Posted on 12/18/2005 9:50:43 AM PST by 68skylark
Washington — The Army met its recruiting goal for November by again accepting a high percentage of recruits who scored in the lowest category on the military's aptitude tests, Pentagon officials said Thursday, raising renewed concerns that the quality of the all-volunteer force will suffer.
The Army exceeded its 5,600 recruit goal by 256 for November, while the Army Reserve brought in 1,454 recruits, exceeding its target by 112. To do so, they accepted a “double digit” percentage of recruits who scored between 16 and 30 out of a possible 99 on the military's aptitude test, said officials who requested anonymity.
Last month, The Baltimore Sun reported that the Army reached its recruiting goals in October by accepting 12 percent from these low scorers, known as Category IV recruits. The Army may accept no more than 4 percent annually, according to Defense Department rules. While officials last month disclosed the percentage accepted in October, Thursday they refused to reveal the November figure.
“We are not giving out (aptitude test) categories during the course of the year,” said Douglas Smith, a spokesman for the Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox, Ky.
Still, Army officials continue to say that at the end of the recruiting year, next Sept. 30, the total percentage of Category IV soldiers will be no more than 4 percent. For more than a decade, the Army kept its Category IV soldiers to 2 percent of its recruitment pool. But last year, faced with a difficult recruiting climate because of the war in Iraq, Army Secretary Francis Harvey decided to double the number of Category IV soldiers.
“We will be at 4 percent at the end of the fiscal year, that's what matters,” said Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, a spokesman for Army personnel.
The increasing reliance on the lowest-scoring recruits is troubling to former officers who fear that the quality of the force will erode. They say that the increasingly high-tech Army needs even more qualified soldiers. And with troops facing more complex duties involving nation building and peacekeeping duties, good judgment is more important.
“We are putting more responsibility on the shoulders of privates, probably more than any time in our history,” said retired Lt. Col. Charles Krohn, a Vietnam War veteran who later worked as a speechwriter for the head of Army personnel in the 1980's. “You don't want (lowest-scoring recruits) wandering into a mosque in Baghdad.”
The Army already had brought in 4 percent from Category IV — or roughly 2,900 of its 73,000 recruits — for the 2005 recruiting year, which ended Sept. 30. In 2004, the Army accepted just 440 soldiers from the lowest category, or about 0.6 percent of 70,000 recruits. Despite the increase in lowest-scoring recruits, the Army was still about 7,000 recruits short of its 80,000 recruit goal for 2005.
At the same time, the Army is beginning to see an erosion in the percentage of soldiers re-enlisting, with some defense analysts saying the service is beginning to see the ripple effects of repeated, yearlong deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
In October the active-duty Army achieved 91 percent of its retention goal while in November it got 94 percent, meaning for the two months it lost about 1,000 soldiers. In 2005, the Army achieved a 108 percent retention figure, re-enlisting 69,512 soldiers, although its goal was 64,162.
The Real Problems With Urban Schools and RecruitersNovember 7, 2005: The U.S. Department of Defense sees urban schools as ones of its biggest recruiting obstacles. Not because leftist teachers in some of those schools try to keep recruiters out, but because so many potential recruits have to be turned down because of the poor education they have received in those schools. While only 21 percent of Americans live in rural areas, 44 percent of the qualified recruits come from these areas. What’s strange about all this is that the rural areas spend much less, per pupil, on education, but get much better results. Part of this can be attributed to differences in cost of living, but a lot of it has to do with simply getting more done with less. Per capita, young people in rural areas are 22 percent more likely to join the army, than those of the same age in urban areas.
The rural recruits are also a lot easier to train, and generally make better soldiers. The urban recruits often have a bad attitude, as well as a difficult time getting along with others, and following instructions. The urban schools deserve some of the blame for this, while rural schools tend to be far more orderly, and put more emphasis on civil responsibility. Many of the urban recruits are aware of these problems, and joined the service to learn useful (for getting a job) social skills. Those skills are more often found among rural recruits because out in the boondocks, people are more involved with local government, and more involved in general. This has been noted in urban neighborhoods, and for decades, many urban parents have sought to send their kids, “to live with kinfolk in the country” to get the child away from the bad influences of urban life.
Over the last decade, there’s been a movement back to the rural areas. Urban areas may be more exciting, and offer more employment opportunities, but they are a tough place to raise kids, or find suitable recruits for the military.
According to the about.com entry for the ASVAB , the score they're talking about is a percentile. So somebody who scored a 16 is in the 16th percentile for the general population, and would correspond to an IQ of 86
No, 50% are below median. LOL.
The army needs ditch diggers too.
My only concern is that less educated = more public school/welfare mentality as we saw in New Orleans and A.G. The legacy of the NEA.
They are percentile ranks, not raw scores.
I was on active duty when the draft was discontinued, and still on active duty until well beyond the day the last draftee ETS'd.
From what I saw firsthand and what senior NCO's and Officers were saying at the time, the quakity of servicemembers suffered without the draft, and in ways other than GT score matters.....motivation, criminality, etc, etc. The lifers were saying that with the draft they at least got a cross-section of the American populace for two years.....after the draft, they did not.
Q. What do you call a judge who graduated in the bottom half of his law class?
A. Your Honor.
"50% of people are of below average intelligence"
Actually, 50% of people are below median intelligence.
Great minds think alike - guess I should read all of the posts before I add my own comments.
You are correct, of course. I was going to mention that. But, those ditch diggers are supposed to be SOLDIERS first, ditch diggers second. Otherwise why not outsource to the locals? No one wants imbeciles (functional) with the arsenal of weapons that soldiers have today.
I'm not disagreeing with you. This has been discussed before and I've read the same arguments before. I'm just adding the standard reply to your post.
Some of those people may enjoy the Military lifestyle, in so far as almost all decisions are made for you and you are guaranteed food and shelter. Others may have their eyes opened as to what true personal freedom is and the dangers of the Government making your life decisions for you.
" he writes that the Army and Army Reserve have met their recruiting goals only by accepting way too many recruits from the lowest aptitude category."
so, more democrats are getting involved?
Sounds like the article is another cherry picked disinformation piece. The Army is still limited by the annaul 4 % limit is it not? So for one month they are above pace.
I'm suprised the Dems haven't passed a law requiring the military to accept the bottom 15%.
You mean the Army and government are fudging the facts on their "recruitment". Who would have ever thought that.
You can't say a lot about intelligence based on raw score without knowing what it measures. For example, in some tests given in very tough courses at very tough schools, the top score among a group of very bright students might be 30% or even 15%. Unfortunately, I doubt that is the case with this test, but still, you need to see what it measures.
Another point, the same technology that puts increasing demands on many of our soldiers can also be used to reduce those demands. An example of this is the cash registers at fast food places that have pictures of hamburgers on them. The cashier doesn't need to read or know the price of anything, he just needs to be smart enough to press the button.
Still, I believe that in general, for any job, smarter is better. What I assume, what I hope, the military is doing is matching its brightest recruits to the most demanding jobs and putting the low-level recruits into the more mind-numbing positions. Anyone who's been in the military knows that there is plenty of need for people who can tolerate the mind-numbing jobs. As one poster said, they still need ditch diggers.
Criminality is one thing, scoring a sigma or two below the median is not dispositive of anything.
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