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Rogue Valley Peace Veterans FOIA & ASVAB Data
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While this web page started out as presenting simply ASVAB data obtained from FOIAs, it is now turning into a more general FOIA data presentation page, with this spreadsheet showing what has been submitted, when and where to.
Since the DoJ advises going to the respective agencies, we originally exercised the FOIA links on the MEPCOM website. They were, however, poorly equipt to respond so that we had to get Sen. Merkley's staff in Portland, OR, to assist. They, in turn, went to the DoJ, twice because the DoJ had also "misplaced" the paperwork. For about three months MEPCOM had a very good peron in the FOIA response position, then reassigned her and it was again like pulling teeth without painkillers, before they abandon any efforts to respond, turning the whole process over to the DMDC. The FOIA trail now goes back through OSD/JS from http://www.dod.gov/pubs/foi/ to http://www.dod.gov/pubs/foi/foiareq.html and finally to the submittal form at http://www.dod.gov/pubs/foi/submit_foiaform.html. |
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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.
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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:"
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: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 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. 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.
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 GO TO TOP 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. GO TO TOPASVAB 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.
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). 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. 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.
GO TO TOP School Years 2009-2010 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. GO TO TOP School Years 2010-2011 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.)
From the local standpoint, here's the Oregon Rogue Valley school data. School Years 2011-2012 |
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