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Access to Higher Education: Spatial Mapping of Military
Recruitment
Mapping Out Options Students are Given
Mireya Morales
USP 186 Section A01
mmmorale@ucsd.edu
October 19, 2010
Abstract:
Career Academies and Small Learning Communities within comprehensive high schools were
essentially created as an effort to correct systemic issues that create barriers in access to higher
education, but the results are far from perfect. Although these small learning communities serve
as a form of educational reform, there are groups of students within these models that continue to
be marginalized. My research analyzes the negative effects of Career Academies, which have
recently become open grounds for militarization of public high schools. A disproportionate
amount of recruitment is present in low-income high schools and underrepresented students are
being targeted. This creates another barrier for students trying to access college and perpetuates
structural racism by legitimizing these institutional practices. The goal of this study is to find
what the “space of recruitment” is and what it looks like in terms of urban planning, physical
access to institutions of higher education and proximity to military recruitment centers in the
communities in South East San Diego.
Key Terms: Military Recruitment, Low-income Communities, People of Color, Small Learning
Communities, Counter-Recruitment
Introduction:
With college completion rates for lower income students remaining static over the last 38
years and 60 percent of a low-income family’s income required for four-year public education
tuition, the opportunity for a college education continues to be challenging for low-income or
financially underserved students. The issue is clear, there are structural barriers in access to
higher education for low-income youth of color, but the reforms that have been initiated focus on
the wrong issues within the system of education. Recent reforms aim to break down larger school
into small learning communities (also known as academies or centers), but do not focus on
instruction or barriers that keep students from even thinking of college as a choice. This study
seeks to understand the spatial layout of communities of color and find the paths of access
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students realistically have and how the built environment maps of their choices even before they
are educated about their options. In order to understand the overarching issue, the study must
first explain and define the reforms that have been attempted, address their flaws and develop
another strategy that will raise awareness on these issues in hopes of closing the educational gap
and increasing diversity in higher education.
Small Learning Communities
The system of small learning communities were meant to have a positive impact on
academic achievement in large schools, but has inversely created a career tracking path that
inherently traps students on a path to nowhere. That system of small learning communities is
becoming more and more popular (Huffman, Hipp 2003), therefore it is crucial to address this
issue and raise awareness in order to allow students to use their agency in deciding their career
paths without being forced into them. Improvements are needed before the problems of access to
higher education become overlooked and continue to perpetuate the system of oppression for
students of color and students working to lower class.
Within the issue of small learning communities is the issue of tracking. Not only are
students not receiving the support needed to apply and attend college after high school, they are
also being targeted by military recruiters seeking to meet mandatory quotas instituted by the
government.
Conceptual Framework:
My research uses the following question(s): What is the space of recruitment? This aims
at asking the question of what communities the military targets and why. How does the built
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environment affect the outcomes in access to higher education? What kind of physical access do
low-income youth have to military recruitment, work, or vocational schools as opposed to
institutions of higher education or transportation to those institutions?
This is significant because militarization targets schools in low-income communities and
if those areas are made up by people of color those students that could be applying to college are
enlisting in the military instead. This contributes to the lack of diversity on college campuses. As
Conchas (20) states it is a structural and cultural issue that needs to be addressed from the source.
In this case the source in the system that is taking educational opportunities away from a
marginalized group. Researchers have focused on a two reasons/sources for poor student
performance: Structural and Cultural. Structural is a macro view of things, which is what my
argument uses as supporting evidence. Structural arguments include the fact that America's
history of economic dislocation and oppression creates "caste" educational system that excludes
ethnic minorities. They argue that this exclusion has created a counter cultural reaction an
"oppositional culture" (turning on the system). Cultural, on the other hand is a micro view that
includes factors such as language differences, conflict in values and is more of a bottom up
perspective. Conchas argues that we need a holistic argument that includes both structural and
cultural factors in order to explain complex relationship between ethnicity and academic
performance.
As Knight (September 2002) stated, “Reform efforts are commendable and necessary, but
not sufficient.” In other words, the work that is being done has the right idea, but there are people
that are being targeted within the student population and some that are not, and those that are not
may be tracked in academies/centers that only offer options that include the military. Schoolwithin-school plans were initially conceived to offer alternatives to parents who wanted a
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specialized education for their children not available through the normal school structure or
standard curriculum. Administrators have devised a variety of plans in accordance with the
special circumstances and resources of their districts. The purpose of SLC’s was to break down
the larger school settings in order to focus the teaching of students down to a small scale, more
personal level. However, if the primary purpose is to improve the quality of education, why not
have the SLCs all be liberal arts learning communities? Focusing career academies on careers in
the military distorts student perceptions about higher education.
Gilberto Q. Conchas work entitled The Color of Success: Race and High-Achieving
Urban Youth (2006), informs us about the existence of success stories. His study shows a case
that included two career academies: a Medical Academy and a Graphics Academy. His research
focus asks how the structure of the academy leads to a culture that promotes success for Latino,
African American and Vietnamese students.
Conchas’ work is directly related to the development of small learning communities, but
his approach is unique because instead of focusing on the negative issues in the system that
require restructuring, he sheds light on the success stories and tries to find the turning points for
these students. In doing so, he looks for a way to duplicate those success stories and use them as
a model to reform the system overall.
Conchas critiques the framework of "the system." He suggests a more holistic view with
focus on all youth from completely disconnected to the ones that succeed despite the odds. This
includes an acknowledgement of the situations/conditions for the low-income youth of Mexican
descent. Conchas methodology examines the social, emotional, cognitive and physical processes
of their lives shows when choices were made. This can be tied to the idea of decision-making
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seen in Pathways project. Perceptions change lives and can lead to school or gangs. Most have a
specific turning point that causes students to choose gangs instead of family/school.
Those who have argued against the small learning communities focus their attention on
the “tracking” that goes on within the models. The centers are organized by career goals and
options. This is seen as a form of educational tracking that has been criticized over the years.
Tracking is the manner by which students are separated by academic ability into groups for all
academic subjects within a school (Gamoran 1992). Critics of “tracking” argue that students in
lower tracked classes do not receive the same quality of education as those in higher tracks. The
problem is whether there is an equity imbalance within the centers because some students are
targeted while others are left behind without many options for PSE.
Michelle Knight analyzes Black Students’ perspectives and the complexities of caring
embedded in the academic expectations of mini-houses and the distributive counseling structure
of learning centers. She also focuses on the role of programs such as the JROTC in facilitating
students’ college access and proves that there is a significant influence by the military because of
the idea that joining the armed forces they can fund their education after their service. The
presence of JROTC programs is at work at Mission Bay High School’s campus and has caused
high levels of militarization, while the numbers of students applying to four-year universities
decreases. Project YANO and Education Not Arms Coalition have worked on policies that
propose “Equal Access” for college recruiters and military recruiters. They counter-recruit my
offering alternatives and also take action in trying to restrict access to public school campuses for
military recruiters because the “No Child Left Behind” Act, passed in 2001 by the Bush
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Administration, protects the militaries right to access students. (A copy of the policy currently
being proposed is attached).
Jorge Mariscal is a member of Project YANO, a counter-recruitment organization of
military veterans and activists who speak to young people about the realities of military service.
He is also a professor of Chicana/o and Spanish cultures at the University of California, San
Diego and is heavily involved in various topics affecting Chicano/a, Mexicano/a, and Latino/a
communities. He has written many articles on the topic of militarization, specifically directed
towards the recruitment of Latinos/as in low-income communities.
In Mariscal article entitled “The Dilemma of "Double Deportation": Military Recruitment
and the Immigration Debate,” he provides statistics to prove that the presence of Latinos/as in the
armed forces is directly correlated to the amount of recruitment quotas instated by the military.
Mariscal states that non-citizens make up 3-5% of total military personnel. To date, they have
received more than 200 medals and awards in the combat zone. More than 100 of them have
received posthumous citizenship after making the ultimate sacrifice. The majority of them have
roots in Mexico and Latin America (Mariscal 4-2-2005).
Methodology:
This is a qualitative study focused on investigating the role of military recruitment in
low-income areas and access students have to institutions of higher education. This study will
aim to find this by using GIS technology to bring a visual form of representation of a community
in South East San Diego (specific area has not been mapped). Possible layers include: income,
race/ethnicity, military areas/recruitment centers, schools, and transportation. By layering these
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populations the study will analyze the correlations between the groups and use scholarly work to
support my conclusions.
This study will also use GIS to try and prove that there is a correlation between lowincome areas and students of color. For this project, low-income will be defined with the
description given by the Gates study which defines low-income as students to 185% of the
federal poverty level.
I will be conducting interviews with people around centers of recruitment in areas such as
shopping malls and schools in South East San Diego. This will be done to understand the
perceptions people have about their career options in order to understand what influence these
recruitment centers have. I will also interview Professor Mariscal of UCSD and investigate the
role of counter-recruitment organizations in San Diego in order to get the perspective of a
military veteran who is now working in education.
Most of my work will be archival research focused on finding flaws in educational
reform done in the past in order to find the missing pieces that would help advance the
educational system to increase educational equity in access to higher education for students from
all backgrounds. This archival research will include work by scholars in educational policy,
military practices and community based organizations.
My passion is in educational reform and equity in accessing higher education. When I
entered college I realized the institutional inequalities that existed within the world of higher
education and access to postsecondary education (PSE) in schools with a low socio-economic
status. I attended to a high school that had an implemented a system of small learning
communities known as “Academies.” It was not until I had gone through the system that I
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realized that there were issues that caused a problematic pattern within the academy model. The
only academy to consistently help and get students to apply and be accepted into a four year
university is the University Academy. That is a group of about 40 students per year, in a student
body of 1,700. All the other academies failed to provide the information and support needed for
students to continue their postsecondary education and the Law Enforcement Academy tracked
students into the military.
I am learning GIS, but I have the help of a researcher from UCLA who is an expert in the
program and I will have access to previously mapped regions of San Diego through the database.
I will be working with her and my mentor, Professor Amanda Datnow, Director of the Education
Studies Department at UCSD on this project through private funding they have arranged. My
work is an ongoing project I have developed through the McNair Scholars program last year and
I hope to continue it through the SRP and into graduate school.
Outcomes:
This study is significant because perceptions students have may be tied to a larger
structural problem that can be addressed through policy reform. It can and has affected diversity
in higher education. The goal is to identify positive impacts and obstacles such as institutional
racism as the first step for reform and change for public education in California. Alternatives
must be provided to prevent the injustices that are being perpetuated through these educational
models. The flaws are being overlooked and can have very negative impacts on the educational
system in the near future. This study is advocating for education in hopes of limiting military
recruitment and academies that cater to the militarization of public education.
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Working Bibliography:
Datnow, Amanda, and Daniel Solórzano. "Project Description." Pathways to
PSE+: Maximizing Opportunities for Youth in Poverty. UC/ACCORD, n.d.
Web. 10 Oct. 2010.
Gamoran, Adam (1992). "Is Ability Grouping Equitable?". Educational Leadership 50 (2).
Knight, Michelle G. The Intersections of race, class, and gender in the
teacher preparation of an African-American social justice educator.
N.p.: Equity & Excellence in Education, 2002. N. pag. JSTOR. Web. 10
Oct. 2010. <http://jstor.org>.
Mariscal, Jorge. "Youth Activists Demand Military-Free Schools." Committee
Opposed to the Military and the Draft 23: n. pag. JSTOR.
Web. 15 October 2010. <http://jorgemariscal.blogspot.com/>.
Mariscal, Jorge. " The Dilemma of "Double Deportation": Military Recruitment and the
Immigration Debate." Committee Opposed to the Military and the Draft 23: n.
pag. JSTOR. Web. 15 Oct 2010. <http://jorgemariscal.blogspot.com/>.
Mariscal, Jorge. " Immigration and Military Enlistment:The Pentagon's Push for the DREAM
Act Heats Up." Committee Opposed to the Military and the Draft 23: n. pag.
JSTOR. Web. 15 Sept 2010. <http://jorgemariscal.blogspot.com/>.
Mariscal, Jorge. “The Poverty Draft: Do military recruiters disproportionately target
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Communities of color and the poor?." Committee Opposed to the Military and the Draft:
n. pag. JSTOR. Web. 15 Oct 2010. <http://jorgemariscal.blogspot.com/>.
Military Recruiting 2007: Army Misses Benchmarks by Greater Margin Web. 4 October
2010<http://jstor.org>.
Neptun, Rocky. "The Militarization of Public Education!" Jstor (Oct. 2008): n. pag. JSTOR.
Web. 13 Oct. 2010. <http://jstor.org>.