Drop and Give Me 20, Lardass

I live and work in a military community, and every spring there’s a big up-tick in activity as everyone shakes off the winter hoar and gets ready for their physical fitness tests. I usually get to the school at 6:30 or 7:00, and I’ll typically pass about a 100 or so airmen out for their morning runs, all dressed in gray shirts and shorts.

The fitness tests are a big deal that everyone knows about. And yet…

Since the new fitness program began in 2004, Air Force Reserve Command’s performance has stumbled.

In 2003, 76 percent of unit reservists took the fitness test. Most of them—98.9 percent—passed their assessments.

Two years later 68 percent of the reservists tested. But this time 7 percent of them finished with a marginal score and 12 percent of them performed poorly. AFRC’s failure rate in this category was six times higher than the rate for active-duty members.

We can’t get 100 percent of the Air Force to the standard of physical fitness after decades of measurement. How, then, can the expectation to get 100% of kids to grade level in reading and math be reasonable? Consider too the drop-out rate from bootcamp, which you can find here. The upshot it that they've all lowered their failure rate, but none of them are at zero. Consider that these are folks who self-select to be there, while students don't often have that motivation. Can we draw anything from that?

Just something I've been kicking around.