Wing changing Training Standards

[floridacyclist]

Maybe argument is the wrong word...point is that I have no problem with someone actually approving the potential SET before (s)he can sign off on anything  rather than it being an automatic function of passing a caveman-proof 10-question test. Now it would be fairly simple to put that functionality into My Ops Quals so that you cannot put a CAPID in as your evaluator unless that person has been approved as such.

[RiverAux]

Actually, if the person was signed off by someone outside your unit, there is no way for you to personally confirm their qualifications since you only have access to e-records for your own unit. 

However, I am very, very leery of having only certain people "qualified" to sign off on ES qualifications.  The CG Aux has an extremely rigid and limiting system for this that makes it extremely difficult to get sign offs unless you happen to be in one of the few units with an approved person in it.  This problem would be magnified in CAP since we have a much more robust operational programa.

As to 12 year olds signing off -- simple solution is to restrict SET status to 18+.

[Eclipse]

Actually, if the person was signed off by someone outside your unit, there is no way for you to personally confirm their qualifications since you only have access to e-records for your own unit. 

One commander can call or email another commander and ask if so-and-so is a "good fella".

[floridacyclist]

Anyone can read the qual records of anyone in CAP on the left side under "My Operations Qualifications / National Reports" - "National Reports" - "Mbr Qual Report". You don't get any really juicy non-ops info, all you get is something like the following:



Now if SET required approval like other ES Quals, it might start to mean something to a remote commander

[Dragoon]

The SET system, without adding in some kind of command approval, means that a brand new 12 year old GTM 3 who takes the online SET test can now evalute other GTM trainees throughout the wing.  Dumb idea.

Except that the new system requires commander's approval for the signatures.  Yes an inappropriate member can physically sign things off, but the commander is the safety valve, which is how it should stay.

You're making an assumption that the commander is qualfied to evaluate the evaluators.  In many cases, he ain't

The commander may not hold a single ES rating.  He/She may have no knowledge of the people who did the evaluation.  Asking him to personally examine each evaluator to determine if that person knows their stuff - is probably undoable.  He'll be on the phone all day tracking those guys down.

Just like the check pilot system, it makes sense to have a subject matter expert, have some say in who gets certified.  While the Wing CC ain't that guy personally, everywhere I've seen this system used he delegates to the ES Director, who DOES have a staff of SMEs.

[Dragoon]

Maybe argument is the wrong word...point is that I have no problem with someone actually approving the potential SET before (s)he can sign off on anything  rather than it being an automatic function of passing a caveman-proof 10-question test. Now it would be fairly simple to put that functionality into My Ops Quals so that you cannot put a CAPID in as your evaluator unless that person has been approved as such.

It still makes a SET guy eligible to test everything he's qualified for.

You may have cases where a guy is a crackerjack experienced GTL who you want to have evaluate GTMs, but he's a brand new GBD, and you'd rather he not be evaluating other GBDs until he gets a little more experience in the job himself.

[Dragoon]

Actually, if the person was signed off by someone outside your unit, there is no way for you to personally confirm their qualifications since you only have access to e-records for your own unit. 

However, I am very, very leery of having only certain people "qualified" to sign off on ES qualifications.  The CG Aux has an extremely rigid and limiting system for this that makes it extremely difficult to get sign offs unless you happen to be in one of the few units with an approved person in it.  This problem would be magnified in CAP since we have a much more robust operational programa.

As to 12 year olds signing off -- simple solution is to restrict SET status to 18+.

You're right that you can set the bar too high.  I've seen it as well.  This tends to happen in cycles - it happened to us with Check Pilots.  Someone raised the bar too high, and then we didn't have enough.  A year later we didn't have enough pilots to handle missions, so now the bar has been lowered a bit and we're gonna have more check pilots.

Remember, the Wing has a vested interest in having a fair number of qualified folks.  They are the guys who get beat up if they can't handle the mission load.

Setting SET status to 18+ helps a little - but there are some 18+ guys who are not going to be good evaluators, even if they do pass a rinky dink online multiple choice test.  And there may be some dynamite younger folks who ARE capable of evaluating certain specialties.

[RiverAux]

Just what sort of extra training or experience shoud someone have to be an evaluator?  If they are qualified in the position, they are qualified in the position and should be able to identify others that are qualified (or not).  If they can't tell right from wrong, they shouldn't be in that job in the first place.

We do quite rightly hold our pilots to higher standards in this regard, but it isn't necessary to have super duper people with 30 years of experience in almost any other  position to sign off on it.   They can do the job or they can't.  If they can't, yank their ticket and the problem is solved. 

[floridacyclist]

Maybe argument is the wrong word...point is that I have no problem with someone actually approving the potential SET before (s)he can sign off on anything  rather than it being an automatic function of passing a caveman-proof 10-question test. Now it would be fairly simple to put that functionality into My Ops Quals so that you cannot put a CAPID in as your evaluator unless that person has been approved as such.

It still makes a SET guy eligible to test everything he's qualified for.

You may have cases where a guy is a crackerjack experienced GTL who you want to have evaluate GTMs, but he's a brand new GBD, and you'd rather he not be evaluating other GBDs until he gets a little more experience in the job himself.

Good point there. Maybe they should tie other requirements to being an SET as well..such as X missions in that position before being allowed to evaluate or don't automatically tie it  to a position....but simply putting some human approval into the process would take it a long way.

Actually, a new GBD might be one of the best evaluators at the task level....before they start developing all sorts of bad habits and shortcuts LOL

[Eclipse]

You're making an assumption that the commander is qualfied to evaluate the evaluators.  In many cases, he ain't

The commander may not hold a single ES rating.  He/She may have no knowledge of the people who did the evaluation.

Then he needs someone on ES staff who is, and if he is not comfortable with or cannot verify the competence of the person doing the sign offs, should disapprove them until he can.  A staffer from another unit or higher HQ is the next line of checking.

We cannot simply dismiss a commander's right and responsibility for the training of his people because of flaws in the system.  Its exactly this issue which the IAWG experiment grew out of - the inability of local units to prosecute their missions (for whatever 1000 reasons) so the next higher HQ takes over and does it.

This gets back to the arguments about CC's who are allowed to pick which parts of the program they want to do, and which to ignore.  That latitiude should not exist to begin with. Commanders are not supposed to be rubber signature stamps for things happening around them that they have no knowledge of.

And no, I don't think this is just going to magically "happen".

I have to ask, as well, just exactly how much of this is a real issue in other states.  There are about 100-200  legit active ES people in my wing, and of them maybe 20% are SET's.  Because I am active as well, and a commander, I make it a point to know most of them, if not personally, then by reputation.

If I see something questionable, I make a call.  I also trust my unit cc's to hold the same standards and do their own legwork, so this is rarely an issue on things that come to me for higher HQ approval.

And again, this is why we need to move people away from the idea that CAP can be executed in weekly meetings by themselves.  Especially in ES, we are looking to do the same kinds of work that full-time professionals do 40 hours a week. 

Spacing - MIKE

[floridacyclist]

[Then he needs someone on ES staff who is, and if he is not comfortable with or cannot verify the competence of the person doing the sign offs, should disapprove them until he can.  A staffer from another unit or higher HQ is the next line of checking.

With several thousand members in FL Wing, plus another few thousand in neighboring wings (that we do train with regularly since the state line is only 20 miles away) I can't imagine a commander knowing diddly about the SETs in other squadrons...if he even cares about anything that doesn't fly. I just ran a report and we have 199 of them in our group alone.

Disapproving a member's signoff just because you do not personally know the SET and don't trust the online system for validating their qualifications seems pretty unfair for a member who has worked hard to attain credit for their training only to have it denied because the CC has never met Lt Smith of the BFE Composite Sq. Yes, I do have some of the same issues in that I do not think that that current SET program is strict enough, but the regs say that is what we have and like you I do not believe it is up to us to pick and choose which parts of the regs we should follow.

Making an SET obtain approval from their chain of command before being allowed to sign off on a person, possibly limiting their ability to specialties that they have a certain amount of experience in, and then holding the SETs responsible for the final knowledge level of their evaluatees through random QC simply makes sense to me. Then if a Sq CC sees someone signed off by an Approved SET, he can at least rest assured that the person is qualified.

This is of course unless you would rather track down the evaluators from a cadet who submits a GTM3 SQTR with signoffs from 358738, 266594, 358738, 117121, 382896, 394879 and 375673. Would you approve that if you knew they had been down this way on Summer vacation and had been attending meetings and activities here?

[SStradley]

I have had a member from another Group take GTL training from me.  I did not sign his SQTR or approve his training.  He was not a qualified GTL when he left the SAREX.  The next thing I know he has the rating.  There is nothing I could do about it.  I don't know if he took more training, or got another SET to sign him off, or he just used my CAPID on e-services.  And there is no way for me to tell because as I said he is from another group.

I think the idea of the SET having to approve the E-SQTR before it goes to the members chain of command is an excellent suggestion. 

[Eclipse]

I have had a member from another Group take GTL training from me.  I did not sign his SQTR or approve his training.  He was not a qualified GTL when he left the SAREX.  The next thing I know he has the rating.  There is nothing I could do about it.  I don't know if he took more training, or got another SET to sign him off, or he just used my CAPID on e-services.  And there is no way for me to tell because as I said he is from another group.

But that isn't your problem, its the problem of his CC.  If yo have real concerns you would certainly be within your rights to ask.

I think the idea of the SET having to approve the E-SQTR before it goes to the members chain of command is an excellent suggestion. 

Not a bad idea at all, in fact I have always had concerns about how my number might be used.

I guess one thing I'm not considering is the bigger wings with very active ES.  Right now, my state is a WMU state and it is a managed bottleneck at wing level.  The ESO approves all CAPF 100 upgrades. Some of this was in needed response to pencil-whipping and other shenanigans that went on, and since I am opn the right side of the fence, has not been much of an issues for my people.

Others complain that they should be able to work the system as defined.

Having MIMS send me an email as an SET for confirmation when someone uses my number, blocking self-sign offs, but still leaving the CC as the ultimate arbiter would be a good solution.

Rethinking this I guess I see the issue of just letting everyone be an SET and trusting people not to break the rules.

[mynetdude]

All very good ideas, I've taken the SET test myself... all too easy and very loose regulations it seems.

I'm curious though, would it work if say I took training from XX person, entered their CAPID (as of right now doing that would give you the rating/approval) but under the new system it would then alert that SET person of whom the CAPID you entered by email to either approve or deny (confirming that basically you did train this person and you felt that they were either qualified or disqualified).

Then depending on those actions that member could continue their training to make it better and then re-enter the next SET's CAPID number (even if it is the same SET evaluator).

I don't like the idea of having wing approved trainers/evaluators because there are so few in my area (there are some whom ORWG would approve of, but how many are there that they would do so?) having to drive 2-3hrs or more to get to a WAT or a WAT to come down towards us is a real issue there which is why many of us got UDF qualified recently because some of the squadrons in our area had nobody in their units to do sign offs and the nearest person wto do that was 3 1/2 hours away and he wouldn't go further than that to that unit, so one person from that unit came to ours to get alittle bit of training of what he could get.

This is where multiple unit training has its benefits, trying to do it all on your own isn't always the best way to do it. And having your own SET WAT (at least one or two in your unit) would be ideal.

[isuhawkeye]

why would a wing set up an evaluator network and leave coverage holes

[floridacyclist]

A while back we had a meltdown of leadership...anyone who was anyone took off and left us with nobody to sign off on anything. Even the people who had been around a little were lost in the confusion of the MIMS system and felt that they had lost it all in the transition. I started traveling to other units and getting training and taking a couple of sharp cadets with me whenever possible. In the meantime, two of mine went to Hawk Mountain and another cadet went to Blue Beret, all getting qualified in something in the process. The first class we held was an advanced UDF class that was by invitation-only and aimed at those who had some sort of background to draw from....military, formerly-qualified, any excuse to not have to get down on our hands and knees and explain the difference between an Elper and a compass. We had maybe 15 people in the class and only two were cadets.

Fri night's class was on MIMS....how the system worked and how to input your data into the system and get it accepted. We also went through the task guide and everyone received an assignment to teach one or two classes the next day basd on what they felt comfortable with and could study in the book enough to talk about. Our final class of the evening was a review of the SET exam and a discussion and demonstration on how to formally evaluate someone using the task guide....and we tried to hammer home that as long as you follow the book, you can't get in trouble.

Sat was all-day classwork, with each student taking one or two turns teaching a class. We chugged our way through the classes by 4 and then the students had to go station-to-station to be evaluated using our 3 qualified cadets as evaluators with me supervising and filling in to speed up roadblocks. Sun morning, they came back and formed into two teams to go find one of two ELTs that had been hidden on opposite sides of town, met for lunch and then took off to find the other ELT. With the exception of a couple of tasks that we substituted an extreme verbal discussion on (we didn't set up a 10-mile road course for them to navigate on since the mission was unfunded, but we did hammer them on the use of roadmaps), but even I was comfortable that the level of performance that we demanded on those tasks significantly exceeded the minimums called for in the task guide...and several of them were able to practice for real in the included missions or on their drives to/from our building since many of them were from town further West.

By the time it was over, we had 15 or so SETs that we could then use to train and evaluate others. Sometimes you just have to put forth the effort to get a core group going and try to spread the training gospel from there. I'm going through that right now with ICS as we try to identify CAP members with the initiative and desire to learn to be ICS TTTs and then put together teams so that we don't always have to rely on other people for our training.

If the wing goes to an authorized trainer/evaluator program, we're just going to have to knuckle down and get a core group going in the same way and then watch the ripples spread from there. I hope they leave the trainers out of it and concentrate on QCing the daylights out of the evaluators.

[Dragoon]

Just what sort of extra training or experience shoud someone have to be an evaluator?  If they are qualified in the position, they are qualified in the position and should be able to identify others that are qualified (or not).  If they can't tell right from wrong, they shouldn't be in that job in the first place.

We do quite rightly hold our pilots to higher standards in this regard, but it isn't necessary to have super duper people with 30 years of experience in almost any other  position to sign off on it.   They can do the job or they can't.  If they can't, yank their ticket and the problem is solved. 

No need to take things to extremes.  No one is claiming a need for 30 years of experience.

Simply pointing out that a guy who just learned to do something is not neccesarily the best guy to evaluate others. 

There's a depth of knowledge that goes beyond the minimums....it comes in handy when evaluating.  The new guy may not have the best handle on what constitutes "good enough," nor enough experience to analyze someone's mistakes and recommend how to fix them.

Almost any trade I know has some similar system - there's a minimum level to get qualified, and a HIGHER level before you can qualify others.   

There are also some guys who will never be good evaluators - they either hold wayy to high a standard ("until you're as good as me, you don't pass!") or too low ("awww he's a good guy.  So what if he got lost - I'll cut him some slack.")



Bottom line - if you were the Wing Commander and you were responsible for certifying your ES force, you'd want some say in who gets to make those calls.  You wouldn't want to leave that critical decision up to an online multiple choice test.

[Dragoon]

You're making an assumption that the commander is qualfied to evaluate the evaluators.  In many cases, he ain't

The commander may not hold a single ES rating.  He/She may have no knowledge of the people who did the evaluation.

Then he needs someone on ES staff who is, and if he is not comfortable with or cannot verify the competence of the person doing the sign offs, should disapprove them until he can.  A staffer from another unit or higher HQ is the next line of checking.

We cannot simply dismiss a commander's right and responsibility for the training of his people because of flaws in the system.  Its exactly this issue which the IAWG experiment grew out of - the inability of local units to prosecute their missions (for whatever 1000 reasons) so the next higher HQ takes over and does it.

This gets back to the arguments about CC's who are allowed to pick which parts of the program they want to do, and which to ignore.  That latitiude should not exist to begin with. Commanders are not supposed to be rubber signature stamps for things happening around them that they have no knowledge of.

And no, I don't think this is just going to magically "happen".

I have to ask, as well, just exactly how much of this is a real issue in other states.  There are about 100-200  legit active ES people in my wing, and of them maybe 20% are SET's.  Because I am active as well, and a commander, I make it a point to know most of them, if not personally, then by reputation.

If I see something questionable, I make a call.  I also trust my unit cc's to hold the same standards and do their own legwork, so this is rarely an issue on things that come to me for higher HQ approval.

And again, this is why we need to move people away from the idea that CAP can be executed in weekly meetings by themselves.  Especially in ES, we are looking to do the same kinds of work that full-time professionals do 40 hours a week. 

Spacing - MIKE

I get your intent - it's what you'd like to have happen.  Every unit self sufficient - every unit qualified to teach everything from GT to Mission pilots, to Mission Staff.

Personally, I don't think it's feasible. 

And until it is, and as long as the Wing signs the 101 cards, Wing needs a say in the quality control

Dumping yet another QC task on the untrained squadron commander ain't gonna help much.

[Dragoon]

why would a wing set up an evaluator network and leave coverage holes

Because they screw it up.

Because they haven't balanced the needs of quality and quantity.  Because they forget it ain't about training super-troopers, but building a competent ES force large enough to handle your mission load. 

This normally does correct itself over time, but it DOES frustrate some members. 

On the other hand, the rampant "pencil whipping" I see from folks who truly don't understand evaluation are just as bad in a different way.  I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone give a lecture on a task and then sign off every participant without actually testing anyone in the room. 

Practical, hands-on testing is not everyone's cup of tea.  It requires not only knowledge of the material, but the personal discipline to follow the rules even when it's inconvenient, the guts to occasionally say "no", the wisdom to know how good is "good enough", and the personal skills to hold high standards without turning people off.

[Eclipse]

On the other hand, the rampant "pencil whipping" I see from folks who truly don't understand evaluation are just as bad in a different way.  I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone give a lecture on a task and then sign off every participant without actually testing anyone in the room. 

OMG YES! 

My first day as a GT trainee the SET, who was also a unit CC, dragged out all his stuff, showed us, and then signed off 20 people!