ARLINGTON, Va. — Sailors’ performance will play a greater role for sailors who want to advance to E-4 through E-6, Navy officials said.
That is one of several changes to the formula used to calculate sailors’ Final Multiple Score, their overall score that helps determine whether they are promoted, Lt. Kimberly Pizanti said.
Effective in August, the changes will affect between 106,000 and 109,000 active-duty sailors and Reserve sailors on active duty, as well as 12,000 to 13,000 reservists approaching the next advancement cycle, said Pizanti, enlisted advance planner for the Chief of Naval Personnel.
Last year, commanding officers complained that their best performing sailors were not advancing due to the formula, which relied largely on sailors’ test scores to determine who advances to E-4 through E-6, Pizanti said.
To give commanding officers greater input in which sailors get promoted, the Navy is making sailors’ performance evaluations, known as their Performance Mark Average, represent a larger part of the Final Multiple Score for advancement, officials said.
As of August, sailors’ Performance Mark Average will make up 43 percent of the Final Multiple Score for advancement to E-4 and E-5 and 48.5 percent for the score to advance to E-6, an increase of 7 percentage points for both categories, according to a presentation on the changes provided by the Navy.
Test scores are also playing more of a role in the promotion process, Pizanti said.
Test scores will make up 38 percent of the Final Multiple Score for sailors trying to advance to E-4 and E-5, an increase of 4 percent, and 33.5 percent of the score for sailors trying to advance to E-6, an increase of 3.5 percent, the presentation says.
Because the Navy changed the weight of the Performance Mark Average, it had to reformulate how the Final Multiple Score is calculated, officials said.
“The only reason that the standard score or the exam performance is going up is because total points went down. We did not change the number of points a sailor gets for the exam,” Master Chief Robert McCombs said.
In other changes, the Navy reduced the importance of sailors’ time in their jobs and points they accrued from passing tests even if they don’t advance, officials said.
The Navy determined that these two factors were playing too big a role in whether sailors advance, said McCombs, command master chief for the Naval Education and Training Professional Development and Technology Center in Pensacola, Fla.
