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

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

FOIAs were sent to each military branch, with the following request 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.

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

The USAF was the first to provide the data 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 Case #2012-02998-F), 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

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

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

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

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - RESULTS, ANG - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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.

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.

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.

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).

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

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.

School Years 2010-2011

O.K., we're going to go with what we have on hand. We have provided this link to our current (ongoing? :-) FOIA request for the 2010-2011 ASVAB data.docx that had been submitted on 7/14/2011, via email. The data that had been sent was missing the city associations, but there is no telling when that is going to be available, so sometime in the near future, this 2010-2011 data will be posted sans the city associations, just as in the 2009-2010 data.