Life is increasingly driven by the need for speed of information. It is accelerated by email, texting, cell phones, Tweeting, and, yes, blogging. We posted a blog last week entitled "Education as an issue of national security." In it, we accurately referenced an Education Week story which reported that 75 percent of Americans??ages 17-24 are ineligible to join the military because they have not graduated from high school, have criminal records, or are physically unfit. This is a truly alarming statistic and a sad commentary on the state of American youth and education, which was the main point of the post.
But, we also wrote, almost as an offhand comment, "Keep in mind that the military lowered its admission standards to near abysmal levels in 2005-2006." That reference was to a 2006 Washington Post article, "Lower Standards Help Army Recruit More," that reported, "The U.S. Army recruited more than 2,600 soldiers under new lower aptitude standards this year, helping the service beat its goal of 80,000 recruits in the throes of an unpopular war and mounting casualties."
The story continued, "According to statistics obtained by the Associated Press, 3.8 percent of the first-time recruits scored below certain aptitude levels. In previous years, the Army had allowed only 2 percent of its recruits to have low aptitude scores. That limit was increased last year to 4 percent, the maximum allowed by the Defense Department."
In fact, the article's headline was far too simplistic and even misleading, and a careful reading of the full story made that obvious, but we missed it because we didn't fully check our facts.
Not surprisingly, because Flypaper's readers are some of the most thoughtful and discerning minds in the country, we heard from a reader who felt that the Defense Department's decision to allow 3.8 percent of first-time recruits who scored below a certain aptitude level to enter the Army while the country is in the midst of two wars was a far cry from lowering its admission standards to "near abysmal levels."
The reader wrote that the assertion was wrong in two important ways. "The most significant is: the military has not lowered its admission standards in terms of education and aptitude - ever!!"
The reader cited data that showed, "The military's standard for education is that 90 percent of its recruits should be high school Diploma graduates (not GEDs)."
"Second," the reader continued, "the recruits who enlisted in the Armed Forces in 2005 and 2006 were not abysmal: quite the contrary. They were excellent, despite the fact that these were challenging recruiting years. In 2005, 93 percent of recruits had a high school diploma and 70 percent scored in the upper half of the Armed Forces Qualification Test [AFQT - its version of the SAT in math/verbal skills]. In a less challenging recruiting year (2009), the numbers were even more impressive. Ninety-six percent were high school diploma graduates and 73 percent scored in the upper half of the AFQT."
In short, some of America's best and brightest young people are serving in our Armed Forces, and we apologize for suggesting otherwise. On this Veterans Day we are happy to eat crow and to say thank you to our Veterans and to acknowledge not only their service but the talent and education they bring to their jobs.