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Nuclear Missile Command Drops Grades From Tests To Discourage Cheating
An anonymous reader writes: Earlier this year, just over half of the military officers put in charge of U.S. nuclear launch facilities were implicated in an exam cheating scandal. The Air Force conducted regular exams to keep officers current on the protocols and skills required to operate some of the world's most dangerous weapons. But the way they graded the test caused problems. Anything below a 90% score was a fail, but the remaining 10% often dictated how a launch officer's career progressed. There might not be much functional difference between a 93% and a 95%, but the person scoring higher will get promoted disproportionately quicker. This inspired a ring of officers to cheat in order to meet the unrealistic expectations of the Air Force. Now, in an effort to clean up that Missile Wing, the Air Force is making the exams pass/fail. The officers still need to score 90% or higher (since it's important work with severe consequences for failure), but scores won't be recorded and used to compete for promotions anymore. The Air Force is also making an effort to replace or refurbish the aging equipment that runs these facilities.
They had a story on the radio last night about this. The issue is that everyone (well, most everyone) was getting a passing grade. When they came in and gave an unexpected test the average score was 95%. The problem is that promotions were based on the grades. So, people were not cheating to pass but instead to be "perfect" in order to look better for promotion.
Unrealistic expectations?
Not for the best of the Best of the BEST, SIR!
bickerdyke
Obviously promotions should go to the candidate who has launched the most missiles.
I'll let you in on a secret.
Just having the code stopped the problem they created the code to fix. Since it fixed the problem, it makes sense for it to be an easy number. I suspect the rpesident will be under a little stress if he had to actually use it, so you want to minimize mistakes.
The security guy makes a classic security review mistake. Ignoring why and the practicality and the impact.
So that actual number is irrelevant, and no, you don't punch the code and then missiles launch.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
take the men out of the loop
I disagree. I'd be surprised if the standard deviation for an individual test taker was less than 2%. If you take the office who scored 95% and the officer who scored 93%, then made them take another test on the same subject, I wouldn't be remotely surprised if the scores were reversed. This is a good rational to make the test pass/fail and drop the grades.
I stole this Sig
Who are you talking to?
The summary states that 90% will continue to remain the minimum requirement for success, as it was before.
The "unrealistic expectation" was making promotion decisions based solely on the difference between 93% vs 95% on the test score. A 90% was the equivalent of a "D". The problem was that to be promoted, the expectation was to hit that 2% difference (which may very well be a single question on the test) and that would mean the difference between being promoted or not being promoted (which means a host of different responsibilities). It's nice to have a firm metric you can point to in order to justify the decision that was made.
The problem is that the single question out of many, was the deciding factor between 2 candidates to take on a multitude of increased responsibilities, their qualification for which may not be accurately gauged by a single question out of many on a graded exam. For comparison, let's say you have 2 programmers take a test, programmer A gets 93%, and programmer B gets 95%. They both clearly have a very strong grasp of the requisite knowledge, which would you promote? The 95%? Well what if programmer B has excellent book-retention, but is lazy and disorganized in his personal and professional life? Maybe he has poor leadership skills over the people that he/she oversees? The idea of promotion based on a tiny difference in already-strong test scores starts to fall apart.