Who's who of possible recruits

IN THE NEWS
Let's set aside any debate about whether having a database of current high school students who might be recruited into the military is a good idea. It's a bad, bad, bad idea to give the job of collecting and maintaining this information to a private company that won't answer basic questions about privacy. It's dumb to try to use the No Child Left Behind Act as a way of compelling schools to participate, since many states are already ready to tell the federal government to go stuff its unfunded mandate.

On the topic of trying to circumvent restrictions on the collection of private information for government purposes: I've worked with private contractors in military settings. They're functionally indistinguishable from the full-time DoD employees. If you're sitting at a table with them and you don't take a close look at their badges, you couldn't tell that the person on the left is a federal employee, and the person on the right actually works for SAIC, Northrop-Grumann, or any of dozens of other possible companies. They are, functionally, part of a federal project.

Comments

[Andrew Hadley]

"No Child Left Behind" is neither unfunded, nor is it a mandate. Each state (all 50, plus DC and probably a territory or two) argreed to meet the NCLB goals, and each has received the funding that was agreed to, despite what Kerry and Edwards said during the debates.
For an elaboration on this, see "The Democrats develop the 'Media-Safe Lie'" on my blog at

I agree with your main point, however. Military recruiting is not directly connected to education, and should not be tied to funding for education.