Oklahoma No. 2 In Army Recruiting

Friday, January 19th 2007, 12:36 pm

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ Oklahoma sent more young people into the U.S. Army on a per capita basis last year than any other state except Arkansas, according to a report by a national nonprofit organization.

National Priorities Project, a nonprofit in Massachusetts that compiles data to help citizens and community groups shape federal budget and policy priorities, examined Army recruiting through records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Oklahoma contributed 1,296 of the 68,556 recruits signed by the Army in 2006. That was more than two per 1,000 residents ages 15 to 24, according to the report.

``People out here, families and kids, still see serving their country as a value,'' said John Soos, director of advertising and public affairs for the Oklahoma City Army Recruiting Battalion. The battalion is responsible for top-ranked Arkansas, No. 2 Oklahoma and a small part of north Texas.

Nationally, the Army exceeded its quantitative goals for the year, signing almost 4 percent more recruits than in 2005, when it missed its target.

However, the Army fell short on qualitative goals in 2006, with only 47 percent of recruits considered ``high quality,'' down from 61 percent in 2004, the report said. The goal was 60 percent.

In Oklahoma, 43 percent of 2005 recruits were ``high quality,'' meaning they had a regular high school diploma and scored in the upper half of the Armed Forces Qualification Test.

The National Priorities Project began studying Army recruitment in 2004 because of the Iraq war, research director Anita Dancs said.

``We are engaged in a war where young people are dying, so we should know where the recruits are coming from,'' she said.

The 2004 and 2005 reports found wealthier areas were under-represented in the Army, and that gap grew in 2006, she said. The largest number of recruits continues to come from neighborhoods where incomes range from $30,000 to $59,999, data show.

Arkansas led the recruiting rankings with 2.47 recruits per 1,000 youth, followed by Oklahoma, 2.44; Montana, 2.39, and Texas, 2.38.