Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) and Junior ROTC School Data, By State, School Testing Data

DATA DIRECTORY

DETAILED MILITARY ENLISTMENT/DISCHARGE DATA FOR 2009 - 2011

MILITARY ENLISTMENT DATA FOR 2010

ASVAB INTRODUCTION

ASVAB 2006-2007

ASVAB 2008-2009

ASVAB 2009-2010

ASVAB 2010-2011

DETAILED MILITARY ENLISTMENT/DISCHARGE DATA, BY BRANCH, FOR 2009 - 2011:

1) The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) responded to some critical questions raised about its compliance with the U.N. Committee's protocol on child soldiers (full document, dtd December 3, 2012). Again, as we've learned to expect, neither the U.S. nor the DoD concedes to any criticism of its recruiting practices, especially when it comes from an international agency. Those of us that have been in the U.S. military and/or track issues that arise within the various branches, can pick out many of the idealistic situations depicted in the DoD response, versus reality.

One area of useful information that was revealed by the DoD in Appendix 1 are the statistics on 17-year-old enlistees (the term "accession" is when they enter the military).

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2) Under our on-going FOIA efforts, a request was made to the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) on February 6, 2011. The DMDC balked at the request and stated that we had to go to each branch, but that the DD214 error claims had to be "decoupled" from the request. Requests were then submitted to each military branch on February 12, 2012, with the following request (sans Item "F") concerning the "Description of Records Requested:"
(A) For each of the calendar years 2009, 2010, 2011, through the immediate past year, for (the respective branch, as appropriate) Active Duty, Reserve and Guard, the number of end-of year personnel by officer and enlisted breakouts, then, for each year:
(B) Number of new recruits;
(C) Discharge #s: Retirements, Honorable Discharges, Administrative Discharges with separate breakouts for "Order of Release from the Custody and Control of the Military Service" and "Entry Level Separations", General Discharges, BCDs and DDs.
(D) AWOL and Deserter #s: Number of each so noted during calendar year; carry overs from prior years; carry overs to next year;
(E) Conscientious Objector #s: (1) Number applications initiated; (2) number applications approved; (3) carry overs from prior years; (4) carry overs to next year.
(F) DD214 error claims: Number filed in designated calendar year, by enlisted and by officer
(G) This request to be updated in the following years.

In early January 2013, a CD was received from the DoD which contained this spreadsheet (Excel) information. The letter was dated 27 Dec 2012, yet EACH of the four spreadsheet tabs state at the bottom, "Produced by the Defense Manpower Data Center on April 16, 2012." What was the purpose of waiting from the April 16 data preparation to the mailing on December 27, 2012? Despite that, however, there is a LOT of manpower information in this document that could be researched in various ways! The results from the individual branches is also presented below as they did/did not materialize.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - INDIVIDUAL BRANCH RESULTS - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

One of the purposes of this exercise was to get some idea of potential recruiter communication problem differences between the services. While the data format, etc., differs between each of the branch responses, it has been possible to combine like categories of separation data to obtain respective percentages which we categorize as Recruiter Communication Problems on a percentage-of-enlistments basis for each year. The relative ranges for each reporting branch seems to be:

USAF: 8.5%; USCG: 3.8%-5%; Army National Guard: 22%-25%; Army: TBD; Navy: TBD; Marines: TBD.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - RESULTS, USAF - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The USAF was the first branch to provide the data, received on April 28, 2012, to the extent that they had records available between Randolph AFB, TX (an outstanding job accomplished by Crystal Schalk, AFPC FOIA/PA Policy Officer, for AFPC/DS1F Case #2012-02998-F they had received on April 6, 2012), with "accessions" provided by Fort Sam Houston, TX (under FOIA Case #2012-02999-F). Randolph supplied four data sheets that we scanned-in and combined into two Excel '97 files.
Item 'F,' above was not detailed, but addressed with the statement: "36,000 DD Forms 214 produced each year (2009, 2010 and 2011), the average 'error' rate is estimated at ~ 3000 per year or 0.83%. Information is not currently broken down between officer/enlisted personnel." The two spreadsheets from the USAF data are:

USAF Active Duty Voluntary Separations (Not for Cause) from CY 2009 - CY 2011 and

USAF Active Duty Involuntary Separations (includes for Cause and Court Martials) from CY 2009 - CY 2011

The Air National Guard was the first to "push back" in an email (for their Case #2012-03001-F), to which we provided a justification letter containing 'universal' arguments that can be used for any branch.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - RESULTS, ARMY - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The Army's initial reply, passed the actions on to four other commands.

The Army National Guard data (Case #FA-12-0044) arrived on June 2, 2012, with various errors included, indicating that they probably hadn't really read the FOIA. For example, there was no separate breakout of officer and enlisted personnel, except for a "New Recruits" table and two tables they provided (Retirements and DD 214 Error Claims) were labeled as Fiscal Year information, rather than Calendar Year. Here, we have combined their six charts into one.

Regular Army data - no results, to date, July 9, 2012

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - RESULTS, USCG - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The USCG response for their Case #2012-1302, was received on June 7, 2012, via snail-mail with a return receipt, on paper and a CD of 2009 separation data. As can be seen from the above summary of what we call Recruiter Communication Problems, their data indicates the lowest such percentage of any branch. This file also has an email exchange, attempting to clarify what USCG data was available and what had been stated in the FOIA... the ONLY such detailed exchange with any of the military branches.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - RESULTS, NAVY - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The Navy's initial reply, passed the action back to DMDC!!!.

Navy data - no results, to date, July 9, 2012

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - RESULTS, MARINES - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Marine data - no results, to date, July 9, 2012

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MILITARY ENLISTMENT DATA FOR 2010:

But, to begin with we also have calender year 2010 military enlistment raw data, by state, city and branch of service here, our Oregon State data here, and down to the Rogue Valley (with Klamath Falls) data here. For those that work in CR, this gives you a good idea of what is at stake in your local areas. It would also be interesting to see how comparative military enlistment data works out as a percentage of population data for city, state and region.
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ASVAB School Testing Data by Years, State & Territory, in Excel Format

The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) is the military's entrance exam that is given to prospective recruits to determine their aptitude for various military occupations. The four-hour test is also used as a recruiting tool in thousands of schools across the U.S. and its Territories and used by military recruiting services to gain valuable information on hundreds of thousands of high school students across the country every year, the vast majority of whom are under the age of 18. In many cases, students take the test without parental knowledge or consent. Unless the school that is used for the testing establishes "Option 8" for reporting purposes, all of the information from each test is given to local military recruiters to be able to conduct more effective sales pitches to our youth.

The data provided on this page details, by State or Territory, each school with the numbers of students that have been tested under each ASVAB option.

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School Years 2006-2007

Rearranging the "All State Data" to better evaluate the effectiveness of utilizing Option 8 testing, it can be seen that the vast majority of students, almost 72% (of 617,799), are tested under Option 1 (full disclosure to military recruiters) and only 4.4% under Option 8 (no disclosure to military recruiters).

Here is a synopsis of the all-states data for this test year, reduced by this webmaster from the information picked up by the Philidelphia Inquirer several years ago.

Looking specifically at Oregon (where the webmaster resides), we see less than 30% of the students being subjected to Option 1 (full disclosure to military recruiters) and just over 56% tested under Option 8 (no disclosure to military recruiters).
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School Years 2007-2008 Not Available

School Years 2008-2009

Rearranging the "All State Data" to better evaluate the effectiveness of utilizing Option 8 testing, it can be seen that the vast majority of students (of 643,632), over 60%, are tested under Option 1 (full disclosure to military recruiters) and only 8.6% under Option 8 (no disclosure to military recruiters). The introduction of Option 7 in the data shows this "no-test" metric, at over 13%, plays a larger roll than expected.

Looking specifically at Oregon (where the webmaster resides), we see about 16% of the students being subjected to Option 1 (full disclosure to military recruiters) and just over 62% tested under Option 8 (no disclosure to military recruiters). Again, the introduction of Option 7 in the data shows this "no-test" metric, at about 10% plays a larger roll than expected.

Our original FOIA request didn't specify the associated city/town with the school data. In retrospect, a gov't entity isn't going to provide anything more than specifically requested, so mea culpa... and we used to do the same thing when we were on that side of the FOIA request process!! However, Jesus Palafox found that the last three numbers in the school_code are the same last three digits assigned by the college board for each high school and can be linked to specific cities at http://sat.collegeboard.com/register/sat-code-search. Meanwhile, let's see if the 2009-2010 data has the cities identified as we somewhat belatedly requested.

Incidently, this data delivery only came about through the efforts of our senior U.S. Senator from Oregon, Sen. Ron Wyden. Our original FOIA was initiated on March 26, 2010, but we'd had no response from Military Entrance Processing Command (their initial response was supposed to have been within 20 days!), before we initiated a second FOIA request on July 9 and finally talked to a Sen. Wyden staff member on August 23rd. That staff member then began "beating on" the Dept. of Justice, but our first response from MEPCom was on Dec 18, with the CD containing the 2008-2009 data arriving January 17, 2011, almost 10 months after initiation of the first request!
ASVAB Data Table for School Years 2008-2009

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School Years 2009-2010
(This data has also been freely provided to http://studentprivacy.org/)

Although it took a lot of interface with MEPCOM to get this batch of data and then it came in without city ID for the schools in the states. However, we have added preliminary Option selection data support (in bold blue) for each state and, in some cases where curiousity lead us to some minimal data reduction. What would also be useful is some additional work (such as we did for our home state of Oregon), to denote those schools that require the test be given to each student (anything in the "Mandatory" column), coupled with the less-than-Option 8 notations, again, such as we have done for Oregon.

Here is a synopsis of the all-states data, reduced form the information below by Pat Elder, who is initiating a nation-wide ASVAB Option 8 campaign after his successful Maryland Option 8-only legislative campaign, making Maryland the first state in the union with such an ASVAB restriction.

It should be noted that, despite the miserable showing of 0% Option 8 for some states (examples: ME, AZ, MO, LA and SD, with all "territories" in the same category) , the '08-'09 over-all Option 8 participation was 8.6% of all students tested, while the '09-'10 participations edged up to 12.2%. Another item of note is that anywhere a JROTC is identified as being in a school, all ASVAB testing seems automatically to be "Option 1," reflecting the strong military leaning at that school.

Here is a synopsis of the all-states data comparisons between the '09-'10 and the '06-'07 test years. The formats/layout of the two data bases aren't exactly the same, but side-by-side comparisons for each state have been made for the total number of students tested (down, over-all) and for the percentages of Option 8 reporting (up, over-all).

From the local standpoint, here's the Oregon Rogue Valley school data.

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School Years 2010-2011
(This data has also been freely provided to http://studentprivacy.org/)

We have provided this link to our FOIA request for the 2010-2011 ASVAB data.docx that had been submitted on July 14, 2011, via email with the data finally received on a CD on August 7, 2012. The data received appeared to have a number of duplicate entries, but the differing testing dates resolved that issue. We have tried highlighting a number of what we believe are quite questionable repeat visits to various schools by setting the school code in bold font. The main question we have is WHY are so many ASVAB testing visits necessary within a school year to certain institutions? (A comparison with the enlistment figures for 2010, above, may help answer that question.)

Additional annomalies include missing city designations and even recruiters that don't know when they're in a school in Hawaii, American Somoa or Guam. Schools in AS and GU were attributed to HI, while the city of Kelso, WA was called Kelso, OR. Other cities and states that are not fully capitalized were where we had to look up the school on-line to verify where it was located.

Despite the low number of schools that are recruiter-identified as having mandated ASVAB testing, it doesn't take an in-depth analysis to realize that a quite large number of schools in various states require each student to take the test, so that military recruiters are given carte blanc with the resulting test data. Most of these schools are in Southern, or "politically red" states, exactly where recruiters have more success in their sign-ups. It is virtually impossible to tell whether it is the recruiters not providing the whole story to school personnel in these areas, or if the school administrators are simply gung-ho for military recruitment, no matter the cost to those that won't fit the "military mold."

This batch of data also included the APOs and FPOs of our military-provided schools in foreign countries, as provided here. It stands to reason that virtually all ASVAB testing in these schools are under Option 1. :-)

It is also obvious from the Hawaii and Maryland data, that anadministrative ruling and a state law, respectively, are not enough, but an information campaign is still necessary... and maybe some "teeth," or sanctions, in the respective rulings and laws.

An assertion that some schools stagger their ASVAB testing years is correct, but from a two-year look-see at Oregon schools, the majority of the schools tested both years. In comparing the data for the consecutive testing years for Oregon's 342 public schools, year '09-'10 showed 139 schools participated, while the '10-'11 year showed 155 participating, yet 129 schools tested in both years, which indicates that as many as 171 public schools, statewide, are in the ASVAB test program. The corresponding numbers for Oregon private schools using the ASVAB, were 25, 26 and 19, indicating about 33 private schools may be using the ASVAB.

From the local standpoint, here's the Oregon Rogue Valley school data.

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School Years 2011-2012
(This data, when received and processed, to be freely provided to http://studentprivacy.org/)