The inaccurate and irrelevant NCOER
MSG William Armstrong
United States Sergeants Major Academy
Class 62
Mr. Victor Pedraza
November 20, 2011

Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to acquaint the readers with an ethical issue with NCOERs that I came across while serving as a First Sergeant. I was appalled to learn that leaders and raters are writing inaccurate and irrelevant NCOERs and making them less effective, because NCOs are not applying themselves. NCOs expect to be evaluated fairly, objectively, and want to be receiving an NCOER that will allow them to excel for further promotion and assignments. An NCO wants to have the faith that their rater is competent enough to give them a proper rating, good or bad, on their performance. The visual information career field is small and highly competitive to reach the ranks of Sergeant First Class to Sergeant Major, so accurate NCOERs are crucial to compete. An area of concern on ethical behavior was found on NCOERs coming from the Defense Information School instructors. NCOs had received bullets that were exactly the same and in the same blocks of evaluation, causing the value of their NCOERs to be devalued and possibly causing Staff Sergeants to fall behind their peers for promotion.
The inaccurate and irrelevant NCOER
Ever since I was a young Sergeant, I learned that the Noncommissioned Officer Evaluation Report, NCOER is a crucial document to show and justify what you have learned and accomplished during that rating period. In recent years as I have become a senior noncommissioned officer and been able to review many NCOERs, I have seen a pattern for NCOs in the Visual Information career field for the Signal Corps. Leaders are writing inaccurate NCOERs and making them less effective, because NCOs are not applying themselves. I still believe that the NCOER is the most accurate means there is to