Posted on 12/04/2005 11:02:18 AM PST by SandRat
Military recruiters visited Tucson-area high schools more than 1,300 times in the 2004-05 school year, but, contrary to critics' charges, did not appear to target poor or minority students, according to an analysis by the Arizona Daily Star of recruiter activity at 21 schools.
Community support for the military seemed a bigger driving factor in where recruiters go, with high schools in conservative suburbs such Oro Valley, Marana and Vail drawing more military visits than those in many other parts of the city.
For example, Ironwood Ridge High School in Oro Valley, one of the most heavily Anglo and well-off schools in the city, reported nearly six times as many military visits last school year — 117 — as the 21 visits made to Sunnyside High School, which is 90 percent Hispanic, with two-thirds of its students from financially disadvantaged families.
Other higher-income and predominately Anglo schools — such as Mountain View High School in Marana, Canyon Del Oro in Oro Valley, and Vail's Cienega High School — also reported more military recruiter visits than less affluent schools with more students of color.
Still, citywide, only a small fraction of graduating seniors planned to go straight from high school to boot camp last year. For example, in Tucson Unified School District — the city's largest — 3 percent of students said they were military-bound.
The Star's findings were surprising to social studies teacher Ray Siqueiros, who was certain military recruiters were targeting the low-income Hispanic teens he teaches at Sunnyside High School.
Siqueiros, 40, is a father of three including a 14-year-old son bound next year for Tucson High Magnet School, where concerns also have arisen over the frequency of military recruiter visits. He was a vocal proponent of restrictions on how often recruiters could visit high school campuses.
"If the situation is more equitable than I thought, then that's great," Siqueiros said.
The findings did not surprise officials at the state recruiting headquarters for the Army, the nation's largest military branch.
"We never target specific high schools. We target all of them," said Phoenix-based Army spokeswoman Nancy Hutchinson.
TUSD and Sunnyside Unified School District — which is predominantly Hispanic — both put guidelines in place this year limiting military recruiter visits — as well as visits by colleges and employers — to once a month per organization.
Several other school boards around the country have taken similar steps recently to cut back recruiter visits or to better inform parents on how to keep their children's contact information out of military hands. Officials at most local school districts say they haven't had any problems with military recruiters on their campuses and do not plan to change their current practice of offering students a wide range of career choices. Under federal law, military and other recruiters are supposed to have equal access to high schools.
The Star's research suggests military recruiters are most likely to go to schools that provide a warm welcome.
At Cienega High School, for example, many students have parents stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, resulting in "strong community support for the military," said Vail School District superintendent Calvin Baker.
Last year, Cienega had one of the highest numbers of military-bound graduates of any high school in the Tucson area that keeps such statistics.
Twenty-two Cienega seniors from the Class of 2005 said they planned to join the service out of high school — double the number at Tucson High, the city's largest secondary school.
Mountain View and Marana High School also had more than 20 military-bound graduates each, the only other local schools with that distinction. Neither has had any complaints about recruiter visits on campus, said Marana Unified School District spokeswoman Tamara Crawley.
Douglas Smith, a spokesman at national Army recruiting headquarters, said the service no longer relies heavily on high schools as a source of new recruits. Two decades ago, the average age for enlistment was about 18, Smith said, but now it's about 21. Last fiscal year, only 16 percent of the 77,000-plus new soldiers the Army signed were fresh out of high school, he said.
"If the situation is more equitable than I thought, then that's great."
Ray Siqueiros
social studies teacher Sunnyside High School
When a normally Liberal Democratic Party paper that endorses folks like Cong Ed Pastur, Cong Raul Grijalva, Name any Clinton, Kerry, Edwards, and normally loves Cindy Sheehan has to to out a Howard Dean/Charlie Rangel lie you know the left is in trouble.
So, they're discriminating against poor, inner city kids by trying harder to recruit rich white kids. /sarcasm
There are no "liberal principles", only unsupported assertions.
The Arizona Daily Star is often referred to as the Red Star here for its far left lean.
I don't understand why it would be so HORRIBLE to recruit at schools with "poor or minority students." The military may be one of the opportunities "poor or minority students" who are hardworking and ambitious might have to improve their lives. Like their alternative is going to Harvard?
Therein lies the problem. They'll go in and based on their being "hardworking and ambitious" advance, find out all the lies that they've been fed over the years by the left, be independant, and HORROR of HORRORS!!!!!!!!
Become Conservatives!!!!!
Ray Siquieros is one of the reasons Arizona is 50 out of 50 for educational performance. Of course the Red Star normalizes these moonbats.
You're right; I forgot to look down to the end of that road.
http://www.azstarnet.com/dailystar/relatedarticles/38498.php
Civic profile
Dedicated teacher almost dropped out of high school
By Dan Sorenson
ARIZONA DAILY STAR Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.12.2004
Ray Siqueiros doesn't want to be known only as "that tortilla guy" who got tortilla tossing banned at University of Arizona graduation ceremonies. He teaches Government and English as a Second Language at Sunnyside High School, or, as he puts it, "I teach young people. . . . I teach success."
Siquieros, 39, says teaching should be about turning students into graduates who are "poised to serve others, be passionate toward others." That process includes learning the subject matter in classes, but for the purpose of becoming a better person, and that includes "respecting other cultures and respecting your own culture. Being responsible for yourself and others. "That's kind of why, as a teacher, when I saw them throwing food . . . ," and here he hesitates. "I did what I did," he says. "I was attending my wife's graduation in May 2000. I see these two white guys passing around tortillas."
Siqueiros says he had seen what he thought were Frisbees sailing through the air earlier during the ceremony, but only when he saw the "Anglos" in front of him passing a package of tortillas around did it register that the Frisbees were flying food. He says he was offended because, to him, the tortillas represented his culture and he remembered his mother made tortillas to help the family get by when he was growing up. "I wasn't yelling," he says, but recalls that the group got very quiet when he asked them what they were doing and explained why it was an offensive thing to do. But his preferred venue for changing the world is the classroom, a classroom at the same school from which he graduated in 1983. It wasn't love at first sight. "I hated high school," says Siqueiros. "I almost dropped out. One day I dropped my books by one of the buildings and I was walking home. I stopped by the baseball field and I sat in one of the dugouts for a couple hours. I thought, 'I've only got one year to go. I can do it.' " That was a life-changing moment for him. He went on to the UA and graduated in 1995.
He's also an advocate for honoring the life and work of labor leader César Chávez through the establishment of a paid state holiday. Contact reporter Dan Sorenson at dsorenson@azstarnet.com or at 434-4073.
Any luck with your science teacher, SandRat?
Ping to Borax Queen
Thanks, Axes! BLECKKKKK to the Commie Red Star! They had several articles about this today, desperate to find some sort of bias against the poor.
HE's the tortilla guy too? Good detective work!
Now you have me thoroughly confused. My daughter had troubles with her History Teacher at NAU but that's straightened out as is issues she had with a prof caleed Four Arrows. Is that what you were referring too?
I thought it was you that had issues with a science teacher and the pagan non-science courseware. I might have you confused with another poster.
The science teacher at the 7-8th grade level was pushing gaia and political agendas in science classes.
This is for Tucson.
Excuse me if I have you confused with someone else.
That's ok.
Its a saddening and little discussed fact that the military can't target poor and minority students because these student's educations are so substandard that they cannot meet the needs of the service in 2005.
Not to worry liberals, your devestated, ill-educated young people are safe from the military giving them an opportunity to learn a skill and to learn about something besides the 'hood.
Its a saddening and little discussed fact that the military can't target poor and minority students because these student's educations are so substandard that they cannot meet the needs of the service in 2005.
Not to worry liberals, your devestated, ill-educated young people are safe from the military giving them an opportunity to learn a skill and to learn about something besides the 'hood.
The discrimination is against the lazy, ignorant, street lizards.
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