the extent to which college attendance is seen
as standard and preeminently desirable. It is here that the mission-diffuse nature of North
Deco complicates interviewees’ understanding of military recruiting: in the absence of a
clearly stated objective, the guidelines about which students go where after graduation go
unstated. Since military enlistment cannot equally be a more and less valued
postsecondary option simultaneously, we are left to wonder who decides to serve.
The bottom line? “Neutrality” may not be neutral. Students do not enter schools
as blank slates: they have different experiences, different aspirations, different knowledge
and beliefs about their abilities and futures. If college attendance is standard except in
cases where students “aren’t college material,” administrator neutrality may simply mean
that those students who possess the cultural capital to pursue the standard option, do.
Neutral, in this case, does little to change the paths that students were already traveling
along. But neutral might also mean that North Deco wants to create the conditions to
interrupt that flow for students who develop the knowledge and confidence to make other
choices on their own.

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For administrators, the simultaneous awareness of outsiders’ political feelings
about military recruiting combined with the insistence on maintaining “neutrality”
suggests something deeper than the military as “just another” postsecondary option.
Inside of the diversity of a comprehensive high school, the military enlistment option
serves a necessary purpose in the landscape of students’ postsecondary choices by
meeting the needs of students unable to attend college. If administrators believe that
military enlistment serves that goal, then administrator neutrality is critical to a social
efficiency project that transitions students into a vertical postsecondary economy.
Further, administrator intervention could undermine both social efficiency and social
mobility goals by moving more students up one level in the competitive arena while
disrupting the meritocratic ideals associated with social mobility. Neutrality, then, may
work to further pursue the dual goals at work in North Deco.
What does “neutrality” towards the individual look like at the collective level? If
college attendance is the de facto or standard postsecondary option, who is it that chooses
the military and why? When considering how study participants understand recruiting at
North Deco, the question of who chooses college and who chooses the military recurs. In
the discussion chapter of this dissertation, I examine this question by examining data
from all five schools.

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CHAPTER 7: A CAPTIVE AND CONCERNED AUDIENCE,
DISCORDANT TONES AT TAPLEY HIGH SCHOOL
It's a shame because my nose tells me that if you have to sell, then there is
something wrong. If you can educate or offer, then you can rest on what you have
to offer. If you need to market, maybe there's a reason why you need to market. If
you have to put the air freshener in your room, maybe there is a problem with the
room. – Paul, Principal, Tapley High School
Tapley High School emerged as one of my target schools because of its proximity
to an Army base; as one possible measure of Burk’s (2001) material salience in a
community’s proximity to a military base, I was interested in finding a school with
potential for more “face time” with recruiters. Coincidentally, Diane, the principal at
North Deco, worked at Tapley as an assistant principal for many years, and was happy to
refer me to Tapley’s principal, Paul, who then agreed to participate. As I will explain
below, Tapley’s proximity to Fort Hamilton base has very little bearing on interviewees’
experiences with military recruiting inside Tapley High School, something of a surprise
in light of Burk’s (2001) typology.
Tapley is home to 1297 students, 79.9 percent of whom qualify for free and
reduced priced lunch. As is typical of Sunset Park, 54.9 percent of Tapley’s students
identify as Hispanic, 10.3 percent as black, 15.9 percent white and 18.4 percent Asian.
The student body at Tapley tilts slightly (53.7 percent) male, and 69 percent of Tapley’s
seniors go on to college immediately after graduating. Specific to military recruiting, 38
percent of students opted-out of receiving military recruiting information in 2010,
compared to only 13.53 percent in 2011. Tapley administrators cannot explain the large
difference beyond speculation. Table 11 details demographic information for Tapley
High.

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Table 11 - Tapley High School Demographic Information
Free and
Reduced Male
Lunch
%
%

Female
%

Postsecondary
Enrollment
%

Military
Enlistm
ent %

53.7

46.3

72.1

0

White %

ELL
%

SPED
%

15.9

5.6

18.0

Total
Enrollment

2010
Opt-Out
%

2011
OptOut %

1297

38.0%

13.5%

79.7

Asian %

Hispanic
%

Black
%

18.4

54.9

10.3

Tapley High School considers itself a zoned, un-themed public high school with a
focus on college preparation. The college-ready ethos at Tapley is different than the
college-preparatory mission at Paulie High, though - whereas at Paulie High college
preparation is an explicit part of the mission that draws students from all parts of the city,
at Tapley, college attendance is an ideal that shapes administrative decisions. To these
ends, Tapley remains a neighborhood school and draws the bulk of its student population
from the surrounding area. So, for the purposes of this study, I consider Tapley a
“mission-specific, nonselective” school.
Evidence of this college-preparatory focus is everywhere at Tapley. Upon first
entering the school, visitors are greeted by a 20-foot wall plastered with current students’
college acceptance letters. Admissions letters are from schools of all types: community
colleges, out-of-state research universities, Ivy League institutions, and this researcher’s
undergraduate alma mater. The wall is designed to facilitate student enthusiasm for
college attendance, as well as celebrate every acceptance in the same capacity. College
counselor Elaine notes, “it’s really exciting for them because any acceptance is
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[celebrated]….City Tech is equal to Bowdoin! You know? So it’s a very inspiring,
exciting place to work.” Military enlistment contracts are not included on the wall.
On Tapley High School’s website, a message from Principal Paul notes that the
faculty is “very proud that our graduates have demonstrated their ability to be successful
in the finest universities in the nation.” The school’s mission statement indicates that
academics at Tapley are conducted in “in the liberal arts tradition with the most advanced
technologies,” a nod to the school’s curricular diversity that is also intended to familiarize
students with taking courses at the college level. Moreover, substantial time and energy is
devoted to college-going programming: college counselors Elaine and Jenny run college
visits, conduct mock college interviews, visit classrooms, and run an application
simulation program designed to prepare underclassmen for the application process. To
the extent that a zoned, neighborhood school can singularly focus on college attendance,
Tapley seeks to transition its students into colleges and universities.
I interviewed six students and five administrators at Tapley High School. Two
students (Elena and Howie) plan to enlist after high school, and one student (Sam)
remains undecided (see Table 12 for information about Tapley study participants).
Table 12 - Tapley High School Interviewee Information
Administrator

Role

Sex

Carrie

Assistant Principal - Pupil
Personnel Services
College Counselor
College Counselor
Guidance Counselor
Principal
Senior
Senior
Senior

F

Military Service/
Postsecondary Plans
N

F
F
F
M
F
M
M

N
N
N
N
Enlisted
College-Bound
College-Bound

Elaine
Jenny
Peggy
Paul
Elena
Andre
Dylan

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Table 12 (cont’d)
Howie
Sophie
Sam

Senior
Senior
Junior

M
F
M

Enlisted
College-Bound
Undecided

An explicit skepticism about military recruiting pervaded interviews with
administrators like Paul at Tapley High School. Administrators were candid about a
slight anti-military bias due, at least in part, to Tapley’s explicit focus on helping students
get to college. To this point, Assistant Principal Carrie noted that Tapley administrators
“think of [placing students after high school] as a rake. We’re going to just get as many
of the kids in to college as we can and then we’ll figure out something else for the rest of
‘em.” To the extent, then, that the military competes with colleges for graduating seniors,
administrators are committed to supporting college-going seniors to the best of their
abilities. Carrie corroborates this: “Yes, I don’t think it’s a school-wide goal to prepare
[students] for the military… it isn’t a goal and I don’t mean that it’s something we’re
working against. It’s just not a goal.” She continues, “I don’t want it to seem like we’re
not open to [the military] and don’t think it’s a viable option, but we are focusing on the
academic preparation for college. That’s what drives our structuring of the school.”
So, while interviewed administrators at Tapley may not all identify themselves as
“anti-recruiter” (although, to be clear, some certainly would), the predominant attitude
among interviewed administrators remains committed to students’ college attendance.
Interviewed administrators credit this attitude to shared political beliefs, brought about by
principal Paul’s purposeful hiring of young, recent college-graduates. These hiring
decisions were made in an attempt to build a college-going culture, and one side effect of
those hiring shifts is a largely left-leaning staff. Elaine notes, “There has been a shift in
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the building to a younger set and the school is definitely filled with brown-haired women
from liberal arts colleges who moved here. Most of us aren’t from New York City. Most
of us went to small liberal arts schools and most of us are below 35. There’s a different
tone.”
Faculty are not entirely clear on the school’s military recruiting policy, save that
the military is not welcomed into the building with open arms. All the administrators
interviewed reported variations of how their school’s opt-out process worked, and several
seemed to be guessing when asked to explain the finer details of their school’s recruiting
policy such as who writes the school plan or who the school’s designated point-person is
for military recruiting-related issues. Though I observed this confusion occasionally at all
of the schools participating in this project, Tapley administrators reported something
closer to tolerance rather than acceptance or enthusiasm in approaching their work with
military recruiters. To these ends, when Elaine was asked about how she felt about
working with the military, her response was clear: “I don’t think I would do it if I wasn’t
told to.” In the following section, I will explore how this attitude about recruiting informs
administrative understanding about the role of the military at Tapley.
For their part, Tapley students interviewed seemed to pick up on their
administrators’ tolerance of recruiters and recruiting, noting that the only time recruiters
19

are present inside the school building is to participate in their school’s college fair .
Senior Anthony suggests,
I think the school basically says, “You can come to the college fair or you can talk
to our children or kids about military,” but I don’t think that the school probably
19

Including military recruiters in events like college fairs is part of both the federal and
district mandates insofar as the military is required to be treated “in the same capacity as
a college or any other postsecondary opportunity” (NCLB 2001, 2002).
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allows them to go further with the kids in that college fair. Because at the end of
day, we’re still in the school. We still didn’t graduate yet. I don’t think that the
school really wants them.
Similar to responses heard at other schools, students saw their school’s focus on collegegoing contributing to administrators’ reluctance to welcome recruiters. Senior Elena
noted,
I don’t think [administrators] work [with recruiters] as much as other schools
do… Probably because this school is just like a college-based school. You’re
outta here to college. Other schools are like, for example, a stereotype would be
[another school nearby], where you just graduate and you end up in jail or you
end up working in lower-paid end jobs and you… like some people don’t go to
college.
The Tapley students I spoke to believed that the focus on college-going separates
Tapley from other high schools, and means that administrators do not treat the military as
a valuable alternative for students. Senior Sophie concurred, noting that while
administrators support students in whatever they decide, “if you ask [administrators] for
their personal opinion they probably would answer you back, but they’re not going to tell
you that you should join the Army.” When asked about what that means for recruiting in
the school, Sophie responds, “I think my school kind of just lets it happen.”
Administration and Recruiters: Defined by Tension
I don’t want students to feel that [enlistment is] the way to get to college or that’s
the way to… I wonder how many students that are choosing that as a backup, as a
fall back. I don’t know. I feel like there are a lot of promises made to them and I
don’t know that they know how to discern what the experience is actually going
to be like from what is sold to them. – Jenny, College Counselor, Tapley High
School
Jenny’s quote illustrates a common sentiment among administrators at Tapley:
military enlistment is a less desirable postsecondary option for high school students, and
administrators feel trepidation around how students’ understand the realities of military

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service. While administrative attitudes about recruiting look similar to those expressed at
Paulie High School, Tapley administrators experience a very different policy reality:
recruiters maintain a presence at the school, showing up at college events, waiting outside
school grounds, and interacting with guidance counselors about individual students.
Whereas the high rate of opt-out means that Paulie administrators have virtually no
practical experience with recruiting, the lived experience for Tapley administrators
interacting with recruiters sets a very different stage for developing understandings of
military recruiting in schools. When probed about anxiety around recruiting, Tapley
administrators voiced two primary misgivings: their perceptions of the tone of recruiting
and students as a “captive audience.” In discussing each concern, they expressed genuine
concern about their students’ wellbeing and made sure I understood that their hesitation
about recruiting came from a desire to protect students at a vulnerable moment.
Pushups and College Prep: Discordant Tones
This school feels very into tone and academic standards and making sure of that
bell-to-bell instruction. It’s not super into assemblies or breaking the flow of that
tone and I think that having somebody come in… could be seen as a distraction or
as something that in some ways undermines the message where all kids go to
college. – Elaine, College Counselor, Tapley High School
Elaine’s quote points out the single-most common concern articulated by Tapley
administrators: recruiting in schools disrupts the “tone” of the school’s atmosphere, and
shifts student and administrator focus away from academics. Administrators were most
concerned about this issue as it related to their annual college fair. Because administrators
understand district policy to mean that they are obligated to invite military recruiters to
their annual fair in the same way as they would invite a college or university, the college
fair acts as the chief way in which administrators actually interact with recruiters every

119

year. Although there are other, less frequent interactions with recruiters throughout the
academic year, the college fair represents the primary practical experience that
administrators have with recruiters. As such, administrators described feelings of
discomfort with recruiter presence, primarily because it disrupts the event’s academic
tone. Elaine remarks on her feelings about recruiters at the college fair, “It’s like we’re
having this college fair and in the corner they’re doing pushups. I’d be like ‘this isn’t the
tone of this.’ The fair is more like informational and supportive and empowering. I
guess that’s empowering in its own way, but it just seems like… glossy.” Elaine’s use of
the word “glossy” evokes a slick sales pitch and a feeling of skepticism. Jenny, a college
counselor, is similarly off-put by the mismatch, responding by limiting recruiting-related
booths to one end of a hallway: “I tend to place them at the end of the hall … there’s just
a whole lot of people and they’re in uniform and the pushups. It’s just much louder,
boisterous of atmosphere. There’s a lot of swag, a lot of free stuff that’s given out.” This
kind of energy detracts from the goal of the event, and does little to ingratiate recruiters
to administrators. Principal Paul observes, “Kids go…flock to [recruiters] a lot. They’re
personable. They’re fit. They’re young. They’re good looking in their uniform. They
don’t have to pay for college at all…. and college in America is expensive. I think it’s a
good marketing tool.”
This discord between the tone of recruiting at a college fair is deeply symbolic of
how administrators understand the recruiting enterprise at Tapley: where administrators
see their job as helping students get to college, recruiting disrupts this imagined future.
Jenny, describing the scene, expresses anxiety about how that “glossiness” may shape
students’ experiences:

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I see the energy that they bring. For a booth that has one college representative
you have the military, you have the Army, you have the Navy, you have a dozen
people there. They’re having students do pushups in the hallways with them and
there’s a lot of excitement and energy around it. I think especially our male
students can get very excited by the idea of going and building up their bodies and
getting strength like that. They’ve communicated that to me when they’ve
thought about enlisting rather than going to college. There’s also the idea the
military will help pay for college eventually for students whose families don’t
have the funds to send them to college. They see that as a real option.
Because Jenny sees her role as helping advise students toward college attendance,
often by helping students overcome perceived obstacles in the college admissions
process, these experiences with recruiters are challenging for her, and she expressed
frustration about how difficult it is to counter the message. When the tone is shifted away
from academic work, she observes, it takes away from “the messaging that goes on in the
school, that if you come here you will go to college, you will go beyond college, those
are your goals.”
A Concerned Captive Audience
[School is] a place where everybody is. I often feel that … we have a captive
audience and if you are interested in 17, 18-year-old citizens then this is where
you find them.…Where are high schoolers? After school they disperse, especially
in New York City… It’s hard to find them after three o'clock because they all go
into their separate neighborhoods and probably go home, or whatever they do; go
to the park. You can’t really approach a kid in a park. -Elaine, College
Counselor, Tapley High School
Elaine raises another central theme in how administrators (and a few students) at
Tapley understand the purpose of military recruiting in schools: military recruiting is in
schools because the needs of the military (specifically, young people to serve in its ranks)
neatly map onto the structure of schools (a cache of young people in the process of
making decisions about their postsecondary trajectories). Further, Elaine notes that

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because of the way that our culture is organized, schools are, in fact, the most efficient
place to interact with young people in our society.
When asked about why recruiters might recruit in high schools, many respondents
seemed almost surprised by the question, as if the answer were as plain as day.
Administrators, in particular, professed the most clarity on the topic. To this point, Paul,
says, “Well, where else would they recruit? I mean that’s where the kids are.” Carrie
concurs, “I think you have the age-appropriate audience I would assume. I don’t know,
but I would assume from the military’s perspective, this is their audience. You have
students who are coming out of high school potentially not even graduating from high
school, that are looking for their next step and their next opportunity or career path, and
20

these are those people.”

All five of the Tapley High School administrators keyed in on the idea of their
students as a captive audience. But at Tapley, there is a specific nuance to this “captive
audience” idea that is different than Paulie administrators’ concerns about “targeting”
vulnerable students. Both concerns reflect the feeling that military recruiting is in
schools because its needs map onto the structure of public schooling, but how they play
out is subtly different, reflecting the different policy reality of the schools. While the
“captive audience” concept emerges from administrator anxiety around taking advantage
of the moment of decision-making, the idea of “targeting” is about pursuing vulnerable
20

For the purposes of clarity, it is important to note that the Army is the only branch of
the military that enlists candidates without at least a General Equivalency Diploma, and
even in this case it requires participation in a special program called Army Prep School.
In all other branches of the military, GEDs make up less than five percent of enlisted
servicepeople – everyone else holds at least a high school diploma. Carrie’s comment
here speaks to the earlier point that administrators reflect the perception that students
pursing the military are less qualified than their college-bound peers. (Operation and
Maintenance Overview: Fiscal Year 2013 Budget Estimate, 2013)
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populations of students based on demographic characteristics. It follows, then, that the
most common expression of discomfort among interviewed Tapley administrators would
reflect the school’s policy reality: at Tapley, administrators’ compliance with the law
literally means that the school is captive, and cannot evade certain interactions with
military recruiting. While Paulie interviewed administrators’ mistrust of recruiting
emerges from a more abstract political ideology, at Tapley, administrators’
understandings reflect their lived experiences in schools.
Unintended Consequences: Recruiting and Academic Ambition
I feel like some students get the idea of being recruited so they do not have to
work as hard or work as they are supposed to be in the school, because of the fact
that they’re going to be recruited or they’ll be recruited. You feel like they have
kind of relaxed a little bit. – Andre, College-Bound Senior, Tapley
Part of the school’s lived experience is how students react to the recruitment
efforts. Andre’s hunch is that the presence of military recruiting can act as a disincentive
for students’ academic ambition. Of the five students interviewed at Tapley, four
independently noted this idea. Three of them (Andre, Sophie and Sam) suggested that the
possibility of military recruiting undermining academic ambition is something that could
happen to other people, though they themselves did not have this problem. College-bound
senior Sophie observes, “Personally, I don’t feel that way, but I have a feeling that there
may be some of those kids that may think, ‘Why am I wasting my time here when I want
to go out into the field.’” Sam, undecided about his future, agrees with Sophie, suggesting
that the presence of recruiters shifts students’ focus. He notes, “I think [recruiting] puts
their priorities in a different kind of order and it takes their priorities away from school,
and more into other things like maybe sports even and maybe the military itself. They
won't be as geared towards their schoolwork.”
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Enlisted senior Elena is candid about this point, observing that her own decision
to join the Marines has left her with very little motivation for her schoolwork:
Sometimes I just slack off. I slack off because I’m like, ‘Why do I need this?’
Even though I need my high school diploma, I’m thinking like, I’m here, I can
study at home for my recruiters’ test and I’m good to go. Even though I need my
high school diploma, I just slack off because I know that’s a fallback, that I’m
straight going to the Marines.
When probed if she thought she might feel differently if she did not have the Marines to
rely on, Elena was resoundingly certain: “Yes, I would be a 80-90 average student
because with this economy, everything is competition, everything. Of course I would see
everything different, my books, I would be on it.”
So, why did this happen at Tapley? I posit that there is something about the
amalgam of the college-prep focus combined with students’ lived experiences with
recruiters that disrupts students’ attention to academics. For Tapley students, academic
work is understood to be a precursor to college – that is, the kind of work one does in
high school is understood as preparation for college-level work. In this frame, the
presence of recruiters changes the endgame, and students who are struggling with the
realities of college attendance may question the work necessary to get there. College
counselor Jenny observes this trend, expressing anxiety that the presence of recruiters
might serve to disincentivize hard work in school. In her explanation, she steps into the
student’s shoes: “I feel like it’s an easy way out. Well, I don’t have to pass all my
classes. I don’t have to maintain a high GPA. I don’t have to commit to the rigor of
academics and the discipline that I would need to bring to academics. I don’t need to
struggle through that, I’ll just join the military.” Elaine agrees, worrying that certain
students will be swayed from an academic track: “I don’t feel like they have that sense of

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self yet to make that decision and that’s exactly who’s going [to enlist]…. It’s very sexy
and [there is] money and awards and a title. That’s much more tantalizing than [a
community college and] remedial classes.”
Discussion
The administrators I interviewed at Tapley High believe that college attendance is
a necessity in order to compete for economic success. Thus, administrators may be said to
see their roles as integral to a social mobility mission for schools: in helping students
attend college, they are equipping them to attain economic security in a capitalist society.
In focusing attention squarely on college attendance, administrators at Tapley are
attempting to better equip their students for later competition.
The presence of recruiters, however, is a disruptive force in administrators’
understanding of this purpose, and the resulting friction means that administrators
experience many iterations of discomfort around the military. In particular, their concerns
about the “captive audience” betray an unease about military recruiting in schools. From
the social mobility orientation of a college-preparatory high school, college attendance is
prized because it is believed to offer the best opportunity to compete in a capitalist
market. Students, operating in their best interests in this social mobility scheme, should
choose college attendance so long as they are able. The objective, then, of a collegepreparatory high school education is to ensure that all graduating students are
academically able to attend college. Students who instead enlist in the military must not
be able to attend college for other reasons, namely financial. Given this set of beliefs, it
makes sense that administrators would characterize these students as “captive”: from
their vantage point, students’ circumstances render them without better, more desirable

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alternatives. This interpretation is bolstered by all five interviewed administrators’ stated
belief that students are, at least in part, attracted to enlistment because of a financial
inability to afford college.
In this social mobility frame, military recruiting in schools reminds us that not all
students can afford college. By its very presence in these schools, recruiting shines a
spotlight on a hole in the school’s college-prizing, social mobility narrative. This chasm
between the lived experience of high schools and the stated purpose of their schools
causes administrators to chafe at recruiters’ presence. Elaine summarizes:
I think there’s a tension at this school between the bell curve of kids. We have
kids who go to the University of Chicago, we have kids who don’t graduate on
time or go to [a community college] and never graduate. This belief that all
students can go to college, all students can learn…I believe that all students can
learn, but not everyone’s going to go away to school. Actually, it makes me
uncomfortable to think about some of the lower-level kids. It makes me
uncomfortable to think about where Elena is going to be in ten years. When I
think about it too much, I’m like…but right now I have her and this is what I can
do.
Elaine’s anxiety here is palpable: What does she do for those students who do not
meet the stated goal of college attendance? Educators cannot afford to be depressed about
the probable futures for many of their students, and pushups at the college fair can be an
uncomfortable reminder of the students who their efforts will not -- in the end -- help.
When all students choose to attend a college-preparatory high school (like at Paulie
High), decisions to enter the military can be experienced as more benign. But in a setting
like Tapley, military recruiting can highlight Tapley’s inability to get its public,
nonselected population into college and university programs. In this mission-specific,
nonselective environment, how students and administrators understand military recruiting

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may be an “uncomfortable” reflection of the vertical hierarchy of the capitalist
marketplace.

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CHAPTER 8: HAVING AND MAKING CHOICES,
JROTC AT FLORENCE LUSCOMB HIGH SCHOOL
Our job is to educate people to make sure that they are freethinking individuals
who understand how to weigh the options that are out there and come to their own
decision. That’s one of the goals that I’d like to think that we work hard at, and
that as an educator you understand that that’s your role. – Maher, Principal
Florence Luscomb High School is the largest school participating in this project,
enrolling 4211 students in 2011. Initially, I approached Florence Luscomb because I was
looking for a school with a JROTC program, and I had encountered a long profile about
Florence Luscomb’s highly decorated units in a national news outlet. I felt my study
could greatly benefit from a school with such strong ties to a JROTC program. Florence
Luscomb is home to one of the largest JROTC programs in the U.S., and at 800
participating cadets, over one-fifth of Florence Luscomb students arrive at school in full
JROTC fatigue uniform once a week.
Florence Luscomb High School is located in a middle-class, urban residential
neighborhood that in recent years has seen a large influx of Asian Americans and East
Asian immigrants. Florence Luscomb is a zoned, neighborhood school, and draws most
of its students from the surrounding area. Interestingly, Florence Luscomb’s opt-out
numbers are consistently low, but not necessarily lower than several of the other schools
in this study. In 2010, 15.8 percent of students opted-out of receiving recruiter
information, and in 2011, 17.18 percent. Fifty seven percent of students are eligible for
free and reduced lunch. Asian Americans comprise the largest ethnic group, making up
51.6 percent of the population to 24.1 percent Hispanic, 8.3 percent black and 15.8
percent white. Over seventy-eight percent of Florence Luscomb seniors enroll directly in
college after graduation (see Table 13).

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Table 13 - Florence Luscomb High School Demographic Information
Total
Enrollment

2010
Opt-Out
%

2011
Opt-Out
%

Free and
Reduced
Lunch %

Male
%

Female
%

Postsecondary
Enrollment %

4211

15.8

17.2

57.4

48.9

51.1

78.6

Asian %

Hispanic
%

Black %

White %

ELL
%

SPED %

51.6

24.1

8.3

15.8

12.8

10.8

Florence Luscomb is a comprehensive high school serving just over 4200
students. Its mission is to “promote lifelong learning by providing students with the
skills and values that are necessary for academic and personal growth.” As is often the
case in a comprehensive school, students may participate in a wealth of special programs
including a “University Scholars” Program for liberal arts-bound students, the “Jacob
Javits” law academy with criminal justice college credits and internships in law firms and
city courts, a forensic science academy, a math and science research institute, a “virtual
enterprise” career training program, an EMT training program, and an engineering
academy. Florence Luscomb offers 18 advanced placement courses, and eight foreign
languages tracks, including both Chinese and Korean. The extracurricular activities
available to students are extensive as well, far surpassing the number of opportunities
available at any of the other schools in this study.
Although college attendance is not the singular goal of a Florence Luscomb
education, college is certainly prominently positioned as a desirable postsecondary
outcome. The school’s motto, proudly displayed front and center on the school’s website,
notes that Florence Luscomb is “preparing students for success in college, career and
life.” The school’s mission statement makes reference to the school’s “college-bound”
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culture, and the school’s website prominently positions a link to the school’s “college and
career” office on its home page. So, unlike North Deco High School where collegeattendance is implicitly positioned as the most desirable postsecondary option, at
Florence Luscomb, the desirability of the college-attendance option is explicit.
However, Florence Luscomb is not exclusively college-preparatory: Principal
Maher’s online message to students notes that Florence Luscomb is striving for a “wellrounded education” that offers individualized options for a diversity of students. Further,
the inclusion of “career and life” in the school’s motto -- as well as the battery of
vocational and technical programming -- suggests that college admissions is not the
school’s singular focus.
For the purposes of this study, I classify Florence Luscomb as “mission diffuse,”
although it emerges as somewhat less diffuse than North Deco, which takes care not to
include college attendance as part of its mission despite prizing college attendance. I
interviewed five students and five administrators at the school (see Table 14). Only one
student (Wally) plans to enlist after high school, and four of the five students are JROTC
participants. (The large percentage of JROTC-participating students in this sample
suggests some selection bias in my sample.)
Table 14 - Florence Luscomb Interviewee Information
Pseudonym

Role

Sex

Chelsea
Andrea

Assistant Principal - Guidance
Assistant Principal - Pupil
Personnel Services
College Counselor
Principal
Teacher – JROTC
Senior

F
F

Military Service/
JROTC
Postsecondary Plan
No
-No
--

M
M
M
M

No
No
Yes
Enlisted

Scott
Maher
Roger
Wally

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---Yes

Table 14 (cont’d)
Bradley
Aidan
Cameron
Traci

Senior
Senior
Senior
Senior

M
M
M
F

College-Bound
College-Bound
College-Bound
College-Bound

Yes
Yes
No
Yes

It was harder to identify a central theme in how administrators spoke about the
military in our interviews. To be sure, the JROTC program is clearly a source of pride for
the school, and all interviewed administrators expressed comfort with the idea of military
recruiters in U.S. schools more generally. Yet it was difficult to get a clear picture about
how administrators feel about military recruiting at Florence Luscomb. At every other
school in the study, administrators’ opinions about recruiting were largely consistent, and
when interviewees were questioned about recruiting in the school, respondents generally
articulated similar sentiments. Not so at Florence Luscomb. For instance, when asked
about how administrators perceive the military at Florence Luscomb, AP Andrea
suggested that because of JROTC, the military is
just a part of our everyday lives…. We have five sergeants here every day. The
kids all wear their uniforms on Wednesdays. Every Wednesday there is anywhere
from 700-800 kids depending on who’s present wearing an Army military
uniform…It's embraced here, which is a little different I think than the culture in
most schools in the city.
Conversely, college counselor Scott suggests that his biggest challenge in
working with the military at Florence Luscomb is working with the staff.
I think the staff is so concerned because I think of the wars that are going on and
everything, so I think automatically people think that they’re going to go into the
frontline and they’re in danger and everything like that… I’ve heard of staff also
kind of sometimes discouraging students from joining the military.
The variation in administrator views may be related to the school’s size; I interviewed
approximately the same number of staff at each school. Had I selected samples that were
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more proportional to the size of the student population, trends might have been more
readily identifiable
That said, Florence Luscomb students painted a clear picture of military recruiting
in their school. Students, regardless of their personal experiences with recruiters,
universally reported feeling that teachers and administrators enthusiastically welcome
recruiters in their school. Cameron, a senior, says that staff at Florence Luscomb is “very
receptive to [recruiters]. They come pretty easily. They just walk in. I think the school
welcomes them with open arms.” He notes that the military is allowed to set up tables
daily on campus in “the strip,” a widely trafficked hallway -- “the Long Island
Expressway for students,” Cameron says. “Everybody passes through there. [Recruiters]
set up right there. I think that’s a really good place for the school having them set up for
everybody to see it.”
By allowing recruiters set up there, Cameron suggests, administration is tacitly
supporting recruiting. Wally, a senior leader in the JROTC program who has enlisted in
the Army, notes that recruiters are so welcome at Florence Luscomb that “the security
guards know most of the recruiters. They see them come often so they know, I’m not
sure on a first name basis, but they know who they are and they don’t try to keep them
out. I think [recruiters’] job here is pretty easy, it's not like some other schools.” As far
as the interviewed students are concerned, military enlistment is endorsed by the school’s
administration.
Preparing Students to Have and Make Choices
I think it’s [incumbent] upon schools to make sure that they’re having
conversations with young people about postsecondary options and what those
options are and really connecting the work that students are doing in schools to
what students want to do in their lives and how they envision their future…. I
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think it’s really making all the options available and explaining what each of
those options bring you and how they connect to your future. – Maher, Principal,
Florence Luscomb
Though administrators’ understandings of military recruiting at Florence
Luscomb are difficult to distill into universal themes, Maher’s comment was a common
sentiment among interviewees. Administrators saw their role as preparing students to
both have and make choices after high school. Specifically, they see themselves as
integral in ensuring that students’ postsecondary options are not limited and, when faced
with those options, students have the skills necessary to make good choices for
themselves. It is this focus that distinguishes Florence Luscomb administrators from the
sentiments expressed at North Deco: at Florence Luscomb, the school’s responsibility is
not merely to ensure that students can make decisions, it is also to guarantee that they
have choices to make. In other words, where interviewed North Deco administrators
believe they should remain neutral in counseling students, Florence Luscomb
interviewees articulated the need to intervene in certain cases in order to ensure students
are neither vulnerable nor cornered into one option.
Specific to military recruiting, this commitment to making sure students both have
choices and are able to make choices means that administrators are often walking a fine
line in terms of counseling students around enlistment. On one side, Florence Luscomb
administrators are quick to clarify that the reason military recruiting is in their school is
to provide students with options, because not every student is college-bound, despite their
college-bound culture. When administrators talked about this issue, it was couched as a
“reality” – a “truth” that administrators must deal with. In the case of this reality,
administrators at Florence Luscomb professed that it was incumbent upon them to present

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an array of choices for students in order to serve those for whom college is not an option.
Andrea, assistant principal for pupil personnel services, explains, “Listen, college is not
for everyone, as much as this city, state, country thinks everybody should go to college,
it’s not for everybody.” She continues, “I think sometimes you set up kids to feel like
failures because they're just not students. You know what, they can become electricians
and plumbers and make just as much money. I think that everybody has a place.” In this
case, administrators saw military enlistment is another option to add to students’ caches.
Recruiting in schools, then, fits comfortably into their understanding that part of
schooling should be increasing the number of postsecondary options available to
students.
On this flip side, however, administrators at Florence Luscomb are clear that they
do not want students to think that military enlistment is their only option. Administrators
saw is as their obligation to ensure that students can make good decisions. Andrea
explains,
You're not here to change [students’] minds. If they say well, "I think that I don't
have any other options." Then you have to put those brakes on and say, "Wait a
second. Let's sit down, let's talk about it a little bit more." You do have other
options. You know when the young lady was recruited because of [immigration]
status that was a huge conversation.
Here Andrea is referencing an earlier conversation in which she related a story
about a young undocumented student who pursued enlistment ostensibly to facilitate her
petition for U.S. citizenship. Perceiving the young woman to be vulnerable and
potentially without recourse, Andrea was concerned that the student was choosing
enlistment solely based on her immigration status. Andrea intervened so as to make sure
the young woman understood that the military was not her sole postsecondary choice. So,

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while Andrea wants to make sure enlistment is an option, she also wants to make sure it
is not a choice that students are making under duress.
Chelsea, assistant principal for guidance, agrees with Andrea’s sentiments,
explaining that she is regularly in the position of helping students critically review the
information they receive from recruiters, as well as highlighting available financial aid
opportunities that make other educational options possible as well. She shares, “I try to
explain to them that although [recruiters] say this A, B, and C, [students] are also
responsible for D, E, and F, and that you can go to college and get a student loan and pay
that six months after you graduate. You just try to inform them a little bit more.” Like
Andrea, Chelsea believes it is her job to ensure that students do not see enlistment as their
only option. College counselor Scott summarizes, speaking in more general terms about
the goal of school, “school should be about developing strengths, working on skills, and
then looking at the multiple strengths and multiple intelligences of an individual so that
when they leave here, they can do other things besides saying, ‘Okay I only have one
option.’ That’s ultimately what the goal of the school should be.”
It is unclear whether administrators’ attitudes pertain to all postsecondary
decisions. Do they, for example, counsel students who treat college as the only option?
An observation by Scott about the typical trajectory of his advice may offer some insight
here: “It’s about having choices now. If they don’t have the choices, or they feel like
college is not an option for them, then I would definitely present to them all the different
options that they might have including employment, military, vocational training, and all
that.” In this sense, Scott is noting that he typically offers up advice around alternatives
to college after students have expressed disinterest in college attendance. Though

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certainly less visible than in the college-preparatory atmospheres of Paulie and Tapley,
this line of reasoning among interviewed administrators at Florence Luscomb positions
college attendance as the preferred choice against which other decisions are made. Even
though other options may be reasonable (even desirable), college attendance is still
positioned here as the primary choice.
“We know why they’re here”: JROTC and Familiarity with Recruiters
I don’t see the recruiters that come to this school as aggressively trying to recruit.
They are more so just trying to offer options for students. I don’t think students
that have never experienced recruiting and have never experienced anything in the
military would feel threatened by them. – Wally, Enlisted Senior, Florence
Luscomb
Wally’s comments echoes those made by other Florence Luscomb students; in
general, students saw military recruiters at Florence Luscomb in a benign light. All of the
students interviewed saw the school’s efforts to provide postsecondary options as a kind
of courtesy – a genuinely benevolent way to show students all the benefits that await a
life in service. When framed in these almost altruistic terms, students saw recruiters as
vanguards of opportunity, providing wages and a career for anyone who can do the job.
In order to be characterized as benign for this study, respondents needed to speak
specifically to recruiter motivation in positive terms. For example, college-bound senior
Traci observes about recruiters,
Even though they want to recruit you, they don’t necessarily push you to enlist.
They just talk to you and they try to figure out like, “Oh, what are your plans?”
Or if you don’t have any plans you could also join the military as another option.
They’re just telling you all your different options, which I think is great.
Here, Traci posits that recruiters are in school as a kind of service to students in the
process of making postsecondary decisions. Wally, an enlisted senior, agrees: “They want
young individuals to be able to explore, I guess, the benefits of military service. I guess
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I’m biased because I don’t really see the negative side because I had my mind set for -pretty much -- ever.”
Interviewed students see the schools’ large JROTC presence as instrumental in
shaping their feelings about recruiters and recruiting. Speaking in effusive terms about
their experience in JROTC, students saw recruiters as part and parcel of their schooling
experience. Aidan, a college-bound senior, notes,
I see military recruiters probably once a week I would say, because most of the
time I’m in the JROTC office and that’s where they would usually come in order
to recruit students… because that’s where sometimes there is a majority of
JROTC students. Not a majority, but a couple of JROTC students who would like
to join the military and that will be first step into leading them into that field.
For Aidan, there were direct connections between Florence Luscomb’s JROTC
program and its military recruiting enterprise. Other students concurred. Wally even
pointed out that one of the frequent Army recruiters often volunteers with the JROTC
program’s “Raider Team” by chaperoning trips and supervising events. The students I
spoke with believed that this familiarity between the JROTC program and military
recruiting in their school (as well as students’ exposure to their own Army instructors)
translated into a lack of skepticism around recruiting in their building. Traci observes,
If you’re in a school and there’s no JROTC, [students] are not used to those who
are in the uniform, and they not really sure about those who are in the program.
Then they would probably like, “Oh, why is this recruiter here?" … because of
JROTC there’s about 800 kids who are in the program and there’s 4,000
[students] in here. They definitely have a lot of influence, the JROTC. So when
students do see a military recruiter they’re not skeptical. They have a better
understanding on why they’re here.
In Traci’s mind, this exposure to the trappings of military culture (the uniform, the
rituals, etc.) through the presence of JROTC in school familiarizes students to a military

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presence and, as such, students are less anxious or worried about interacting with
recruiters.
Interestingly, Cameron (the only non-JROTC interviewee) also observed the
relationship between military recruiters and JROTC, but observed that JROTC students
acted deferentially towards recruiters in order to impress recruiters and maintain the
professionalism associated with their highly decorated unit. Cameron believes this
interest in “showing off” for recruiters translates to the general student body, so that all
students interact respectably with recruiters.
Notably, students adamantly denied that JROTC played any role in recruiting. All
of them expressed the belief that, if anything, JROTC instructors pushed students toward
college-level participation in ROTC, or attendance at a military academy like West Point.
Bradley observes that his Army instructors (or “AIs”) regularly tell him, “If you want to
join the military, join after college.” Students believed this is because JROTC is training
them to become leaders and, as such, JROTC instructors would rather see students
exercising their leadership skills in an officer capacity rather than active duty. Regardless,
interviewed students’ experiences with JROTC certainly impacts their understanding of
military recruiting and military enlistment options by familiarizing students to the culture
and practice of military service.
Discussion
Florence Luscomb’s comprehensive model is characterized by goals of preparing
students for “college, career and life.” This contributes to a mission-diffuse environment
in which administrators seek to provide students with options and the knowledge to make
informed decisions. This distinguishes the school from the mission-diffuse environment

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at North Deco, as Florence Luscomb administrators proactively intervene when they
perceive that students do not think they have choices. Beyond this, the presence of an
active JROTC program in the school dramatically impacts how interviewed students
interact with military recruiting and understand the military enlistment option. Here I
consider how this mission-diffuse environment interacts with all three of Labaree’s goals
in order to inform students’ and administrators’ understanding of military recruiting in
their schools.
One might infer that “providing students with options” inherently positions
“students” as the unit of analysis, thus aligning with Labaree’s (1997) social mobility
framework that presumes that “the outcome for the individual is precisely what matters
most” (p. 51). In this way, one might argue that (at least for the twenty-one students in
this study) the act of “providing students with options” is designed to impact (individual)
student outcomes and, as such, meets the tenets of a social mobility objective in schools.
In complicating this analysis, though, with descriptions of how students
understand the idea of “providing students with options”, I posit that there is evidence of
more than just a social mobility goal at work. When students are so quick to assign
altruistic motivations to recruiters, it calls to mind a kind of value in ensuring that all
students are having similar experiences in school. If recruiting is in schools in order to
provide all students with choices, than all students can be said to be experiencing a
similar process in moving into the postsecondary world. In this case, students may be
seeing their experience from a democratic equality place.
Interestingly, when student respondents were asked to comment on the purpose of
military recruiting in schools, all spoke in terms of recruiters interacting with students

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and, subsequently, weighed in on the practice. When administrators were asked to
comment on the purpose of military recruiting in schools, however, they tended to frame
their responses in more systemic terms, suggesting that “providing options” was about
filling specific needs observed in their student populations. This distinction makes
logical sense: students, as the object and target of military recruiting, may be likely to
reflect on their individual experiences and, in turn, conceptualize the practice of military
recruiting in terms of students’ individual experiences with recruiters. Administrators,
then, in working with large numbers of students, may be more inclined to generalize
across groups of students. This makes sense given the technical functions of
administrators’ work, but there is more to the classification of groups of students than
mere convenience: conceptualizing groups of students in terms of where they are headed
after high school is grounded in the belief that schools prepare some students for some
roles, and others for others. This point is amplified when paired with administrators’
“college is not for everyone” language: these ideas reflect a social efficiency framework
in which the military is a part of a functioning society that requires sustaining. In this
frame, the stratification of students reflects the “reality” that some students are bound for
college, while others head into service, among other things.
Administrators and students juggle all both social mobility and social efficiency
goals inside of a mission-diffuse atmosphere, foregrounding one over the other depending
on the conversation at hand. Valuing college attendance reflects the language of the
market economy that students will enter after high school. Acknowledging that not all
students are college-bound serves to perpetuate the vertical structure of the market.
Ensuring that all students have options also hints at the basic democratic principles that

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undergird a public schooling experience. Given the size and scope of schooling at
Florence Luscomb, it is logical that all of these concerns might emerge as important in
one moment or another.
At Florence Luscomb High, where students have access to a battery of academic
and extracurricular programs, having and making choices is of particular value. Missiondiffusion, specifically the lack of directed attention on one specific postsecondary route,
enables these choices and holds them in high esteem. Indeed, tailoring the school
experience in order to meet a diversity of “individualized students’ needs” is an
important part of the explicit mission of Florence Luscomb – Principal Maher’s online
statement to students even highlights that the school’s goal is to “personalize education
for every student” by providing a wealth of choices students can make regarding their
coursework, extracurricular activities and, eventually, postsecondary route. In this
context, it makes sense that an institution that provides yet another postsecondary option
(the military) would be received warmly by an administration committed to building an
array of postsecondary choices. Interviewed students, in observing their administrators,
pick up on this enthusiasm, understand it to mean approval of the enlistment option.
Moreover, with the inclusion of a JROTC program inside the school building,
interviewed students’ exposure to the military further augments their belief that their
administrators support military recruiters and enlistment.
In essence, the military recruiting enterprise at Florence Luscomb offers
administrators and students an opportunity to balance all three of Labaree’s goals in some
fashion. By offering to subsidize college after sufficient service, military recruiters pay
heed to the way social mobility manifests at Florence Luscomb insofar as it prizes college

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attendance. By offering a career for those students who “aren’t college material”, military
recruiting offers yet another postsecondary option for entrance into the market. Finally,
by associating itself with an integrated JROTC program within the school, military
recruiting is able to use military-associated values such as camaraderie and leadership to
play upon democratic equality-related ideals of service and shared experience. At
Florence Luscomb, the mission-diffuse environment combined with the exposure of
JROTC may endow interviewed administrators and students with a moldable, changeable
understanding of military recruiting that can map onto whatever objective is important in
any given moment.

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CHAPTER 9: INSIDER KNOWLEDGE AND TRUSTED GUIDANCE AT
MARITIME HIGH
We at the school are here to take the position and advocate for the student, not for
the recruiter. If [students] have an interest in joining the service, try not to go to a
recruiter outside the building because then we have less control of that
recruitment process and to try to use one of the recruiters that are assigned to
Maritime High School. This way you can have a guidance meeting with the
recruiter and the student. I also tell students that there are a lot of valuable
resources in the building because a lot of teachers here are veterans. They can
provide them with an aspect of the military life that probably the recruiter may
not. – Rocco, Assistant Principal of Guidance, Maritime High School
Maritime Engineering High School is the fifth and final school approached for
participation in this research study. Enrolling 2119 students, Maritime Engineering is
quite different from the other schools in this project: as a vocational-technical high
school, Maritime Engineering necessarily educates a different population of students than
is typical of New York City High Schools. Calling itself “the premier career and
technical high school in New York City,” the school itself is a remarkable institution
aimed at preparing students for “exciting careers” in the marine engineering industry.
After four years at Maritime Engineering, students graduate with at least one of the two
certifications necessary to work as a marine mechanic. If students choose to stay on for
an optional fifth year (referred to as “thirteenth grade” by interviewed students), they
have the opportunity to earn the second of those certifications. Students also have the
opportunity to work as mechanical interns for major shipping companies such as HapagLloyd. Maritime Engineering High School operates a mock shipyard on campus where
students are able to perform hands-on work on the various kinds of watercraft currently in
service including aircraft carriers, cruise ships and personal boating vessels, many of
which have been retired and donated by the U.S. military. Finally, Maritime Engineering
maintains a fully staffed and operating school annex at Brooklyn Navy Yard airport in
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Brooklyn, where students can observe firsthand the inner workings of maintaining
commercial watercraft and work amongst professional colleagues. For these and other
reasons, Maritime Engineering’s relationship to the military and military recruiting is
quite different than any of the other schools in this study.
As one might expect from a school where both administrators and students
describe the atmosphere as “pro-military”, opt-out rates are typically quite low at
Maritime Engineering, registering at 13.68 percent in 2010 and 14.02 percent in 2011.
Interestingly for a school with such a strong vocational, career-prep orientation, 56.5
percent of graduating Maritime Engineering students go on to college. In terms of racial
demographics, 58 percent of Maritime Engineering students identify as Hispanic, 25.3
percent as Asian, 9.2 percent as white, and 6.1 percent as black. 77.4 percent of Maritime
Engineering students report eligibility for free and reduced lunch. Only 14.3 percent of
Maritime Engineering’s students are female, a fact that is readily observable in terms of
campus atmosphere. Perhaps unsurprisingly because of the school’s stated content area,
as much as 30 percent of school staff members identify as veterans, although that number
could not be officially verified. Table 15 shows demographic information for Maritime
students.
Table 15 - Maritime High School Demographic Information
Total
Enrollment

2010
Opt-Out
%

Free and
Reduced
Lunch %

Male
%

Female
%

Postsecondary
Enrollment %

77.4

85.7

14.3

56.6

Hispanic
%

2011
OptOut %
14.02
%
Black
%

2119

13.68%

Asian %

White %

ELL
%

SPED
%

25.3

58.0

6.1

9.2

3.0

4.9

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In addition to the licensing, Maritime students graduate into a unique alumni
network that assists in job training and job placement. Maritime maintains an active
alumni resource office, which helps graduates and soon-to-be graduates connect with
professionals in the field and identify job opportunities. Indeed, Maritime’s website
features a rotating “Alumnus of the Month” page, where alumni who are using their
Maritime education share their experiences. Many students’ participation in internship
programs translates into post-graduation employment in one of the school’s partner
companies. As an explicitly career-preparatory school, Maritime takes its commitment to
students’ post-graduate employment seriously.
For the purposes of this study, I characterize Maritime as “mission-specific,
selective” because the school a) maintains a specific outcome objective (students’
technical competence in maritime engineering) and b) admittance to the school is based
on student interest not on residence. I interviewed five students and seven administrators
at Maritime High School. Only one student in this study, Tricia, maintains plans to enroll
in college after she graduates from Maritime – which is certainly not representative of the
school’s postsecondary outcomes. Despite this, the high percentage of enlisted students in
this sample offers distinct insight into Maritime’s unusual approach to dealing with
recruiting issues. Table 16 displays information for Maritime High School study
participants.
Table 16 - Maritime High School Interviewee Information
Pseudonym

Role

Sex

Rocco

Assistant Principal Guidance

M

145

Military
Service/
Postsecondary
Plans
Yes

JROTC

--

Table 16 (cont’d)
Gino
Sonia
Don
Floyd
Darren
Jack
Tricia
Tucker
Caleb
Sarah
Ben

Assistant Principal –
Maritime Maintenance
College Counselor
Principal
Electricity Teacher,
Attendance Coordinator
Senior Guidance
Counselor
Teacher - JROTC
Super Senior
Senior
Super Senior
Senior
Senior

M

Yes

--

F
M
M

No
Yes
Yes

----

M

No

--

M
F
M
M
F
M

Yes
College-Bound
Enlisted
Enlisted
Enlisted
Enlisted

-Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No

In terms of military recruiting, Maritime Engineering maintains an open-door
policy for recruiters looking to come onto campus, so long as recruiters check in and are
approved by the school’s Assistant Principal for Guidance, Rocco. Rocco serves as the
central operator for all of the military recruiting related issues on campus (notably more
extensive than any of the other schools I visited) by dealing with recruiters first and then
delegating them to appropriate personnel based on the request. In addition to typical
campus visits and tabling, military recruiters from different branches often run activity
days in the school’s shipyard, where recruiters run pull-up competitions and other kinds
of physical fitness tests and hand out military swag such as backpacks and lanyards. In
conjunction with the JROTC and Color Guard programs, Maritime Engineering often
welcomes various military bands for concerts. Military recruiters hand out awards for
leadership and citizenship at graduation and, like teachers and administrators at both
North Deco and Francis Lewis, Maritime staff regularly participate in the Parris Island
recruiting programs. At the time of my interviews, Maritime Engineering was planning to
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host a “military career fair” for local (read: not just Maritime Engineering) students to ask
questions and interact with recruiters from different military branches.
Despite this, Rocco and Maritime Engineering take the opting-out process quite
seriously. In addition to handing out opt-out forms to parents during ninth-grade
orientation, Rocco personally visits every shop class (all students take shop) for Maritime
Engineering’s juniors and seniors, where he both hands out opt-out forms and instructs
students that if they are interested in the military at all they should choose to work with
recruiters assigned to Maritime Engineering because otherwise “we have less control of
that recruitment process.” Further, Rocco says he wants to remind students that “there
are a lot of valuable resources in the building because a lot of teachers here are veterans.
[Teachers] can provide [students] with an aspect of the military life that probably the
recruiter may not.” This serves a dual purpose: first, it lets students know that when it
comes to working with recruiters, they have trusted adults “in their corners” to help
navigate the enlistment process. Second, it puts recruiters on notice that they are being
carefully supervised at Maritime Engineering. To these ends, Rocco’s and other
administrators’ vested interest in supervising the recruitment and enlistment process was
heavily emphasized in our interviews.
Interviewed students reported full awareness of that supervision and support, and
can see nuance in how administrators discuss military-related issues. Sarah, a senior
enlisted in the Air Force, affirms that distinction: “I think [administrators] support the
idea of people joining the military. I don’t think they support recruiters that would lie to
get people to join the military.” Caleb, a second-year senior also enlisted in the Air Force,
summarizes: “I believe [administrators] support the military itself, but I don’t believe

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they support the recruiters themselves… but the military as a whole they do support.” In
my research, I only observed that kind of concerted, focused attention on shepherding
students through the enlistment process at Maritime Engineering.
Though Maritime maintains a distinctly career-prep mission, it also commits
some resources to college preparation. The college office is featured prominently on the
school’s website, and Sonia, the school’s college counselor, is available to assist students
in the application process. Sonia briefly introduces herself to every class at the beginning
of the school year alongside Rocco. Despite this, college-bound senior Tricia expresses
the feeling that Sonia’s resources are stretched thin, and it can be difficult to obtain her
assistance. While college attendance resources are available for those students that seek
them, it may be difficult for all students to get sufficient support.
Counseling Students with Insider Knowledge
So we don't allow [recruiters to mislead students]. We try to be very honest with
the student, ‘this is what you have right here, these are the jobs.’ And since we
know what it entails, we try to tell them no, this is what is up. – Gino, Assistant
Principal, Maritime Maintenance
Gino’s quote illustrates how interviewed administrators’ at Maritime articulate
their responsibilities to students surrounding military recruiting. As noted in the previous
section, the high percentage of veterans on staff at Maritime means that administrators
possess considerable first-hand knowledge of military service that they attempt to use
when counseling students in the postsecondary decision process. When probed about
their experiences with administrators, students are Maritime are enthusiastic and
forthcoming about how well-supported they are by the administrators around them,
especially in terms of making decisions about the military. As part of an administrative
commitment to ensure equal access to information for students, Assistant Principal Rocco
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notes that this kind of environment is the result of a conscious decision to explicitly
inform students of the available resources by visiting every single classroom at the
beginning of every school year and presenting information related to the opt-out form as
well as college attendance assistance. Sonia, Maritime’s college counselor, accompanies
Rocco on each of these presentations in order to share college application process
logistical information with students. Rocco discusses how he approaches his classroom
presentations to students:
I talk about the reality of a military service, the obligation that’s required, that
we’re [an] all-volunteer force, that we at the school are here to take the position
and advocate for the student, not for the recruiter. If they have an interest in
joining the service, try not to go to a recruiter outside the building because then
we have less control of that recruitment process.
By explaining that the military is all-volunteer, Rocco explains why recruiters come into
school, and then attempts to help students understand that they have advocates in the
recruiting process so that students are not vulnerable in the recruiting process. Further, by
pairing these presentations with information about the college application process,
Maritime administrators are enabling students to see that they have resources available to
them on all fronts.
All five of the students interviewed at Maritime articulated that they felt deeply
supported by their administrators, and knew where to go to ask questions about their
interests. All five attributed this to the fact that many of their teachers have veteran status,
and they knew which teacher to approach about which branch. Beyond this, students
articulated the belief that their administrators supported the military, and believed it was a
good choice for students. Caleb notes, “I believe [administrators] support the military
itself, but I don’t believe they support the recruiters themselves.” This, he suggests,

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means that his administrators are on his side in the enlistment process. Enlisted senior,
Tucker, shared a similar story about his experience signing an enlistment contract. After
showing his contract to one of his JROTC instructors, the instructor noticed a pay grade
discrepancy, indicating that participating in Maritime’s five-year dual licensing program
should yield entrance into the service at a higher pay rate. Tucker notes:
Three years in this program and you get bumped from paid rate E1 to paid rate
E3, which is significant. You would get the same pay increase for a bachelor’s
degree in college. That’s how serious this is. On my written contract, even
though I had the certificate, I didn’t have it written on my contract, paid rate of
E3, I had paid rate of E1. My instructor got on my case, because he was like
‘You should know about it. Your contract, when you go down their Friday… I
want to see that contract back on Monday and I want it to say E3. Don’t get
suckered. You’ve earned that rank.’ I took care of it.
Tucker’s story illustrates a common experience at Maritime of students utilizing their
teachers’ insider knowledge of military systems in order to better advocate for
themselves. Sarah was able to use her strong Armed Services Vocational Aptitude
Battery scores (the military’s entrance exam that also yields students’ possible job
assignments) and, on advice from instructors, negotiate a Damage Controlman position in
the Navy, which will likely see very little to no combat time. Tucker will use his dual
licenses toward a mechanic position. Caleb was initially interested in Special Forces, but
after learning from his instructors of the high burnout rate, he’s now headed into a
position as a Watercraft Mechanics Crew Chief.
That these positions are less likely to see combat time is no accident as far as
Maritime administrators are concerned. Gino, assistant principal for maritime
maintenance, shares his own accounts of helping students through the enlistment process
by advising students of their rights regarding the ASVAB test as well as their capacities
to negotiate their contracts. He says that he tells his students,
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Don't sign anything. [Administrators at Maritime] are just advisors for the kids.
You want to make sure that you are going to go in there to do the job that you
want to do, not necessarily what the military wants you to do. [Students have] to
work with them here, because it is a school, with some degree to measure [the
truth]. We always have at the forefront what the students want, not what the
recruiters want.
Beyond this, interviewed administrators at Maritime take care to get to know the
recruiters assigned to their school so that they can keep close eyes on students’
experiences with enlistment. Because of this supervision combined with the specific
skills garnered in the licensing programs, guidance counselor Darren suggests that
students are often able to find their way into less-dangerous positions. “It’s kind of like
giving them safe jobs, rather than putting them on front-line jobs because our students are
… We’re not Stuyvesant, but we’re fairly high performing, so they tend to give them
more technical jobs than say other students.” So, whereas at North Deco and Florence
Luscomb administrators expressed that their roles required “neutrality”, at Maritime,
administrators see their role as an active counselor around military enlistment
proceedings.
“They’re here for me”: Recruiting for Specific Skills
You see [recruiters] a lot at Maritime…. it’s because here we have, a lot of our
teachers come from the military, and it’s not like they instill it, it’s just that they
talk about their experiences and it’s great … I guess they – military recruiters –
notice that and they come to the school. On top of that we have our JROTC unit
which is really known in New York, and color guard which is like the Marine
version of it. – Tricia, College-Bound Senior, Maritime
Tricia’s quote illustrates an interesting trend among interviewed students at
Maritime. When asked to comment on why recruiters might be in their school, all five
interviewed students at Maritime expressed the idea that recruiters seek out students at
Maritime because the school – its staff, its values, its curriculum – are congruent with

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military objectives. Tricia understands the high concentration of veterans on staff and the
schools’ military-related programming to be examples of this observation, and interprets
the presence of recruiters in her school to be natural outgrowths of military-friendly
culture. Moreover, further investigation into the substance of their commentary reveals a
notable theme specific to their high school experiences, where students are graduating
with at least one (if not both) of the licenses necessary to work as commercial mechanics.
Maritime students tend to see the military recruiting in their school as a logical extension
of the work they had been pursuing both in school and through their involvement in one
of the JROTC units. Students viewed themselves as exceptionally qualified for service
for these reasons and felt recruiters were in their school specifically for them, as opposed
to in other schools where recruiters were either looking to pry students away from
directly enrolling in college, or could entice students who did not have college as a viable
option. Sarah, an enlisted senior, observes,
With the presence of JROTC or the Air Force ROTC here, we already have a
strong military presence here. They teach you stuff. They teach you like, they help
you be confident in yourself and to respect others. It’s really good. Then the
recruiters come in and they see that and they’re even more slightly surprised. The
students understand how to talk to a recruiter and how to interact with military
personnel without being rude or showing they’re just a younger generation who
are rude or incompetent.
Sarah sees her involvement in JROTC as separating her from her peers. These
experiences have given her the skills and vocabulary to enable her to operate inside of
military norms, and rather than seeing recruiters as impenetrable or intimidating
(language frequently cited by students in other schools), Sarah’s access to a military lexis
frames the landscape of postsecondary options differently than students in other schools.
Tucker, an enlisted senior, observes, “Kids are fixing [boats], working with their hands,

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performing technical jobs. This is a trade school, technical aptitude. [Recruiters] know
they’re going to get kids here that are really good with their hands and they’re smart.” In
this way, students at Maritime so not see themselves as targets of military recruiters so
much as natural subjects for military careers.
Discussion
Maritime administrator’s commitment to equally preparing students to make a
well-informed decision around enlistment is supplemented by institutional efforts to
ensure that all students are aware of the available options. In a Labaree-goal framework
(1997), these kinds of investments and institutional choices reflect a kind of collective
valuing of democratic equality-oriented goals, specifically the “equal access” tenet.
Administrators’ insistence on providing students with substantive knowledge about the
military and college admissions is rooted in ensuring that Maritime students are equally
able to access information about postsecondary options. While that commitment to equal
access is transparent in terms of administrative attempts to disseminate information to all
students, it is also evident in administrators’ specific understandings of their roles as
veteran-mentors. Indeed, administrators at Maritime explicitly acknowledge that
facilitating student discussions around enlistment options with veteran-administrators
circumvents groups of students from being targeted for service, and ensure above-board
recruiting practices. In this sense, Maritime’s administrators’ understanding of their roles
is rooted in a commitment to ensuring students have equal experience with recruiters.
These administrators, then, may be said to be privileging the democratic equality goal as
they act as counselors.

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Vocationalism, however, is at the core of Maritime’s mission. As one of the
primary manifestations of the social efficiency goal in practice, it is clear that Maritime’s
mission prizes social efficiency objectives. Evidence of this can be seen in all facets of
life at Maritime, from students’ graduation as skilled and licensed mechanics to the
various curricular tracks specifying students’ detailed training. If enlistment in the
military, then, is a natural outgrowth of the kind of career training a student receives at
Maritime, then it is clear that the act military service may be conceptualized as part of the
maintenance of the healthy, functioning market society. In this sense, study participants’
understanding of military service fits comfortably into a social efficiency framework.
When assessing how students and administrators understand military recruiting at
Maritime, is important to first note that Maritime High School is the only school in this
study in which military recruiting does not occur against a backdrop of standard, de facto
college attendance. Though Maritime does allocate resources to college-related issues,
Maritime’s goal of training skilled technicians means that college attendance may not be
viewed as the singular ticket to competitive advantage in a postsecondary job market. In
this mission-specific environment, a Maritime high school diploma may indeed be
enough to compete in a capitalist market, suggesting that all postsecondary options bear
distinctly different weights than they would in other school environments. Further,
because of the perceived value of a Maritime degree in the market, Maritime is the only
high school that does not have to focus its energies on ensuring students are able to move
into an environment that will help with later competitive advantage, as the high school
offers enough advantage of its own accord.

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This may have particular repercussions for understandings of the military: in
mission-specific environment in which attaining competitive postsecondary employment
is a reasonable expectation, students can pursue postsecondary options to bulk up
competitive advantage if they so desire, but the urgency to nail down a postsecondary
plan may be less. In other words, because students can get competitive jobs, the military
does not have to be a fallback plan for students that are unable to attend college. When
this reality is combined with faculty insider knowledge about navigating the military
enlistment process, both students and administrators can critically engage with military
recruiting and military enlistment from an empowered, informed standpoint.
Evidence of this interpretation emerges in both student and administrator
interviews in different ways. For example, students articulate that they believe military
recruiters pursue Maritime students specifically because of their skills and training. This
finding is unique to Maritime students. Moreover, Maritime students are the only students
in this study who do not see military enlistment from a deficit perspective, i.e. how
military enlistment can provide what individuals lack in competitive capital. In knowing
their market value, students can assess how they can utilize what the military has to offer
in order to maximize their own skills and training. When this confidence is bolstered by
insider facility with the enlistment process, how students and administrators understand
military recruiting is marked by a kind of eyes-wide-open awareness about choosing the
military enlistment option. Indeed, enlisted students at Maritime could fully articulate
their job expectations, forthcoming benefits, and possible career trajectories in a way that
was unique among enlisted students in this study.

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In the following chapter, I synthesize data across schools in this study to shed
light on this study’s research questions, and further illuminate how school mission
matters in how study participants understand military recruiting in their schools.
Maritime High School emerges as a singular case in this study, and I explain the
ramifications of administrators’ unique approach to dealing with recruiting in light of
participant understandings at the other schools in this study.

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CHAPTER 10: ANXIETY, FAMILIES AND COLLEGE ASPIRATIONS,
RECRUITING ACROSS SCHOOLS
In Chapters 5-9, I introduce the five schools participating in this study. For each
school, I describe how both administrators and students perceive military recruiting in
their schools, including the role of each school’s mission. In this chapter, I examine the
schools as a set, presenting three themes that arise from across the schools, and offer
some interpretation as to how schools’ missions may play a role in manifesting these
commonalities or differences. The three themes include: awareness of societal anxiety
around military recruiting in schools, the tendency among administrators to discuss
students’ postsecondary trajectories in terms of “classes” or “types” of students, and the
enlisted students’ initial interest in military service.
Awareness of Angst and Recruiting: Protecting Students or Dismissing Anxiety
Sometimes I think about who a gang would recruit from this school, and they
would pick people who often are in the special education program, who haven’t
been as successful in school, who want to be part of a group, who are looking for
someone to pick them out of a crowd and be like, “we want you, and this is the
role you can play.” I kind of feel that way about the military - that they would be
looking for somebody who wants a sense of something bigger. – Elaine, College
Counselor, Tapley High School
Elaine hints at perhaps the most revealing issue that arose across all five schools:
administrators and students at each school pointed out anxieties around military
recruiting and predation on vulnerable student populations, although the tenor of this
commentary shifted demonstrably from school to school. Regardless of whether an
individual identifies with or dismisses this anxiety, the idea of military recruiter predation
permeated how both students and administrators at all schools understand military
recruiting in their schools. At Paulie High School, administrators and students express
the belief that the military targets poor students and students of color. At Tapley,
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administrators reflect the concern that the tone of recruiting distracts from the school’s
academic agenda and that students in schools are a “captive audience” that cannot avoid
interacting with recruiters. At North Deco and Florence Luscomb, administrators and
students express awareness of an amorphous societal anxiety around recruiting in general,
but deny its presence in their school. At Maritime, administrators identify the potential
for recruiters to take advantage of vulnerable students, see themselves as personally
implicated in protecting students and feel confident that recruiters do not exploit students.
Here I consider how these themes emerge in these schools, and how students’ and
administrators’ perspectives relate to their schools’ diverse missions.
The college gold standard and anxiety over recruiting. Study participants at
Paulie and Tapley High Schools frequently expressed the belief that military recruiting
takes advantage of vulnerable students. Students and administrators share these beliefs,
based on their experiences and cultural values. Administrators expressed anxiety,
worried about how their students would react. Elaine, Jenny, Peggy, Christina and Paul at
Tapley High and Evelyn, Mark and Lena at Paulie expressed concerns about the
truthfulness of the recruiting pitch, and whether their students may be capable of being
critical consumers. As Elaine at Tapley notes,
I feel protective over the kids. I feel… [some students] don’t have that selfassurance of themselves. I just feel like they would be drawn to this… like, tell
me what to do, tell me what to wear, tell me what… that makes me nervous. I
don’t feel like they have that sense of self yet to make that decision and that’s
exactly who’s going to go there. I just get nervous because there is a war. I don’t
think that reality is set in. It’s very sexy and, oh, money and awards and a title.
That’s much more tantalizing than [community college] remedial classes….I just
picture [specific student]. She’s very impressionable and I don’t know what
happens next after they sign up or whatever, but picturing her in the frontlines
or… I just want to keep her.

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Similar sentiments emerged in every interview with administrators at Tapley and
Paulie. Like Elaine, interviewed administrators worry that students are not capable of
making a decision when faced with the attractive carrots that the military has to offer.
From this vantage point, administrators believe the military is pursuing students who do
not have the capacity to say no or may not be able to thoroughly advocate for themselves.
Of the interviewed administrators at Tapley and Paulie, only the assistant
principal at Paulie does not relate to this concern. Interestingly, Leroy could point out his
colleagues’ anxieties about recruiter truthfulness, but did not claim this worry as his own.
Noting that although “the military doesn’t do themselves any favors” by being untruthful,
he sees a larger benefit of having recruiters in schools and, as such, does not feel
protective about his students in the same way that his colleagues do.
Further, eight of the eleven interviewed students at Paulie and Tapley High
Schools raised concerns about military recruiter motivation. Roberto, a senior from
Paulie High School, notes that recruiters “know that if they come to a high school with all
these young kids with immature minds…they can just, I don’t want to say manipulate,
but have an influence. And just feed them all the advertisements…that oh, you don’t need
to get a real job, just join the military and everything will be fine.” Though Roberto stops
short of assigning motivation to recruiters, his stance is skeptical about how recruiters
communicate with students. Like Roberto, these eight students stop short of specifically
identifying recruiter motivations as predatory or malevolent. Instead, they talk about a
“strong influence” in providing options to “impressionable” students.
While the general tone among interviewed administrators and students at Florence
Luscomb, North Deco and Maritime is quite different than that at Paulie and Tapley,

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there are some exceptions. A few students and administrators also expressed an anxiety
similar to their counterparts at Paulie and Tapley Highs. Moreover, every person who
expressed a personal belief that military recruiting takes advantage of vulnerable students
was also personally invested in college-going as a postsecondary objective. In addition to
the administrators and students at Paulie and Tapley Highs, those individual study
participants who are either professionally or personally invested in college attendance as
the primary purpose of secondary schooling also express anxiety about military recruiting
and predation, despite a different trend in their respective institutions.
This finding manifests differently in administrators than it does in students. For
Clare, Scott, Chelsea and Sonia, this anxiety emerges as a desire to ensure that students
do not choose the military because they believe it is their only option. Like Elaine and
Jenny at Tapley and Lena at Paulie, these administrators believe it is their responsibility
to ensure that students are fully aware of the financial aid process, and are fully informed
about the requirements associated with enlistment. As college counselor Chelsea notes,
“When I have kids come up to my office and say they have enlisted, I try to explain to
them that although [the military says] this A, B, and C, you are also responsible for D, E,
and F, and that you can go to college and get a student loan and pay that six months after
you graduate.” Sonia, the college counselor at Maritime, concurs, observing that she tries
to counsel students away from enlistment and towards the military academies. She sees
her role as a buffer, asking questions in order to ensure that students intending to enlist
are well informed and not choosing enlistment because they believe it is their only
option. This insistence on intervening in students’ decision-making processes is part of
these administrators’ jobs as college advisors, but it also reveals an unease about how

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much information students really have access to as well as students’ capacities for adult
decision-making. If these administrators believed their students to be well informed and
capable, they would not need to spend extra time and energy acting as buffers around
enlistment decisions.
In the case of these four administrators, feelings of anxiety around recruiting
(concern that students do not feel overt pressure to enlist, are aware of all possible
options, etc.) supersede school missions that are not specifically college-preparatory. For
Scott, Chelsea and Sonia, this desire to ensure that students have enough information falls
within this preference for providing students with options. For Clare, her additional
efforts run counter to North Deco’s interviewed administrators’ commitment to
“neutrality.”
Specific to students, the vast majority of interviewees at Maritime, Florence
Luscomb and North Deco acknowledge a cultural anxiety around recruiting, while
denying feeling targeted or pressured, or experiencing any recruiter dishonesty. There are
three clear exceptions to this observation: Cameron at Florence Luscomb, Mara at North
Deco and Tricia at Maritime. Of the 17 students interviewed at Luscomb, Deco and
Maritime, these are the only three to express a singular commitment to college. For all
three, college plans are a deep source of pride, achieved after much hard work and
against considerable odds: they all come from low-income families and are among the
first in their families to attend college.
They also were more skeptical of the recruiting they witnessed. Mara sees the
military as exploiting students without financial recourse. Likening the military to
“Jesus,” she observes peers in her neighborhood who view the military as a singular

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savior from their circumstances and is skeptical of the claims. Tricia and Cameron
express feeling overwhelmed by the constant presence of recruiting in their schools, and
Tricia wished that the college office had equal resources. All three experienced some
kind of distress around the practice of recruiting in their schools. In each case, students
are observing a kind of vulnerability in the moment of decision-making, a fear of
succumbing to the lure of recruiting.
Simply put, those participants who valued college attendance as the most
important next step after high school tended to express concern, distaste or displeasure
with military recruiting in schools. Indeed, this distaste supersedes the general trends
articulated in specific schools: in the cases of Mara, Cameron and Tricia, military
recruiting enterprises are so thoroughly integrated into their respective schools that most
of their peers offer little to no critique. For these three students, it is their distinct valuing
of college attendance that is associated with their negative characterizations of recruiting
in schools. So, why is this the case? What is it about privileging college attendance that is
connected to anxiety about recruiters and vulnerable students?
Labaree’s (1997) analysis of the contending goals of schooling offers possible
insight. Positioning college attendance as the single-most desirable postsecondary
option is a manifestation of social mobility goals in practice. Students’ and
administrators’ endeavor to get themselves/their students into colleges because they
believe “the outcome for the individual is precisely what matters most,” and that a
college degree is the best asset an individual can possess in a capitalist economy (p. 51).
By necessity, administrators’ efforts to buffer students’ decisions around enlistment is

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about shaping potential “outcomes” for students insofar as it alters the landscape of
choices.
Military recruiting, though, may disrupt this pursuit of social mobility. This
disruption is particularly problematic at Paulie and Tapley High Schools, where college
placement is central to the schools’ overarching aims. That is, there is a mismatch
between the pursuit of social mobility (college attendance) and military recruiting. In the
social mobility orientation of a mission-specific, college-preparatory high school,
students that are operating in their best interests should choose college attendance so long
as they are able, while the objective of the school is to ensure that all graduating students
are academically able to attend college. In this framework, administrators articulate a
belief that the only reason their school graduates would enlist in the military would be
financial. If administrators believe that the purpose of military recruiting in their schools
is to capture the attention of those students that are unable to attend college and they
believe that their schools’ purpose is to ensure that students attend college, it makes sense
that administrators would characterize these target students as “captive”; from their
perspective, students’ circumstances may render them without better, more desirable
21

alternatives .
In this mission-specific, college-preparatory frame, military recruiting serves as a
reminder of some students’ inability to attend college for financial reasons. Its very
presence in these school contexts shines a spotlight either on the limitations of the
aspiration or the failure of a particular school to make good on its promise. This chasm

21

This observation did not emerge as salient until after the data collection process, but
analyses here would benefit from follow-up interviews designed to address these
questions specifically.
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between the lived experience of high schools and their stated purpose may cause
administrators to chafe at the concept of recruiting and the enlistment option. At Paulie
and Tapley High Schools, this may have led to the administrators’ negative, uneasy
descriptions of recruiting.
This same logic carries over to the individual students and administrators at
Florence Luscomb, North Deco and Maritime who, separate from the missions of their
schools, all individually prize college attendance as the primary objective of secondary
schooling. For the three exception students (Cameron, Mara, and Tricia), intended
college plans represent an adherence to core social mobility values: hard work means
mobility in a vertical economy and college attendance is the chief tangible representation
of that upward movement. Again, in this frame, if a student can choose college then he
will choose college; if a student has worked hard, then he should be able to choose
college. Military recruiting in their schools may disrupts this logic: when student-peers
choose enlistment, it must be because they a) have not worked hard enough or b) are
vulnerable financially or personally, because otherwise they would choose college. In
these three cases, students’ chafing at recruiting in schools may be a result of
incongruence between their social mobility values and their understanding of the purpose
of recruiting. Further, because college attendance was not a fait accompli for any of these
three students, they may be highly aware of their own vulnerability to alternative
postsecondary pathways, potentially heightening their experience of anxiety – follow-up
research directly addressing these considerations is necessary to fully illuminate these
issues. Regardless, in these individual cases, fidelity to the college attendance objective
supersedes the role of school mission in informing individual understandings of military

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recruiting. Later in this chapter, I consider another factor – family influence – that may
nuance individual understandings of military recruiting beyond school mission.
Acknowledging while dismissing critiques: ensuring recruiter access. The
previous section explores how study participants at Paulie and Tapley High Schools (and
some exception participants at other schools) experience anxiety around recruiting in
schools. While study participants at North Deco, Maritime and Florence Luscomb all
acknowledge a societal idea around anxiety about recruiting, they speak about this
anxiety as belonging to others and disavow personal association with it. Several factors
may help explain why study participants at these three schools may simultaneously
acknowledge yet distance themselves from negative associations with recruiters
As discussed in detail in the North Deco High School chapter, both administrators
and students speak about other peoples’ negative associations around recruiting and yet
are quick to refute these ideas for themselves, suggesting that their lived experiences do
not bear out these concerns. This phenomenon is also present among the administrators
and students at both Maritime and Florence Luscomb high schools, although in slightly
different ways. At Florence Luscomb, administrators acknowledge colleagues’ in other
schools’ negative perceptions of recruiting, but pair their own feelings with a belief that
“not every student goes to college”, and thus recruiting is a managed part of their school.
At Maritime, administrators note that recruiters may indeed engage in suspect practices,
but believe it is the job of school-workers to closely supervise recruiting efforts and
enlistment processes so as to protect vulnerable students so that students are safe in their
school. In each of these cases, administrators are acknowledging that societal beliefs
about predatory recruiting exist, but deny experiencing those practices in the contexts of

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their respective schools. As such, how administrators understand other peoples’ negative
associations with recruiting is contingent upon how they experience recruiting in their
own school.
For administrators at Florence Luscomb, Maritime and North Deco, there is one
common thread unifying their belief that administrators in other schools have negative
associations with recruiting. At the same time that administrators at Tapley and Paulie
were discussing military recruiting as potentially exploitative, administrators at all
schools in this study referenced the idea that administrators harbor individual (antimilitary) feelings that could interfere with students’ ability to interact with recruiters. At
Florence Luscomb, Maritime and North Deco, administrators invoked that idea to suggest
that the reason the military recruits in public high schools is to circumvent individual
administrators’ and teachers’ anti-military personal feelings. In this sense, study
participants believe the military to be capitalizing on federal and district policy contexts
that prevent administrators and teachers from barring recruiting in schools.
In this analysis, public schools serve as the primary gathering location for young
people making postsecondary decisions and, as such, are susceptible to the influence of
administrators and teachers. School atmospheres, then, are curated by administrators, and
students only have access to opportunities sanctioned by those in charge. At North Deco,
Maritime and Florence Luscomb, administrators suggested that the regulated nature of
schools (not to mention both the federal and district policy contexts) ensure that military
recruiting has access to students despite the individual feelings of administrators. Diane,
principal of North Deco, observes,
from time to time, different schools and different districts and different
individuals…have different political views on things…I think it was a way of
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opening the door to the high schools where in some areas, not so much here, but
in some areas I’m sure [military recruiters] are iced out, so to say. Where they
don’t get in because maybe that principal…doesn’t believe kids belong in the
military.
At Maritime, principal Don agrees, “A lot of schools do not believe that their students
should join the military. They think that about the military, they can go to university or
college, get a degree, go into business and that the military is not a good option.” Schools
have a responsibility to students to “give them choice,” he says, “give them the options,
let them make the decisions. Allow them to mature enough to make informed decisions.
That’s the bottom line.”
Nine of the twenty-six administrators interviewed for this study explicitly
expressed the idea that the military recruits in schools in order to avoid negative
administrative influence on students, and five of the eight administrators interviewed at
Maritime observed some iteration of this sentiment. None of the student participants
interviewed for this study keyed in on this idea. Further, it is important to note that while
the belief that there are administrators harboring anti-military recruiting sentiment is
widely documented in military recruiting literature (see Literature Review chapter), what
is notable here is that the nine respondents in this study addressing this topic generally
referred to this idea of administrators’ anti-recruiting bias (as in, “some people think
that…”) but never espoused the viewpoint as their own.
That administrators at North Deco, Florence Luscomb and Maritime articulate
other colleagues’ disapproval of military recruiting while simultaneously taking care to
reiterate their own stance reveals yet another subtext in how administrators’ understand
the purpose of recruiting in schools. In identifying the regulated nature of public schools
as some kind of buffer against an imagined anti-recruiter activism common to school
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administrators, study participants may be calling upon that same regulation in order to
evade claiming a feeling about the purpose of recruiting in schools one way or the other.
This barrier functions to both protect administrators from scrutiny for their personal
feelings as well dictate a course of action that obviates administrators for taking personal
responsibility for the outcomes of students ultimately deciding to enlist. In obeying the
law, administrators at Maritime, North Deco and Florence Luscomb are able to avoid
identifying a judgment about both the purpose and practice of recruiting in schools.
Further augmenting this argument is commentary from four study participants at
Paulie and Tapley High School. At Paulie, both Leroy (assistant principal) and Giselle
(enlisted senior) acknowledge others’ negative association with recruiting practices while
fervently expressing their own positive feelings. Elena and Howie, both enlisted students
at Tapley, express similar feelings. In each of these cases, the individual in question
expressly states a distinct personal connection to military service. For the students, all
have already committed to service. Assistant principal Leroy is notably invested in
military service, and takes care throughout our interview to repeat positive associations
with service and strong feelings about supporting the military, despite his colleagues’
anti-military ideas. Just as individual investment in college attendance supersedes school
mission in formulating understandings of recruiting, so too does an individual
relationship to the military for these three enlisted students and assistant principal Leroy.
But beyond these exception cases, this “dismissed awareness” of anxiety about
recruiting that emerges at North Deco, Florence Luscomb and Maritime actually works to
underscore one of this study’s larger findings: the extent to which schools’ missions
focus on college attendance matters in students’ and administrators’ understandings of

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military recruiting. In each of these three schools, college attendance is not an explicitly
stated component of these schools’ missions and, as such, does not represent the same
kind of urgent promotion of the college attendance option. In the absence of a clearly
defined postsecondary ideal, the emergence of alternative postsecondary option
(represented, in this case, by the military recruiting enterprise) does not appear quite as
threatening as it does in mission-specific, college-preparatory environment. In this case,
it makes sense that interviewees would not identify with anxiety over recruiters, even if
they possess an awareness that such anxiety exists in the world. This interpretation is
supported by the “providing options” language employed by administrators at these three
schools, specifically, the desire expressed by interviewees at each school to include
enlistment as an available option for students. Indeed, if schools do not identify one
specific postsecondary route for its students, it is incumbent upon them to present an
array of choices. In this situation, mission-diffusion (or in the case of Maritime, focus on
something other than college) may enable a less threatened view of military recruiting in
schools.
Students Across Schools: Family Influence and Initial Interest in Service
Nowadays it’s really difficult to pay for the college and I know my family is not
in the greatest financial situation. I definitely thought about [joining the military].
Maybe thinking, ‘Oh, it would definitely pay off in the long run.’ It was
definitely just sort of an option because it’s not only about me. It’s about my
family and my parents, how long they would have to work and everything. I just
definitely thought about that. – Traci, College-Bound Senior, Florence Luscomb
High School
Traci’s quote illustrates a central theme in students’ articulations of their
postsecondary decision making process: students’ families are central to decisions
surrounding transitioning out of high school. The breadth of this finding is diverse:

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students across schools and regardless of their intended destination (college, work, or the
military) positioned “family” at the heart of their postsecondary decision-making
processes. In this section, I consider how families act as a common factor in students’
understandings of military recruiting, modulating schools’ missions to inform enlistment
decisions.
Families are one of the primary constituents through whom students measure
what kind of capital is available to them to use toward a postsecondary plan, and
consideration of family approval ranks highly in students’ postsecondary decisionmaking processes (Eighmey, 2006; Kleycamp, 2006). Traci, above, demonstrates this
idea as she notes that the financial strain college would place on her family made her
consider the military more seriously than she would have otherwise. Though Traci
ultimately decided to go to college rather than enlist, her understanding of her family’s
resources weighed heavily on her in that process. This sentiment was echoed across
schools, as students reflected on their own processes as well as articulating their ideas
about why other students might consider the military. Indeed, out of the 28 students
interviewed, 25 noted that a lack of family resources was probably behind the decision to
enlist. Cameron, a college-bound senior at Florence Luscomb, summarizes this idea,
suggesting that students who enlist “don’t have money to pay for tuition or they don’t
have good enough grades to get into a good college. That’s what I would think military
is for.” Notably, Cameron’s quotation also echoes Florence Luscomb administrators’
perspective highlighted in the previous section, wherein enlisting in the military is
positioned as a less-desirable alternative to college attendance as a result of limited
postsecondary access.

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Additionally, students in this study who ultimately did decide to enlist also
frequently cite their family’s resources as a motivating factor in that decision. Of the nine
enlisted students in this study, five mentioned financial strain on their families as one of
the primary factors motivating their decision. Beyond the benefits included in the G.I.
Bill such as funding for college, two students listed their sign-on bonuses as particularly
influential. While certainly related to financial status, Elena, an enlisted senior at Tapley
High School, says that the ability to travel the world factors into her decision, because her
family never traveled while she was growing up.
But “families” do more in this process than provide fiscal resources, especially as
far as the decision to enlist in the military is concerned: of the ten enlisted students in this
study, eight specifically highlighted their families’ influence, guidance and approval as a
critical component in their final decision. Further, two students who had considered the
military seriously but remain undecided or decided against service did so at the behest of
their parents. Caleb, an enlisted senior at Maritime, initially considered joining because
his sister serves in the Marines. Because of his conversations with her about his
experience, he felt aware of the opportunities available to him. He notes,
I have visited her often, been on the bases. I kind of love the lifestyle because
it’s like a military life but a civilian life at the same time, you are serving your
country, but you still have the free time to be with your family. And on top of
that, she is also in England right now so, obviously, you get to travel around the
world.
For Tucker, also an enlisted Senior at Maritime, his uncle’s experience in the service
inspired him to set the lofty professional goals of pursuing college and obtaining an
officer rank. He notes, “My uncle was a captain in the Marine Corps. He’s very
successful. He actually works for a subdivision of Ralph Lauren. He’s president of

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Global Logistics. I mean, just looking at him, and following his example, I see that he
did well.”
This influence can extend even further, into more specific decisions about service.
Sarah, an enlisted Senior at Maritime, knew that she wanted to serve early in her high
school career and struggled to decide on a branch, ultimately landing on the Navy. She
jokes, “My parents would kill me if I joined the Marines. They’d probably murder me
before I shipped out.” In this case, her parents’ perceived discomfort with the culture of
the Marine Corps led Sarah to choose a different path. Whether it be specific to families’
fiscal resources or to the application of parental guidance, students’ decision-making
around postsecondary options is in this study closely related to their perceptions of their
family.
Initial interest and military recruiters.
The conversations [with military recruiters], they were quick and to the point,
since I already knew what I wanted, since I was [following] my sister before, [I
knew] … just to have a mindset of what to go in with and what the questions that
I needed to ask. But otherwise our meetings were really short and quick. Nothing
really needed to be said. -- Caleb, Enlisted Senior, Maritime High School
Of the ten enlisted or undecided students in this study, eight articulated a story
similar to Caleb’s about their first experiences with military recruiters. Of these eight,
seven indicated that they had initiated their first contacts with recruiters and were already
leaning heavily toward enlistment. One student, Howie at Tapley High School, noted that
he was approached by an Army recruiter first, but had already decided on enlistment and
had been “waiting for his call.” The other two enlisted students in this study, Tucker at
Maritime and Wally at Florence Luscomb, are both active participants in their schools’

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JROTC programs and were introduced to their recruiters in through their respective
sergeants.
What is meant here by “initial interest in service”? For the purposes of this
analysis, I use the language of initial interest to indicate that a student entered their senior
year of high school (the time when high school students must begin to strategize around
choosing a postsecondary plan if they are to attend college, join the military or participate
in a vocational-training program following high school graduation) with enlistment or
military service as a likely choice. In order to be considered “initially interested in
service,” a student must have expressed interest in service prior to their initial encounter
with a recruiter. This expression of interest is measured in one of two ways: (a) s/he
communicated interest in service to a teacher or mentor who then facilitated an
interaction with a recruiter or (b) s/he initiated the first interaction with a service
recruiter. Only two students, Miguel at Paulie High and Tricia at Maritime, demonstrated
initial interest but decided against enlistment.
I focus here on students’ initial interest in service because it is the only observed
commonality among enlisted students in this study. Across schools, enlisted students in
this study span races, sexes, classes, and family legacies of service, but all entered the
postsecondary decision-making process with a demonstrated interest in serving already in
place. There are no students in this study who were persuaded to enlist: that is, no
enlisted students made their decision after interacting with recruiters, unless that
preliminary contact was borne of that students’ initial interest in serving.
For students in this study, their initial interest shaped their experience making
decisions in two divergent capacities: 5 of those expressing initial interest expressed the

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specific belief that college attendance was not necessary for obtaining their professional
and personal long-term goals. Conversely, 7 students felt that the achievement of their
long-term goals hinged on college attendance, and enlisting provided the best leverage
for pursuing a college degree. In this way, students expressing initial interest in service
reflect a distinct polarity in their understanding of postsecondary service: for some, it is a
means to an end, while for others it is an end in itself. The G.I. Bill, then, provides a
unique space for the military in the decision-making process, allowing recruiters to
capitalize on the aforementioned “college gold standard” while simultaneously offering
its own distinct plan.
For the two students who expressed initial interest but ultimately decided against
service, both identified mitigating adult figures in their lives who helped navigate the
potentially confusing college application process. In both cases, these adults were
guidance-counselor type figures at their schools. For Miguel, attending Paulie means that
he has access to an entire staff of professionals focused on helping students attend
college. Miguel found that by the time it was necessary to apply to college, he could
depend on administrators for help because “they see college as a better chance at a
successful life. If you go to college, you can get anything you want after college is done.”
At Maritime, Tricia found that she had a lot of assistance with the enlistment process
from her mentors in the JROTC program, who advised her to consider applying to a
military academy or to pursue college-level ROTC, so that she might enter the service at
a higher rank later. Because of this advice, Tricia pursued college, ultimately deciding
between Carnegie Mellon and the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Although

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Tricia plans to attend Carnegie Mellon, she credits her mentors in JROTC for helping her
apply to schools. She notes,
They introduced me, you know, to the Naval Academy, saying that it was meant
for top – you know – for these well-rounded kids who are good in school, that do
leadership, that do community service. [JROTC] introduced me, but not
necessarily pushed me to do it. It was my option, but I have this, I want to be
great, I want to be one of the best of the best. So you know, I was like, I wanna do
that. So that’s what motivated me to do that.
The experiences of Giselle at Paulie High School and Howie and Elena at Tapley
High School offer some insight into how these factors (family influence and initial
interest in service) may illuminate enlistment decisions despite attendance at missionspecific, college-preparatory institutions. In all three of these cases, students experience
support at home for enlistment and articulate a personal connection to service that
predated their postsecondary decision-making processes. These factors enable an
enlistment decision that supersedes their schools’ focus on college attendance and
undergird strong personal feelings toward military service.
These analyses offer an important counterpoint to this study’s main argument:
school missions are not the only factor that can be used to explain how interviewees
understand military recruiting. Indeed, especially for students, families – family
resources, family experiences with the military, family values surrounding college
attendance – offer important influence that may work above and beyond schools’
missions in predicting how a student understands military recruiting and the
postsecondary military enlistment option. So, while this study’s data suggests that school
mission does indeed mediate these understandings, it is necessarily not the only factor
that shapes students’ experiences. This project does not investigate the motivational
factors behind students’ enlistment decisions, but rather seeks to uncover what matters in
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how all students (enlisted or otherwise) understand the practice and purpose of military
recruiting in their schools. As such, family influence cannot be entirely disentangled from
students’ experiences and I posit that more research is necessary to fully explicate the
range of personal factors that explain individual experiences.
Administrators Across Schools: Types of Students and Outcomes.
I feel that a student who is scared about either their academic abilities, their social
abilities, their finances, about being independent, that I think the military offers
something that seems soothing and easier than the challenges of another
postsecondary option…or glamorous. – Jenny, College Advisor, Tapley High
School
Jenny’s quote illustrates one of the most common themes among administrators
across schools in this study: when asked about military recruiting in schools,
administrators in all schools tended to provide answers within the frame of “classes” or
“types” of students. Whereas students framed their answers personally, sharing stories
based on their own experiences, administrators express a normalized narrative across
their experiences with numerous students. Insofar as school missions mitigates
administrators’ understandings of military recruiting, so too does mission intersect with
and inform how administrators classify of students’ postsecondary trajectories.
That administrators across schools in this study speak in terms of classes or types
of students makes sense: students, in the midst of making postsecondary decisions, offer
personal insight into how they understand military recruiting, but their experiences are
limited to what they, personally, have undergone. Administrators, on the other hand,
reflect their conceptions of how to best counsel students as they transition out of high
school. It is this counsel – and the various perspectives about what is best or ideal – that
serve as entry points for this analysis. Further, this analysis benefits from the reality that,

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at least as far as this study’s data reveal, administrators reflected consistency in their
understandings of their roles within their respective schools. Administrators at Maritime,
for example, reflect a commitment to ensuring broad knowledge across postsecondary
options, where administrators at North Deco and Florence Luscomb see their stance as
reflective of a “reality” that some students are unable to attend college. Administrators at
Tapley and Paulie High Schools see themselves as helping filter students toward college
attendance.
Insofar as administrators see their roles as preparing students to take their place in
the postsecondary world, how administrators define that role is related to how they
understand what schools should be preparing student for. School missions, then, become
critically important in administrators’ assessments of “types” of students. If a schools’
sole goal is to transition students to college, helping students make postsecondary
decisions understandably looks quite different than it does in a school that embraces
enlistment as desirable postsecondary option. When college attendance is the primary
objective of schooling, how administrators characterize those students that do enlist is
also quite different than it would be in a setting where college attendance recedes from
view and schools’ missions refrain from identifying one specific ideal outcome.
The data in this study bear out this assessment. At Paulie and Tapley High
Schools, administrators define their professional success by transitioning students into
college. Administrators narrow counseling efforts in order to filter students into a
vertically structured college marketplace that includes community colleges, state
universities and selective private institutions. Further, administrators combat some of the
challenges associated with college attendance (specifically, financial barriers) with

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assistance regarding financial aid and scholarships. At both Paulie and Tapley, enlistment
falls outside of this framework, and administrators categorically do not advise students
toward service options. College counselor Elaine shares, “I’m your college advisor; I’m
not your life coach. I’ll talk to [students] about anything but … I can’t possibly equally
present all the different options.” So, in a school that sees college attendance as its chief
objective, students that can attend college should attend college. When a student in this
situation then does not attend college, administrators may feel that they have not achieved
their goal. For an administrator assessing students inside of this frame, it may appear that
students who decide to enlist must not be able to attend college for reasons administrators
were unable to address (extensive financial issues or previous interest in service or
students must be vulnerable to recruiting carrots -- see previous section on recruiting and
predation).
That administrators’ understandings look quite different at North Deco and
Florence Luscomb is understandable. At North Deco and Florence Luscomb, missions
involve nebulous preparation to make the best postsecondary decision for the individual.
In the case of administrators at these two schools, conceptualizing groups of students in
terms of where they are headed after high school is grounded in the belief that their
schools will prepare some students for some roles, and others for others. This point is
amplified when paired with administrators’ “college is not for everyone” language – the
stratification of students reflects the “reality” that some students are bound for college
while others head into service or other things. How administrators then classify this
“reality” reveals deep-seated beliefs about classes or types of students. If college is not
for everyone, how does an administrator neutrally assess how to counsel students? What

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makes college or the military a good choice for an individual student? At both North
Deco and Florence Luscomb, administrators observe that while some students may
choose not to go on to college, many students do not have access – for financial,
academic, or personal reasons – to postsecondary schooling of some kind and thus may
choose to serve. Enlistment, then, becomes a desirable option when questions of
postsecondary access are in the forefront of students’ decision-making, and
administrators “neutral” standpoint prevents intervention in the decision-making
processes. As Maher, principal of Florence Luscomb, notes, enlistment “is a very good
option for folks who can’t necessarily afford to go to college right away.”
In this framework, college is still positioned as the standard postsecondary option
and, as such, enlisting in the military (or any other postsecondary plan, for that matter) is
seen as an alternative to the standard, rather than as an independent choice. In these cases,
administrators counsel based on their assessments of how likely a student is to be able to
access postsecondary schooling. As such, when postsecondary access is in question
(again, either for financial, academic, or personal reasons) administrators assist in
students’ enlistment decisions. Whereas at Tapley and Paulie High Schools questions of
postsecondary access are addressed within the confines of the schools’ missions (i.e.
financial aid assistance, meetings with parents about the college application process), at
North Deco and Florence Luscomb, these restrictions are viewed as part of students’
individual realities. “Neutral” guidance, then, in the postsecondary decision-making
process may work to reproduce the class and cultural stratifications that students enter
school with. In the name of neutrality, administrators accept individuals’ ability to access

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college as the standard by which college-bound students are separated from their enlisted
peers.
Data from this study about how administrators’ at Florence Luscomb and North
Deco classify students and postsecondary trajectories both augment and complicate these
concerns. When asked to characterize college-bound students, administrators repeatedly
mentioned students’ academic records and “sense of ambition” as critical factors
distinguishing college-bound students from their peers. Conversely, when discussing
students for whom the military is a good option, administrators repeatedly focused on
students’ financial situations. Though there were certainly other factors mentioned
alongside finances, every single interviewed administrator at Florence Luscomb and
North Deco (except for Roger at Florence Luscomb) mentioned students’ financial
situations as a potential indicator of a student for whom the military is a strong choice.
Beyond this, administrators tend to characterize military-bound students in a kind of
amorphous way, employing adjectives that are more important in relationship to one
another than on their own. For example, Maher, principal of Florence Luscomb, suggests
that military-bound students are “good-hearted kids that are respectful that didn’t do well
in school because of their immaturity, not because of their intelligence, because of their
immaturity.” Roger, JROTC instructor at Florence Luscomb, identifies “someone who is
adventurous, [but] not really ready for solid classroom training.” In these composite
assessments, pictures of administrators’ ideas of military-bound students emerge as
related to students’ academic performance but not contingent upon it.
Deeper analyses of the assumptions undergirding these data reveal classifications
that are closely bound to existing social stratifications. Clearly, this observation is most

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pronounced in regard to interviewed administrators’ ideas that the military is a “good
option” for students with financial concerns. Beyond this, the other characterizations
employed throughout are also economically charged – students who “don’t do well in
school” and are “not really ready for solid classroom training” may appear that way
because of socioeconomic disadvantage. Further, the ability to do well academically and,
frankly, even possessing enough social capital to know how to have a sense of ambition
are closely related to race and class in America. Beyond these concomitant observations,
I am hesitant to take this analysis any further so as to avoid overinterpretation that veers
into speculation. Rather, I argue that these questions beg for more data, and could benefit
from follow-up interviews designed to better assess the how administrators are separating
and classifying students with their “neutral” stances.
Administrators at Maritime operate inside an entirely different framework than
their counterparts at the other four schools in this study. While other administrators see
students’ college attendance or ability to make decisions as the primary objective of
schooling, administrators at Maritime focus squarely on students’ strong repertoire of
technical skill as the chief goal of their school. What students choose to do with that skill
is viewed as secondary to the skill itself, and though administrators are concerned with
students’ postsecondary trajectories, they tend to adopt the belief that if their students are
well trained, they should be able to achieve postsecondary success – in any arena. How
administrators classify students, then, is not based on college attendance as the chief
objective of their school experiences. While some administrators do indeed express
thinking that college attendance is better for students than any other route, administrators
at Maritime also believe that their students’ technical training should enable students to

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navigate enlistment processes effectively in order to advocate for their personal safety.
Administrators characterize students for whom college attendance is a desirable option as
“interested in academics” and “bookish”; military-bound students are “disciplined”,
“committed” and “hard-working.” Unlike administrators at Florence Luscomb and North
Deco, questions of financial access do not enter into these assessments, as Maritime
administrators believe students’ technical competencies (coupled with strong
administrative supervision in the enlistment process) enable postsecondary decisionmaking. Moreover, where administrators at Tapley and Paulie classify military-bound
students as vulnerable, Maritime administrators see students’ skillsets as enabling agency
in the enlistment process.
In this section, I have explored several themes in participants’ understanding of
military recruiting and enlistment across schools in this study. In each example, I have
offered evidence and interpretation for how school mission may mediate these
understandings, as well as identifying what factors may complicate these understandings.
In the following section, I look to literature on the problems of the American high school
to offer some deeper analyses into how school missions may inform study participants’
understandings of military recruiting in their schools.
Problems of the American High School: The Market, Purpose, and Military
Recruiting
We want an institution where we can express our social goals without violating
the principal of individual choice that lies at the centre of the social structure,
even if this comes at the cost of failing to achieve these goals. (Labaree, 2012, p.
154)
Labaree’s (2012) observation neatly summarizes one clear trend in the scholarship
surrounding the institution of the American high school: tensions, struggles and problems

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emerge where our cultural commitments to social justice, meritocratic assessment and
market capitalism collide. In this section, I use the classic scholarship synthesized in this
study’s theoretical framework chapter to help interpret this study’s findings. In light of
the cross case themes described in the previous section, I illuminate how the scholarship
on the problems of the American high school helps explain the nuanced relationship
between school mission and interviewees’ understanding of military recruiting and
military enlistment.
The research cited in the theoretical framework chapter of this study highlights
the role of high schools as a provider of a necessary but increasingly less valuable
educational credential in a market economy. Cohen and Neufeld (1981) observe that
universal access to high school has bumped educational competition to the college level,
suggesting some college education is now the best ticket for competitive advantage in a
market economy. In this frame, the high school credential now has a negative rather than
positive value: the absence of such a credential harms individuals’ chances in the market,
while securing the credential does not confer advantage but merely allows for pursuit of
said advantage down the road. Powell et al (1985) observe a similar phenomenon in
practice in schools: in their observations, college attendance is a de facto next step for the
vast majority of graduating seniors. Indeed, college preparation is so standard that the
high school is expanded to accommodate “special” college goers (those pursuing rigor
and challenge so as to make themselves more attractive to selective colleges, thus
increasing their later educational capital) and “unspecial” college goers (those whose
general high school education is sufficient for college attendance but lacks competitive
edge in the marketplace). In Powell et al, this observation means that in a comprehensive

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high school model, college preparation is connected to a high school degree for the bulk
of attendees: the only students for whom college is not central is for those “special”
students requiring accommodating because of inability to manage high schools’ academic
requirements. The result is the kind of stratification detailed explicitly in Labaree (2012):
students’ are tracked to “preserve advantage” among the middle and upper classes.
How study participants’ understand military recruiting in their schools hinges on
this arrangement: though college preparation is explicitly the purpose of two of the five
schools in this study, it is part and parcel of the work of the other three, just by virtue of
being high schools in 2013. Military recruiting, then, regardless of the school, is viewed
through the prism of a market economy that connects educational credentials to
competitive advantage. Simultaneously, the military is seeking recruits, having attended
public high schools, have been subject to the latest upward expansion of educational
competition throughout their schooling experience and as such are coming up in a
universe that places significant competitive advantage on college-going. The military
wants young people at the precise moment that they have been told to capitalize on
college attendance. This clear friction may offer some insight into why conversations
about college going are so closely connected to conversations about military recruiting
across schools and study participants in this project: when the social significance of
college-going is so closely bound to postsecondary outcomes, it may be impossible to
talk about the postsecondary transition moment outside of a de facto college attendance
framework. By virtue of its existence as a postsecondary option, military enlistment
cannot be extricated from ideas about college attendance.

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At the school level, analyses of this project’s data suggest that each school’s
nuanced relationship to college attendance informs the majority of study participants’
understandings around recruiting within their respective schools. In schools where
college preparation is the sole focus, administrators and students alike often experience
military recruiting with a kind of palpable anxiety. Administrators describe efforts to
direct students’ attention away from college attendance as “predatory”, “glossy”, and
“disingenuous.” At Tapley High School, administrators experience distress at military
recruiters’ physical presence at an annual college fair – an event distinctly designed to
highlight and facilitate the institutions’ commitment to postsecondary education – and
observe that the “tone” of recruiting (i.e. recruiter energy, calisthenics activities that
military booths) undermines the intent of the event. At Paulie High School, students and
administrators express beliefs that recruiting efforts exploit vulnerable under-resourced
students from whom college is not accessible.
When a high school institution is organized around fidelity to the idea that college
attendance is a critical credential in a market economy, military recruiting can muddle the
message and undercut the goal. Using the tools of the capitalist marketplace to its
advantage, the military advertises. It offers the kind of tangible benefits that resemble the
fruits of success in a capitalist economy: financial stability, steady housing, opportunity
to travel, vocational training and skills. It even hints at the golden ticket –the college
degree – in exchange for satisfactory service. Indeed, in context of a college-preparatory
high school, it is the G.I. Bill (and the promises of free and subsidized postsecondary
education) that both legitimizes the presence of military recruiting at the college fair (in
the college office, at the table in the lunchroom, etc.) while challenging the premise

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behind an institution that solely values college attendance. If a student can both achieve
the benefits of competitive advantage and hold on to the possibility of a college degree
without ever needing to actually attend, what is the value in focusing exclusively on
college preparation? At both schools, interviewed administrators (with the noted
exception of Leroy at Paulie) see this divergence from the message as anxiety provoking,
causing interviewees concern for how students’ interpret the presence of recruiters in
schools. As Jenny at Tapley notes,
I don’t want students to feel that [the military is] the way to get to college or
that’s the way to… I wonder how many students that are choosing that as a
backup, as a fall back…[because they are] scared about either their academic
abilities, their social abilities, their finances, about being independent. I think the
military offers something that seems soothing and easier than the challenges of [of
college attendance].
Jenny’s concern about the military’s attractiveness to certain students betrays her anxiety
about the success of her schools’ college-prep efforts in the shadow of military recruiting;
in noting the power of the military’s message, she reveals an anxiety about whether all
students’ understand the importance of postsecondary college-going.
This question haunts how administrators and students in college-preparatory
environments explain and understand military recruiting in schools. For administrators, it
may challenge the belief structure that supports the intrinsic benefits associated with their
work by calling into question the usefulness of the approach. For students, it may
confront the basic premise that schooling credentials enable economic success by
providing an alternative that advertises immediate access to capital. On shaky ground
such as this, I posit that it seems logical that administrators and students in this study
arrive at understandings of military recruiting that act to reinforce their faith in college
attendance. When individuals commit their work to ensuring students get into college and
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a voice arrives on the scene that challenges both the necessity as well as the wisdom of
that commitment, it seems natural to defend the commitment by poking holes in the
argument. Conversations about recruiter predation, narrowing definitions of who enlists
to the vulnerable or the less capable, and negative characterizations of recruiting efforts
do just that: in casting military recruiting as harmful or negative, individuals are able to
bolster the value of the college-going ideal while diminishing the desirability of military
enlistment.
I want to caution against overinterpretation here, and take care to note that this
analysis is not intended to suggest that this study’s interviewees are consciously
naysaying in an attempt to push students toward college. It is possible that principals
with explicit political persuasions may hire teachers and administrators of like mind -- in
this study, both Paul and Evelyn (the principals of this study’s two mission-specific,
college-preparatory high schools) self-identify as “left” and “anti-military” -- and it is
possible that the anxiety surrounding recruiting that I observe among interviewed
administrators presupposes their relationship to their schools. As such, I do not intend to
here to suggest that school mission overdetermines administrators’ understandings of
military recruiting and enlistment. Rather, I argue here that school mission – specifically,
schools’ relationship to college preparation - mediates interviewee’s articulations around
both the purpose and practice of recruiting. Regardless of individuals’ political beliefs,
the work of mission-specific, college-preparatory schools requires a kind of focus and
dedication of resources to the objective of college attendance that filter interviewee’s
responses. For these interviewed administrators in college-prep high schools, reflection

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on the recruiting practices (or lack thereof) in their school is necessarily thrown into
sharp relief against a college-prep agenda.
The experience is different in this study’s two mission-diffuse schools: while
college attendance is still seen as the de facto and most desirable postsecondary option,
neither of these schools is singularly organized around that or any objective. As such,
military recruiting is experienced in a framework that expects college attendance but does
not demand it. Like the descriptions of comprehensive high schools in Powell et al
(1985), both students and administrators at North Deco and Florence Luscomb identify
the purpose of their schools to be about preparing students to be able to choose a
postsecondary outcome without preferring any one in particular. Students (and
presumably families) are their own educational agents with an array of choices available
to them while administrators claim neutrality. That both administrators and students
experience and understand military recruiting quite comfortably here makes sense.
Unwilling to direct students’ decision-making processes in order to accommodate the
trajectories of all students, administrators interact comfortably with recruiters, and the
military encounters little resistance as it sells itself as a postsecondary option.
Unlike counterparts at Tapley and Paulie, study participants at North Deco and
Florence Luscomb are not unified by the work of sending students to college and, as
such, their understandings may be subject to less apprehension. In these cases, it makes
sense that the general consensus among administrators would be that military recruiting
belongs in their schools precisely because “college is not for everyone.” Military
enlistment and college attendance are still bound up with one another in this
understanding, and college attendance is still presented as the de facto option, but

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accommodating their universal student clientele requires that college attendance cannot
be considered the only option. Hence the emergence of Powell et al’s (1985) “neutrality”:
supporting students to make a choice rather than directing the choice does indeed do the
work it sets out to do in terms of providing outcomes for the breadth and diversity of
students in these comprehensive high schools. However, this neutral stance is susceptible
to the critiques emerging in The Shopping Mall High School: just as neutrality around
students’ educational choices “abdicates responsibility for pushing all students to learn
and care about learning” so too does neutrality around students’ postsecondary decisions.
By refusing intervention, administrators risk perpetuating the market status quo: students
who enter school with financial and social capital are able to go to college (the agreedupon de facto and desirable option) while others without capital (and because intervening
guidance has not been offered in the name of neutrality) are forced to make other choices.
By offering financing for college as a down-the-road potential, the military is able
to capitalize on the college-going standard in these schools while also providing a
reasonable option for students who may not be able to attend college for other reasons.
Indeed, just by promising the idea of college, military recruiting can appeal to
administrators in these settings by evoking the notion that even those students not going
directly to college still have the opportunity at some point in the future. In this sense,
military recruiting in these schools may actually serve a unique mitigating function: by
postponing the moment that students have to choose or reject college, it relieves
administrators of having to face the stratification of student outcomes in a capitalist
economy. In other words, rather than forcing administrators to confront working class
students transitioning directly into the workforce, military recruiting puts a hopeful sheen

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on the education market by providing an alternative. From this angle, it becomes clear
why administrators at Florence Luscomb and North Deco are so keen to preserve military
enlistment as an “option” available to students: it endows administrators with the ability
to hold onto the neutrality that sustains their work in schools.
Again, this analysis is not intended to ascribe intention or motivation or willful
neglect to interviewed administrators’ work at North Deco or Florence Luscomb. On the
contrary, throughout my conversations at both schools, I noted a distinct care and
investment in students’ postsecondary trajectories. Indeed, it is this care that undergirds
the desire to both remain neutral and provide a battery of postsecondary options for
students – all interviewed administrators at both schools express a universal desire to
support students in pursuit of postsecondary success. Regardless of intention, however,
the consequences of the neutrality highlighted above still stand: by refusing intervention,
administrators risk perpetuating a deeply inequitable economy in which resourced
students are able to pursue the de facto college-going standard while under-resourced
individuals are obliged to make other choices. Indeed, the data around enlistment and
post military service educational attainment bear out these concerns, suggesting that
under-resourced students are disproportionately seeking non-college postsecondary
outcomes. Black, Hispanic and low-income students disproportionately enlist for active
duty service, but are less likely to serve in professional officer-level roles than their white
counterparts (Population Representation in the Military Services: Fiscal Year 2010
Summary Report, 2010). Claims that military service ends with subsidized college
attendance simply do not bear out in reality: in truth, in 2011 less than 23.5% of eligible
veterans ever utilize G.I. Bill education-related benefits, and that number is decreasing

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over time (Profile of Veterans: 2011 Data from the American Community Survey, 2013).
Those veterans able to pursue education are generally pursuing less lucrative associates
degrees, and veterans are less likely than their non-veteran counterparts to hold bachelors
degrees (Profile of Veterans: 2011 Data from the American Community Survey, 2013).
One-third of those veterans not using their benefits cite lack of awareness (of how to use
the benefits available to them) as the reason behind non-use. Indeed, after terms of
service, veterans are more likely to be unemployed than their non-veteran counterparts,
often because civilian work experience is valued more highly in the marketplace (Profile
of Veterans: 2011 Data from the American Community Survey, 2013). The common
understandings invoked by administrators to explain why the military is a “fine option”
(i.e. G.I. bill benefits, job training, competitive advantage in the marketplace) simply do
not hold up in the reality of military service. Neutrality at the individual level may
consign under-resourced students at the collective level to pathways that may not offer
the competitive advantage they seek.
The example of Maritime High School offers some critical perspective in this
entire conversation. While not completely divorced from the reality of competitive
advantage and college attendance (as evidenced by investment in a full time college
counselor position), Maritime is organized around an entirely different educational
objective: specialized, high-level training in the skills and credentials necessary to work
as a maritime engineer. Maritime offers a powerful example of the “purpose” arguments
advanced by both Powell et al (1985) and Bryk et al (1993): by requiring students to opt
into a specific and directed educational experience, Maritime invests its students in more
unique schooling and its outcomes. As a consequence, students emerge from this

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schooling experience highly confident in the meaning of their degree: though there are a
wide variety of specializations available, the vertical nature of their curricular decisions is
tightly controlled for quality and rigor. Students graduate from Maritime with
certifications that signify highly skilled competencies in the market economy.
Moreover, administrators’ close relationship to the practice of military service by
virtue of the number of veterans on staff mitigates military recruiters’ ability to capitalize
on the lexicon of the market economy: administrators at Maritime are uniquely qualified
to be critical consumers of the military “sell” and actively work to prevent recruiters from
overinflating the value of service in the marketplace. As discussed at length in the chapter
on Maritime High School, this fluency in a military vocabulary works as a distinct kind
of capital within the service, enabling students to barter for less dangerous positions,
higher salaries and signing bonuses, and better assignments. Indeed, this kind of
intervention and supervision is thoroughly counter to the principles of neutrality espoused
North Deco and, to a lesser extent, Florence Luscomb: by insisting on helping students
navigate the enlistment process while counseling out those students for whom the
military is a bad option, administrators at Maritime work to ensure that students for
whom college is not affordable are not relegated to military service. This proposition is
made easier because Maritime High School’s commitment to a distinct objective outside
of college attendance means that students graduating from Maritime already have
competitive advantage in a market economy: transitioning directly into the workforce is
more desirable than it would be in other settings because students graduate with highvalue specialized skills.

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For these and other factors, Maritime High School occupies a rare location in the
landscape of secondary schools. Because of its extreme specialization, Maritime attempts
to guarantee competitive advantage to its graduates in a way that even colleges have
struggled to ensure in a post-recession marketplace. It is important here to highlight what
is special about Maritime High School’s specialization: a Maritime education not only
provides highly valuable and substantive credentials, while the extremely specific nature
of the training also requires a fidelity to the mission that builds community and
confidence. As Powell et al (1985) observe, “nearly everyone wants to be special in some
way.” Indeed, it is here that the lessons of The Shopping Mall High School are the most
helpful: Maritime High evidences commitments to purpose, push and personalization by
holding students who have selected into their program to a high standard while also
providing close guidance in the postsecondary transition. For these reasons and unlike the
other four schools in this study, study participants at Maritime do not experience military
recruiting as disruptive to the purpose of school nor does it risk blithely reproducing the
market status quo. By foregrounding students’ special skills, Maritime is able to
disentangle military enlistment from college aspirations and in doing so defuse the
specter of the recruiting enterprise in their school.
Postsecondary Trajectories: Military Recruiting, Mission and the Path Ahead
So, now what? What is the significance of these analyses in the larger context of
American High Schools? What does this mean about us, about schools, about students? I
argue that by considering and analyzing study participants’ understanding of military
recruiting, it emerges as a special case of the more general and historic tensions that have
accompanied the growth of American high schools. By considering how the military

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operationalizes the values of a capitalist marketplace inside the public domain of a high
school, we witness a living example of the tensions the education marketplace has
wrought in schools, played out a variety of iterations as informed by shifting school
values and individual experiences. In an education marketplace that prizes college
attendance as its most valuable capital, military recruiting can be a disruptive reality
check or it can comfortably preserve middle and upper class advantage. By using the
tenets of a market economy to its advantage, military recruiting brandishes its carrot, the
G.I. Bill, to capitalize on college dreams and legitimize its standing in school settings. In
both cases, it is the ability of military recruiters to hitch their stars to the wagon of college
aspirations that undergirds how study participants understand recruiting in their schools.
In other words, how study participants understand the relationship between the military
and college attendance is the linchpin in how they understand and experience recruiting
in general. When folks experience military recruiting as undermining the value of college
attendance, their understandings of the entire enterprise may be colored.
But there is a danger in so closely equating military recruiting with college
attendance in a market economy that is also underscored by a firm commitment to
meritocratic advancement. By asking students to put their lives at risk so that they might
later be able to pursue the college education that has been sold to them as the best ticket
to get ahead, military recruiting in schools constantly undercuts the meritocratic myth of
postsecondary outcomes by requiring the least resourced among us to accept the bargain.
It is this false choice that is amplified in mission-specific, college-preparatory
environments while simultaneously tamped down in mission-diffuse, comprehensive high
schools. Because of an uncomfortable relationship between the life-risking stakes of

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military enlistment and the perceived lack of options for under-resourced youth, these
tensions are explicit, fraught and high-pitched in schools and among individuals that
position college preparation as the primary objective of high schools. When college
attendance is billed as the ultimate outcome by both the military and high schools, it is
the avenue to get to that outcome that is actually up for selection by high school seniors.
In an institution that is designed to address society’s social problems, it is disturbing that
the avenue under-resourced youth are obliged to pursue so often encounters life-risking
obstacles.
I offer the example of military recruiting in schools as a tangible example of how
these tensions play out in the crosscurrents of private aspirations and public goods. How
schools manage those tensions in practice sets a stage for how administrators and
students experience military recruiting, and informs how that enterprise manifests in
different school contexts. Schools’ missions offer a compelling entrée into assessing how
both administrators and students interact with and experience military recruiting, but they
are not the sole factor mitigating these understandings; individuals’ families and personal
experiences may serve too powerful to be subsumed by a school’s dominant narrative.
The stories of this project’s research subjects offer insight into how these individuals
understand military recruiting and postsecondary transitions inside of the complicated
system of American public schools.

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POST SCRIPT
We should not be pushing [the military] onto the kids or, for that matter,
minimizing it for the student. I think we should talk about it. It’s difficult if you
haven’t been through the military to really know what it’s like… Students will
ask me, “Mister, if you join the military, is it likely that you’re going to go to
war?” I will talk to them. I will use an analogy: “that’s like asking me if I’m a
cop, is it likely that I will arrest somebody?” The primary mission, first and
foremost, above and beyond anything, is to defend the country. That comes first before college. Understand that that’s possible. That’s not a remote thought. I’m
not saying that you will or you won’t, but don’t underestimate that that exists.
The same way if you’re a fireman: You’re going to run into a burning building
one day, maybe. Maybe in your whole career you will never run into a burning
building. I think we have to bring those realities to the student. We have a
responsibility. I don’t want the student to find out once they get in. – Rocco,
Assistant Principal for Guidance, Maritime High School
After I graduated from college, I went to work in public schools in Brooklyn
teaching civics and community organizing to high school students. It was in the halls of
those schools that I first witnessed a military recruiting table, staffed by attractive young
men in fatigues speaking casually to student passers-by. I strained to eavesdrop, looking
for evidence of whatever “hard sell” I was convinced the recruiter must be leveraging. I
felt protective of my mostly under-resourced, exclusively of-color students, and I
decided, based on pure instinct, that military recruiting should not be in public schools.
At the time, I asked no questions but felt entirely content in my decision.
Both adulthood and graduate school eventually set to work on my certainty (about
military recruiting and all things) and I found myself a few years later with curiosity
piqued and a dearth of scholarship available to address it. The questions about whether or
not military recruiting “should” be in schools began to recede as concerns about how
students and administrators experience military recruiting unseated my moral high
ground, scratching away any lingering paternalism. My waning convictions mirrored the
development of this project almost exactly: I discovered the role of politics and value
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judgment in military recruiting scholarship, and was challenged by smart people to try
hard to approach my data critically and continuously. I was surprised.
Throughout the data collection process, I tried to note when I found myself
personally relating to something that one of my interviewees said, or when I felt like I
could see myself as a practitioner acting on or expressing my ideas in a similar fashion.
My goal in doing this was to identify potential moments of weakness in the subsequent
coding process, so that I might exercise even greater care in places where my inadvertent
enthusiasm for an idea might endanger my analyses. I was not at all surprised when I
found myself identifying with the administrators at the two college-preparatory schools –
Tapley and Paulie – and their desire to help their students transition into college. In
particular, I found Tapley administrators’ (specifically Elaine, Jenny and Carrie) mamabear protectiveness to be very familiar to me, and could fully relate to their discomfort
with recruiters. Indeed, in a moment of total coincidence and irony that I still do not
entirely understand, one of the Tapley students tapped to participate in my project (Elena
– now serving as a Marine) turned out to be one of my former middle school students
from my Brooklyn after-school director days. As I mentioned, I identified with Tapley
administrators’ protective instincts.
What I was not prepared for was the extent to which I would find myself relating
to – indeed, maybe even admiring – how the administrators at Maritime expressed their
ideas and beliefs around recruiting in their school. Because I had already conducted my
interviews at the other four schools, I expected to find a similar kind of administrator
“neutrality” at Maritime based on their opt-out percentages, enlistment numbers and
JROTC component. It became clear to me early on in my Maritime interviews, however,

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that despite the largest enlistment percentages in my sample, the school was actually
mobilizing a highly interventionist approach to postsecondary counseling. Far from
remaining neutral, these administrators were actively counseling students away from
service based on their own personal experiences. Maritime administrators welcome
recruiters into their building not only because they believe military service might benefit
some of their students, but also because they believe that keeping recruiters closely
supervised could help ensure transparency in the recruiting process. As Maritime’s
assistant principal for guidance, Rocco, says, “We have a responsibility. I don’t want the
student to find out once they get in.” Though the reality of this claim requires extensive
follow-up research to verify, interviewed Maritime administrators universally expressed
the belief that even though they have a higher percentage of students entering the
military, they are confident that those students are satisfied with their choice.
What emerges from these narratives is a space in which both sides of this
politically divisive issue might find room for some qualified agreement: administrators at
Maritime believe that more knowledge and close supervision may work to protect
students in their vulnerable decision-making moment. While I do not take on the veracity
of these claims here, the emergence of this idea as a possibility leads me to believe that
future research in this field might be poised to address questions of how our schools can
best serve students in the postsecondary decision-making process. Though I have never
shied away from an argument in which I can lord my progressive ideals, this project has
opened my eyes to the importance of dropping the “should” in the name of research that
could help administrators support students.

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Another note along the lines of things that surprised me in this process: I was
struck by the universality of some of the findings I report here. As I mentioned, I entered
into this project attempting keen awareness of how my politics could affect all facets of
my work from data collection to analyses. As a result, I want to note that there are a few
findings here that strike me as susceptible to accusations of “leftist” interpretation. First,
where I report on administrators’ expressions of anxiety or awareness of others’ anxiety
around military recruiting: I was duly surprised by the extent to which administrators,
unprompted, identified this anxiety in themselves or others while suggesting that this
kind of apprehension regularly motivated school-specific military recruiting policy
decisions. That pattern in the data could not be overlooked, emerging explicitly in almost
every single administrator interview I conducted. Similarly, both student and
administrator interviewees almost universally juxtaposed military enlistment against
college attendance in our conversations. The two postsecondary options could not be
disentangled from one another in the vast majority of participants’ understandings, and I
was obliged to report on that relationship. So, while I am aware that reporting on these
findings could render me vulnerable to critiques of my analytical position, I believe the
data supports these interpretations.
Further, though I did not set out to expand the seminal scholarship utilized
throughout this project when I began, upon completion of these analyses I feel compelled
to discuss a clear gap in The Shopping Mall High School spotlighted by this work (Powell
et all, 1995). As I reread the observations set forth by Powell and his colleagues, I found
that the characterizations of the American high school lacked the clear programmatic
diversity evidenced in my school sample. Indeed, though prescient in many ways, the

199

authors’ descriptions of the issues plaguing the American high school often fail to hold
up against the new crop of diversely sized, specialized high schools in 2013. Far from
the all-encompassing, comprehensive high schools detailed in Shopping Mall, several
schools in this project (I am thinking of Paulie and Maritime, specifically) bear very little
resemblance to these descriptions, offering highly specialized, un-tracked programs with
clearly outlined objectives. This study offers portraits of military recruiting enterprises in
five entirely different schools, highlighting the role that these differences play in the
understandings and experiences of both students and administrators. The arguments
presented throughout this project suggest the need for an extension of The Shopping Mall
High School’s analysis, as the limited characterizations of high schools no longer
sufficiently encompass students’ and administrators’ lived experiences.
At the time of its release, the Shopping Mall metaphor struck a responsive chord
in readers: images of student-consumers resonated with practitioners and the observations
offered deep insights into the problems associated with the comprehensive high school
movement. But things continued to evolve: the school choice movement, the small high
schools theme, and the advent of new technologies have meant that the menu of choices
available to secondary school students has become as diversified across schools as within
them. This study offers evidence to this effect, as the mix of schools presented here play a
significant role in how the military is interpreted and received by study participants,
despite the evident effects of family and personal experiences.
As I put the finishing touches on this project, I know that I will trade in the
successful completion of this dissertation for a valuable educational credential in our
capitalist economy – professional latitude and privilege for which I am profoundly

200

grateful. Working on this project has offered an opportunity to investigate how the young
adults in my study make decisions about their futures in critical transitional moments, and
how the adults they trust conceive of their responsibilities in those same moments. I am
fully surprised at how different the entire enterprise of postsecondary transitions looks
from school to school, and how complicated the narratives associated with these choices
can be. The stories of this project’s 56 subjects represent the complexity of these
processes, and I offer these analyses in order to provide insight into how these individuals
understand military recruiting and military enlistment in their schools.

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APPENDICES

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APPENDIX A
Section 9528 of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001
"Sec. 9528. <20 USC 7908> ARMED FORCES RECRUITER ACCESS TO
STUDENTS AND STUDENT RECRUITING INFORMATION.
"(a) Policy.-"(1) Access to student recruiting information.-- Notwithstanding section 444(a)(5)(B)
of the General Education Provisions Act and except as provided in paragraph (2), each
local educational agency receiving assistance under this Act shall provide, on a request
made by military recruiters or an institution of higher education, access to secondary
school students names, addresses, and telephone listings.
"(2) Consent.-- A secondary school student or the parent of the student may request that
the student's name, address, and telephone listing described in paragraph (1) not be
released without prior written parental consent, and the local educational agency or
private school shall notify parents of the option to make a request and shall comply with
any request.
"(3) Same access to students.-- Each local educational agency receiving assistance
under this Act shall provide military recruiters the same access to secondary school
students as is provided generally to postsecondary educational institutions or to
prospective employers of those students.
"(b) Notification.--The Secretary, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense, shall, not
later than 120 days after the date of enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001,
notify principals, school administrators, and other educators about the requirements of
this section.
"(c) Exception.--The requirements of this section do not apply to a private secondary
school that maintains a religious objection [**1984] to service in the Armed Forces if
the objection is verifiable through the corporate or other organizational documents or
materials of that school.
"(d) Special Rule.--A local educational agency prohibited by Connecticut State law
(either explicitly by statute or through statutory interpretation by the State Supreme Court
or State Attorney General) from providing military recruiters with information or access
as required by this section shall have until May 31, 2002, to comply with that
requirement.

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APPENDIX B
New York City Chancellor’s Regulation A-825
This is a new regulation. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) requires the New
York City Department of Education (DOE) to provide the names, addresses, and
telephone numbers of 11th and 12th grade students to military recruiters and institutions
of higher learning that request this information, except where the parent or student optsout by notifying the DOE that he/she does not consent to release of this information. The
law also requires that military recruiters be given the same access to high school students
that is generally provided to post-secondary educational institutions and prospective
employers. This regulation implements the requirements of NCLB with respect to the
release of student information to the military and institutions of higher learning.
It sets forth the procedures that schools must follow with respect to opt-out letters and
military recruitment in the schools.
I. OPT-OUT NOTIFICATION
Each school with students in grades 9, 10, 11, and/or 12 is responsible for
maintaining up-to-date information regarding which students have opted out of releasing
their name, address, and telephone number to military recruiters and/or institutions of
higher learning. Accordingly, each school is responsible for following the procedures set
forth below.
A. Each principal/designee must provide the parent opt-out letter (see Attachment No. 1)
to the parents of all students in grades 9-12 between September 17 and October 3 of each
school year. Parent opt-out letters in eight languages are available at
http://schools.nyc.gov/StudentSupport/StudentAttendance/MilitaryOptOutLetters/default.
htm. Parents may opt-out of releasing information to military recruiters and/or
institutions of higher learning.
B. Each principal/designee must distribute the student opt-out letter (see Attachment No.
1) to all students in grades 9-12 by the end of the first week of October of each school
year. Student opt-out letters are available in eight languages at
http://schools.nyc.gov/StudentSupport/StudentAttendance/MilitaryOptOutLetters/default.
htm. Students may opt out of releasing information to the military and/or institutions of
higher learning. Opt-out forms must also be included within the orientation/intake packet
that every new student in grades 9-12 receives. In addition, the opt-out letter must be
provided to the parents of these new students.
C. Each principal of a school with grades 9, 10, 11, and/or 12 must designate a staff
member to serve as a point person on issues relating to military recruitment and requests
for information from institutions of higher learning who can provide guidance to students
who request it regarding these issues.
D. Each principal/designee must enter the names of the students who have opted out
and/or whose parents have opted them out into the ATS system, using the ATS function
Update Student Codes (UPCO). The student opt-out code that has been selected remains
in ATS unless the student and/or parent choose to change it.
E. Parents and students may exercise their right to opt out at any time during the student’s
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school career.
F. Each Principal/designee may elect to distribute opt-out letters to students and parents
at additional times during the school year.
G. Student information will be centrally disseminated to military recruiters upon request
during the first week of November. Schools must not provide student information to
military recruiters and must inform military recruiters who directly request such
information to contact their supervising officers in regard to the protocol for obtaining
this information. Any further questions or concerns pertaining to military recruiters may
be directed to Lilian Garelick, Office of School and Youth Development, Director of
Mandated Responsibilities: e-mail: lgareli@schools.nyc.gov or telephone: 212-3746095.
H. Student information will be disseminated to institutions of higher learning locally, at
the school level. Upon request, schools must provide the names, addresses, and
telephone numbers of 11th and 12th grade students who have not opted out to institutions
of higher education that request such information, unless an opt-out form has been
received by the school. In order to generate this information, schools may use the ROPO
Report on ATS.
I. Opt-out information is included in the Bill of Student Rights and Responsibilities in the
Citywide Standards of Discipline and Intervention Measures (Discipline Code). In
addition, the lesson plans that are provided to schools to teach students about the
Discipline Code and the Bill of Student Rights and Responsibilities will include military
opt-out information.
J. Each principal/designee of a school with grades 9, 10, 11, and/or 12 must include, as
part of its School and Youth Development Consolidated Plan, the following information:
(1) a summary of the school’s plans and procedures for access by military recruiters,
post-secondary educational institutions and prospective employers; (2) a plan for
ensuring that students understand their opt-out rights and receive opt-out forms; and (3)
the name of the staff member designated to oversee the plan.
II. MILITARY RECRUITMENT
A. Federal law requires schools to give military recruiters the same access to students as
is given to other educational institutions and prospective employers.
B. All visitors must follow the procedures in the building safety plan, including signing in
and out and holding meetings only in designated locations.
C. No visitor should be given unfettered access to students in classrooms, cafeterias,
gyms, or other areas of the school building.
D. Information about opportunities in the military should be posted in the same manner
and same areas that other educational and career information is posted. Students should
generally be provided with information about career, educational, or military
opportunities in forums dedicated to that purpose. Classroom time should be used only
for instruction.
E. A list of ‘’Frequently Asked Questions’’ (FAQs) has been prepared to assist guidance
counselors and college and career offices in addressing students’ questions regarding
their rights under the NCLB with respect to military recruitment in the schools. The
FAQs are available on the Office of School and Youth Development website:
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http://portal.nycboe.net/sites/FinanceAdmin/OSYD/SchoolPortal/StudentSupportServices
/NCLB/default.aspx.
III. ARMED SERVICES VOCATIONAL APTITUDE BATTERY (ASVAB)
A small number of NYC public schools administer the ASVAB. Students who take this
test are asked to sign a statement authorizing the Department of Defense to score the test
and report the results to the student’s school. The ASVAB lists eight options for schools
with regard to releasing ASVAB results to military recruiters. In order to protect the
rights of students and parents to determine how student information is released to the
military, it is the policy of the NYC DOE that schools which administer the ASVAB
must elect Option 8, which does not permit the results to be released to military
recruiters. Students who wish to contact the military after receipt of their scores should
contact their guidance counselor for assistance.
IV. INQUIRIES
Inquiries pertaining to this regulation should be addressed to:
Telephone:
212-374-6095
Office of School and Youth Development
N.Y.C. Department of Education
52 Chambers Street – Room 218
New York, NY 10007
Fax:
212-374-5751

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APPENDIX C
School Principal Interview Protocol
1. I’d like to start here by getting a brief sense of your time working for the New York
City Department of Education. What has your career trajectory been up until this point?
How did you get into your current role?
(Probes: Education – did you grow up in New York? Were you a teacher here? Current
job responsibilities? How long have you been working at this school?)
2. Can you tell me a little bit about the school you work in? What are your demographic
breakdowns?
(Probes: Demographics – race, class, Title 1, graduation rates, etc)
3. As you know, this study is concerned with the current federal policy governing
military recruiter policy in public high schools. Before we get started talking about
military recruiting policy, I’d like to get a sense of your own experiences with military
recruiting in high schools. I’m interested in your personal experiences as well as your
professional experiences. This will help give me a little background about your
perspective on the military in our later conversation.
(Probes: experiences with recruiters in your own education, proximity to military in
personal life, relationship with military/recruiters professionally)
If interviewee was working in NYC school district in 2001, proceed to questions 4-5.
Otherwise, proceed to question 6.
4. When you were working in NYC schools in 2001-2002, do you remember what your
role was in responding to all of the changes happening around NCLB?
Probes: then-job responsibilities, explain the process of learning about new reforms and
then doing your job? How did you feel about those changes at the time? About making
those changes in your job?)
5. So, the most current policy federal military recruiting policy is written into the No
Child Left Behind Act of 2001 under Section 9528, and mandates that all public high
schools receiving money under NCLB provide military recruiters with the same access to
their students as is traditionally afforded to other postsecondary opportunities. Do you
remember hearing about Section 9528, that part of NCLB, at that time?
(If principal did not know about Section 9528 in 2001-2, proceed to Question 6.)
a. If so, what were your initial reactions? What did you understand the policy to
mean? What did you think of the sanctions attached to non-compliance? What
207

did you think of the language of the regulations when you first encountered
them?
b. What was your role in responding to that specific mandate? Did it change what
you were previously doing around military recruiting? (probes: planning for
postsecondary opportunity programming)
c. A lot of other things were going on when this policy arrived. What seemed
most urgent to you at this time? What else were you working on? What priority
did you place on responding to this particular policy, given what else was going
on?
6. So, the most current policy federal military recruiting policy is written into the No
Child Left Behind Act of 2001 under Section 9528, and mandates that all public high
schools receiving money under NCLB provide military recruiters with the same access to
their students as is traditionally afforded to other postsecondary opportunities. Are you
familiar with this federal requirement? If so, what do you understand it to mean?
a. Why do think the federal government has put this military recruiter policy into
place in American High Schools?
b. Why do you think the military recruits are in schools, in general? How do you
feel about recruiting?
7. Now I’d like to shift our conversation to military recruiting in your school. You may
know that New York City schools has dealt with the federal government’s military
recruiting policy by passing out A825, a Chancellor’s Regulation which details how
schools must handle recruiting issues. What do you think are the key elements of this
policy?
(Probe: School Plan, “Point Person”, Truth-in-Recruiting resources)
8. So, I’m going to list several of the elements of A825, and for each I was wondering if
you could tell me a few things: 1) How does your school handle/ manage this
requirement? and 2) How did you decide that that would be the case? and 3) Who
handles/manages this thing?
(Probes: writing your school plan, executing the opting-out processes, designating a
“Point Person”, offering Truth-in-Recruiting resources, organizing and managing school
visits)
9. Specific to school visits, how many recruiter visits do you get per year? What do those
visits look like at your school?
10. What are the key differences between what you are doing now with military
recruiting and what you were doing before A-825?
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11. What are your current job responsibilities specific to A 825? What does a typical day
look like in your role specific to A-825 related issues?
a. Overall, how do you feel about the work you’re required to do under a-825?
(Probes: Useful, helpful, unnecessary, etc?)
b. What are your biggest challenges working with A-825 related issues?
12. Outside of the elements of A-825 that I mentioned before, is there any other way that
your school interacts with the military or military recruiting?
13. Do you think military recruiting impacts activities in your school? If so, how?
a. Do you feel (students/teachers/administrators) are affected by military
recruiting? If so, how?
b. In your opinion, does the presence of military recruiters in your schools change
the atmosphere of a school? How?
14. What role do you think the military should play in students’ decisions about what
they do after high school?
a. What role do you think military recruiting (recruiters and/or recruiting
information) actually plays for students in your school making postsecondary
decisions? Why do you think this is the case?
15. Now I’m going to ask that same question for teachers and administrators: what role
do you think the military should play in teachers’ thoughts about what students do after
high school?
a. What role do you think military recruiting (recruiters and/or recruiting
information) in your school actually plays for faculty in your school in thinking
about students’ postsecondary decisions? Why do you think this is the case?
16. In your estimation, what are the specific traits that mark a student for whom the
military is an option? What distinguishes those students from others? What makes the
military a good fit for that student?
17. Why do you think the NYC Department of Ed responded to Section 9528 with the A
825 Chancellor’s Regulations?

209

a. Does executing the mandates in A 825 affect how your school responds to any
other federal or district mandates? In other words, when your planning for
military recruiting in your school, does it impact how you think about any other
kinds of programming or policy decisions?
(Probes: postsecondary opportunity programming, discipline)
b. Do you think recruiting in schools impacts the larger purpose of schools at all?
(Probe for what that is….i.e. what are those ultimate goals? If so, how? If no, why
not?)
18. Would you be willing to share a copy of the military recruiting section of your
school’s School and Youth Development Consolidated Plan?
19. Do you feel it would be beneficial for me to meet with your Children’s First Network
person? If so, would you be willing to share his/her contact information?
20. Is there anything else I should know about military recruiting in your school?

210

School Administrator Interview Protocol
1. I’d like to start here by getting a brief sense of your time working for the New York
City Department of Education. What has your career trajectory been up until this point?
How did you get into your current role?
(Probes: Education – did you grow up in New York? Were you a teacher here? How long
have you been working at this school?)
2. Can you tell me a little about your current role? What are your primary job
responsibilities?
3. As you know, this study is concerned with the current federal policy governing
military recruiter policy in public high schools. Before we get started talking about
military recruiting policy, I’d like to get a sense of your own experiences with military
recruiting in high schools? I’m interested in your personal experiences as well as your
professional experiences. This will help give me a little background about your
perspective on the military in our later conversation.
(Probes: experiences with recruiters in your own education, proximity to military in
personal life, relationship with military/recruiters professionally)
If interviewee was working in NYC school district in 2001, proceed to questions 4-5.
Otherwise, proceed to question 6.
4. When you were working in NYC schools in 2001-2002, do you remember what your
role was in responding to all of the changes happening around NCLB?
(Probes: then-job responsibilities, explain the process of learning about new reforms and
then doing your job? How did you feel about those changes at the time? About making
those changes in your job?)
5. So, the most current policy is written into the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 under
Section 9528, and mandates that all public high schools receiving money under NCLB
provide military recruiters with the same access to their students as is traditionally
afforded to other postsecondary opportunities. Do you remember hearing about Section
9528, that part of NCLB, at that time?
(If school official did not know about Section 9528 in 2001-2, proceed to Question 6.)
a. If so, what were your initial reactions and then responses from the first time
you heard about it through the district’s (and your school’s) responses to it? What
did you understand the policy to mean? What did you think of the sanctions
attached to non-compliance? What did you think of the language of the
regulations when you first encountered them?
211

b. What was your role in responding to that specific mandate? Did it change what
you were previously doing around military recruiting? (probes: planning for
postsecondary opportunity programming)
c. A lot of other things were going on when this policy arrived. What seemed
most urgent to you at this time? What else were you working on? What priority
did you place on responding to this particular policy, given what else was going
on?
6. So, the most current policy federal military recruiting policy is written into the No
Child Left Behind Act of 2001 under Section 9528, and mandates that all public high
schools receiving money under NCLB provide military recruiters with the same access to
their students as is traditionally afforded to other postsecondary opportunities. Are you
familiar with this federal requirement? If so, what do you understand it to mean?
a. Why do think the federal government has put this military recruiter policy into
place in American High Schools?
b. Why do you think the military recruits are in schools, in general? How do you
feel about recruiting?
7. Now I’d like to move our conversation to military recruiting in your school. You may
know that New York City schools has dealt with the federal government’s military
recruiting policy by passing out A825, a Chancellor’s Regulation which details how
schools must handle recruiting issues. Are you familiar with this policy? If so, what do
you think are the key elements of this policy?
(Probe: School Plan, “Point Person”, Truth-in-Recruiting resources)
a. If familiar, why do you think the NYC Department of Ed responded to Section
9528 with the A 825 Chancellor’s Regulations?
8. What are your current job responsibilities specific to military recruiting in your school?
What does a typical day look like in your role?
a. Overall, how do you feel about the work you’re required to do specific to
military recruiting?
(Probes: Useful, helpful, unnecessary, etc?)
b. What are your biggest challenges working with military recruiting related
issues?

212

9. So, I’m going to list several of the elements of A825, the Chancellor’s Regulation for
dealing with Military Recruiting in schools, and for each I was wondering if you could
tell me about your role in dealing with this requirement, if you have a role. If not, who
do you believe is responsible for dealing with this?
(Probes: writing your school plan, executing the opting-out processes, designating a
“Point Person”, offering Truth-in-Recruiting resources, organizing and managing school
visits)
10. Outside of the than the elements of A-825 that I mentioned before, is there any other
way that your school interacts with the military or military recruiting?
11. In your opinion, has your school changed how it handles military recruiting issues
since you’ve been working here? If do, how?
12. Do you think military recruiting impacts activities in your school? If so, how?
a. Do you feel (students/teachers/administrators) are affected by military
recruiting? If so, how?
b. In your opinion, does the presence of military recruiters in your schools change
the atmosphere of a school? How?
13. What role do you think the military should play in students’ decisions about what
they do after high school?
a. What role do you think military recruiting (recruiters and/or recruiting
information) actually plays for students in your school making postsecondary
decisions? Why do you think this is the case?
14. Now I’m going to ask that same question for teachers and administrators: what role
do you think the military should play in teachers’ thoughts about what students do after
high school?
a. What role do you think military recruiting (recruiters and/or recruiting
information) in your school actually plays for faculty in your school in thinking
about students’ postsecondary decisions? Why do you think this is the case?
15. In your estimation, what are the specific traits that mark a student for whom the
military is an option? What distinguishes those students from others? What makes the
military a good fit for that student?
16. Does your schools’ policy towards military recruiting affect how you deal with any
other issues? In other words, when you’re planning for military recruiting in your
school, does it impact how you think about any other kinds of programming or
policy decisions?
213

(Probes: postsecondary opportunity programming, discipline)
17. Do you think recruiting in schools impacts the larger purpose of schools at all?
(Probe for what that is….i.e. what are those ultimate goals? If so, how? If no, why
not?)
18. Is there anything else I should know about military recruiting in your school?

214

Student Interview Protocol
1. Before we begin, I’d like a brief sense of your background. Can you tell me a little bit
about yourself?
(Probes: age, academic interests, plans for the future)
2. As you know, this study is about military recruiting. Tell me about your experience
with the military in your life.
a. Are there military bases in your neighborhood?
b. Do you have any family members who were in the military?
c. What is your general feeling about the military? Why do you think you feel
this way?
3. Tell me about military recruiters in your school. How often do you see them?
a. Why do you think they’re in your school? What do you think their job is?
b. Does the presence of recruiters affect the atmosphere of your school?
c. How do you feel about them?
d. Have you seen recruiting advertisements? Where? What do you think of them?
4. What are your experiences with military recruiters? Have you been recruited? If yes,
why do you think you were recruited? If no, why not?
a. If yes, how often were you contacted?
b. What were those interactions like? What did you think about the recruiter you
worked with?
5. In your experiences with recruiters, have you discussed your plans after graduation?
a. If yes, how so? Have those conversations affected how you think about your
plans?
b. (For students who have decided to enlist) Did you consider any other options
besides the military (College)? What ultimately sealed your decision?
c. If no, do you think military recruiters talk to other students about their plans
after graduation? What do you think other students take away from those
experiences?
215

6. How do you think your school works with military recruiters? What do you think
about how your teachers and principal interact with recruiters?
a. Do you think your school makes it easy for recruiters to talk to you? How do
you feel about that?
b. Do you think your school supports recruiters? Why or why not?
7. What do your friends think of the military? Have you talked to them about it? Do you
have any friends who want to join?
8. Has your experience with recruiters changed about how you feel about going to
school? Do you think the presence of recruiters in schools changes what students are
supposed to be in school to do?
a. If you never had any experiences with recruiting, do you think you’d feel
differently about being in school?
9. Do you participate in JROTC? Tell me about those experiences.
10. Is there anything else you think I should know about recruiters in your school?

216

District Official Interview Protocol
1. I’d like to start here by getting a brief sense of your time working for the New York
City Department of Education. What has your career trajectory been up until this point?
How did you get into your current role?
(Probes: Education – did you grow up in New York? current job responsibilities.)
2. As you know, this study is concerned with the current federal policy governing
military recruiter policy in public high schools. Before we get started talking about
military recruiting policy, I’d like to get a sense of your experiences with military
recruiting in high schools prior to Section 9528? I’m interested in your personal
experiences as well as your professional experiences.
(Probes: experiences with recruiters in your own education, proximity to military in
personal life, relationship with military/recruiters professionally)
If interviewee was working in NYC school district in 2001, proceed to questions 3-5.
Otherwise, proceed to question 6.
3. So, the most current policy is written into the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 under
Section 9528, and mandates that all public high schools receiving money under NCLB
provide military recruiters with the same access to their students as is traditionally
afforded to other postsecondary opportunities. Obviously that policy reform was handed
down to you along with a number of other changes… can you explain your role in
responding to those policy mandates?
(Probes: then-job responsibilities, explain the process of learning about new reforms and
then doing your job?)
4. What were your initial reactions and then responses to Section 9528 mandate from the
first time you heard about it through the district’s responses to it? What was your role in
responding to that specific mandate?
a. What was your initial response to the reform when you first heard about it?
What did you understand the policy to mean? What did you think of the sanctions
attached to non-compliance? What did you think of the language of the
regulations when you first encountered them?
b. Did it change what your office was previously doing around military
recruiting? (probes: planning for postsecondary opportunity programming)
c. How did the professional conversation around Section 9528 influence your
thoughts about putting Section 9528 into practice?

217

d. A lot of other things were going on when this policy arrived. What seemed
most urgent to you at this time? What else were you working on? What priority
did you place on responding to this particular policy, given what else was going
on?
5. Can you talk about the process of putting the Section 9528 mandate into practice?
a. What were the technical aspects of your job specific to this mandate?
b. What do you remember were your colleagues’ roles specific to this mandate?
c. In your understanding, how did anticipate that school administrators would
respond to this mandate? Did those ideas differ from your actual experiences
working with schools around this issue?
d. Did schools’ responses to 9528 impact your job? How did you accommodate
and manage those reactions?
6. Can you talk about the process of developing A 825, the Chancellor’s Regulations on
Military Recruiting in schools? What do you see as the most critical elements of those
regulations? How was it decided what elements of the regulations would be included?
(Probe: School Plan, “Point Person”, Truth-in-Recruiting resources)
a. How were the specific elements of the regulations designed? Why were these
elements chosen?
7. What are your current job responsibilities specific to A 825? What does a typical day
look like in your role?
(Probes: oversight of school plan, reports of recruiter misconduct, providing central list of
student contact information)
a. How well do you think the Chancellor’s Regulations are actually carried out in
the schools? Why do you think this is the case?
b. In your understanding, how do school administrators respond to this mandate?
Why do you feel this is the case?
c. Do schools’ responses to A 825 impact your job? If so, how did you
accommodate and manage those reactions?
d. Other than your oversight, do you allocate any resources to facilitate recruiting
in schools? (probes: if yes, what are they, how are resources allocated?)
e. What are the largest challenges you face in executing A 825?
218

8. What were your initial feelings about the Section 9528 mandate and the A 825
Chancellor’s Regulations when you first learned of your job responsibilities?
a. Why do think the federal government has put this military recruiter policy into
place? Why do you think the NYC Department of Ed responded to Section 9528
with the A 825 Chancellor’s Regulations?
b. Does executing the mandates in A 825 affect how your office (or the Dept. of
Ed in general) responds to any other federal mandates? In other words, do any
other DOE policies interact with the mandates in A 825 and if so, how? (Probes:
postsecondary opportunity programming)
9. In addition to enacting the regulations laid out in A 825, does New York City Schools
do anything else with military recruiting? (Probe: JROTC)
10. Do you think military recruiting impacts activities in schools? If so, how?
a. Do you feel (students/teachers/administrators) are affected by military
recruiting?
b. In your opinion, does the presence of military recruiters in schools change the
atmosphere of a school? How?
11. Can you think of anyone else at the district or school level who might be able to help
answer questions about New York City’s role in responding to Section 9528 or A 825?
12. Can you think of any school administrators that might provide interesting insight into
military recruiter policy?
a. In your estimation, are there neighborhoods with more or less military recruiter
presence? Why do you think that is? Which schools would have
more of a recruiter presence? Less?
b. Are there neighborhoods that are more or less likely to feel favorably about the
military in general? Why do you think that is? What are examples of schools that
might be in neighborhoods with a more favorable outlook on the military? Less?

219

APPENDIX D
Student Recruitment Flyer
[ENTER HIGH SCHOOL NAME HERE] is participating in a research study on military
recruiting in high schools.
Do YOU have something to say?
Researchers are asking for 45 minutes of your time for a short interview. We’ll ask you
questions about your experiences with military recruiting and your thoughts on recruiters
in your school.
What’s on YOUR mind?
We’re here on [DATES OF SCHOOL VISIT HERE] from [XXXX] to [XXXX]
interviewing students. Contact [DESIGNATED SCHOOL POINT PERSON NAME
HERE] in room [XXXX] to schedule an interview time.
Questions? Contact [DESIGNATED SCHOOL POINT PERSON NAME HERE] or
Michigan State University researcher Kenne Dibner at dibnerke@msu.edu.

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APPENDIX E
Interview Codes
Background
Future Plans
College
Enlistment
Career Trajectory
Education
Military
Military Base
Military Family Connection
Served
Parris Island
Current Job Responsibilities
Activities
Military Related
9528
Feelings
Purpose
Prevent Individuals From Blocking Access
Fed’l Need
Provide Options
District Policy
A-825 is…
DP Purpose
Clarify fed’l policy
Ensure compliance w/ fed’l law
Protect families
School Rec Policy
Policy Confusion
Who is in charge?
School Plan
Opt-Out Policy
Decisions
School Mission
Diffuse
Preparing Students to make choices
Preparing students to have choices
No Option is best/No ideal direction
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Specific
College > Military
Technical Compentency
Recruiting in School
Visits
Anxiety
Don’t Care/Don’t Notice
Improve Atmosphere
Veterans on Faculty
Interactions with Recruiters
Enlistment Processes
Swag
Out of School
Advertisements
Special Mil Events
JROTC
Uniforms
Other
[Name of Deceased Paulie High Alumnus]
Military Feelings
Feelings about Service/Enlistment Option
NEUTRAL
Class Mobility
Mil Preys on poor/minority kids
Noble
Challenging
Risk of dying
Feelings about Recruiters
Discomfort
Captive Audience
Impressive
Lies and Lying
Uniforms
Why Join?
Service gives life ‘meaning”
We want YOU
Structure/Discipline
All citizens should serve
Student Trajectory
Admin
Not Everyone Can Go to College
Push College
Should know more
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Insider info
Student Traits
College
Academic
Hardworking
Money/Circumstance
Military
Not Academic
Financial Constraints
Brave
Leadership
Previous Interest
Family
Student
Decision Making
Family
Initial Interest
Money
Fear of Dying
Administrator Support
G.I. Bill
“Never Thought About It”
Other
Well Said!

223

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224

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