thedrifter
02-25-04, 06:30 AM
Issue Date: March 01, 2004
DoD toughens scoring on recruits’ entrance tests
By Vince Crawley
Times staff writer
Young adults have grown more educated and technologically sophisticated over the past two decades, so the military is tweaking its entrance tests, making it slightly harder for borderline people to enlist or get top jobs.
The changes in the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB, take effect July 1. The Defense Department will honor existing scores for up to two years for people with enlistment contracts who already have taken the military’s written entrance exams.
The changes will be slight, but people taking the tests after July 1 generally will find their scores dropping about 2 percentage points compared to their scores if they had taken the same test under existing criteria.
“As a result of the new norms, some military applicants who might have been eligible for enlistment, job-skill training, enlistment bonuses and education benefits under the old norms will not be eligible under the new norms,” Defense Department officials said in a written response to questions.
The Defense Department calls the changes “renorming.” Scores of military applicants are compared against the abilities of 18- to 23-year-olds across the United States.
Current test scores are based on the abilities demonstrated by young adults in 1980, when household computers were in their infancy and high-school grads were less likely to enter college.
Under the new norms, “there will be 3 percent fewer applicants designated as ‘high quality,’”officials said.
High-quality recruits are considered high school graduates with entrance scores above the median scores for young adults throughout the nation.
The military’s benchmark is for 60 percent of recruits to score above the median and for 90 percent to have high school diplomas.
In actual practice, 75 percent of those recruited during the first quarter of fiscal 2004 scored above the median and 95 percent were high school graduates.
Defense officials expect few problems with recruiting based on the new test standards.
The top two aptitude levels — Category I and Category II — will be almost unchanged, but there will be slightly fewer people in Category III. Those in Cat I score in the 93rd to 99th percentiles of adults while those in Cat II score in the 65th to 92nd percentiles. Cat IIIs are those who score in the 31st to 64th percentiles.
The Pentagon last renormed the entrance exams in 1980 to correct errors introduced in 1976. Responding to concerns from basic-training instructors and a high dropout rate among recruits, officials found the entrance exams had been “misnormed” and were too easy to pass.
Since 1980, American youths have undergone significant changes.
“Over the past 20 years, youth aptitude levels have increased,” officials said. “Scores on educational achievement tests … have gone up, high school and college attendance rates have increased, and youth demographics have shifted.”
Thus, the standards set in 1980 are “no longer representative” of today’s population of 18- to 23-year-olds, officials said.
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=0-MARINEPAPER-2654274.php
The Drifter
:marine:
DoD toughens scoring on recruits’ entrance tests
By Vince Crawley
Times staff writer
Young adults have grown more educated and technologically sophisticated over the past two decades, so the military is tweaking its entrance tests, making it slightly harder for borderline people to enlist or get top jobs.
The changes in the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB, take effect July 1. The Defense Department will honor existing scores for up to two years for people with enlistment contracts who already have taken the military’s written entrance exams.
The changes will be slight, but people taking the tests after July 1 generally will find their scores dropping about 2 percentage points compared to their scores if they had taken the same test under existing criteria.
“As a result of the new norms, some military applicants who might have been eligible for enlistment, job-skill training, enlistment bonuses and education benefits under the old norms will not be eligible under the new norms,” Defense Department officials said in a written response to questions.
The Defense Department calls the changes “renorming.” Scores of military applicants are compared against the abilities of 18- to 23-year-olds across the United States.
Current test scores are based on the abilities demonstrated by young adults in 1980, when household computers were in their infancy and high-school grads were less likely to enter college.
Under the new norms, “there will be 3 percent fewer applicants designated as ‘high quality,’”officials said.
High-quality recruits are considered high school graduates with entrance scores above the median scores for young adults throughout the nation.
The military’s benchmark is for 60 percent of recruits to score above the median and for 90 percent to have high school diplomas.
In actual practice, 75 percent of those recruited during the first quarter of fiscal 2004 scored above the median and 95 percent were high school graduates.
Defense officials expect few problems with recruiting based on the new test standards.
The top two aptitude levels — Category I and Category II — will be almost unchanged, but there will be slightly fewer people in Category III. Those in Cat I score in the 93rd to 99th percentiles of adults while those in Cat II score in the 65th to 92nd percentiles. Cat IIIs are those who score in the 31st to 64th percentiles.
The Pentagon last renormed the entrance exams in 1980 to correct errors introduced in 1976. Responding to concerns from basic-training instructors and a high dropout rate among recruits, officials found the entrance exams had been “misnormed” and were too easy to pass.
Since 1980, American youths have undergone significant changes.
“Over the past 20 years, youth aptitude levels have increased,” officials said. “Scores on educational achievement tests … have gone up, high school and college attendance rates have increased, and youth demographics have shifted.”
Thus, the standards set in 1980 are “no longer representative” of today’s population of 18- to 23-year-olds, officials said.
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=0-MARINEPAPER-2654274.php
The Drifter
:marine: