Former Kentucky National Guard Commander Major General Allen Youngman (Retired) just posted a disturbing letter in the Bowling Green Daily News, claiming the serious under-education of our nation’s students poses a real problem for the nation’s continued security.

Youngman cites some disturbing statistics to back up his concerns, claiming:

“An astounding 73 percent of young Kentuckians are ineligible for military service.”

That does not just include those who cannot qualify for the more demanding technical jobs in today’s military. This includes those ineligible for what Youngman says are “even the most basic military jobs.”

The general points out that right off the top, 12 percent of Kentucky’s students don’t graduate from our public high schools, which essentially eliminates their chance for success. So, out of every entering 100 ninth grade students, 12 don’t even begin to qualify for our military.

Among the remainder of those entering ninth grade students who do get a Kentucky high school diploma, he says 23 percent cannot get sufficiently high scores on the qualification tests to even be considered more closely for admission. That’s another 20 students knocked out right away for academically related reasons.

So, right away, 32 percent of Kentucky’s students are knocked out of the running for military enlistment directly due to education-related deficiencies.

The general doesn’t detail why the rest of the 73 percent of Kentucky’s young adults can’t qualify for military service, but similar total numbers have been discussed elsewhere. Aside from the academically disqualifying problems, obesity, drug issues (including medication for ADHD) and physical disfigurement apparently play a role. While many factors play into these other problems, it would appear that schools were not successful in educating students about the dangers of some of these militarily disqualifying activities.

By the way, in 2010 the Education Trust did an analysis of the percentage of students ineligible for the military based on Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) scores. The table on the right, extracted from information in Appendix A of the EdTrust report, shows how Kentucky’s white military applicants (who made up 84% of all Kentucky applicants) stacked up against their counterparts in other states for military readiness. As you can see, our white kids didn’t fare well, which is particularly disappointing because Kentucky traditionally has sent many excellent citizens into the armed forces.

Clearly, Kentucky has a problem.