Military Review English Edition May-June 2016 | Page 74

ILE-only peers, AMSP graduates were admitted to
their programs through a formal selection process.10
The demand for those graduates was not an endorsement of AMSPs; it was a tacit indictment of ILE.
The Army can improve ILE to meet the needs
of the force, consistent with the goals of the Army
University. Creating a more rigorous ILE that will prepare officers for the challenges they will face suggests
four changes:
1. An entrance examination for ILE and a Graduate
Record Examination (GRE) revised General Test minimum score for those attending ILE at Leavenworth
2. A more selective CSC board
3. An attritional model for ILE
4. ILE as a placement tool

Change 1: An Entrance Examination
for ILE and a GRE General Test for
Those Attending at Leavenworth
The first proposed change would be instituting
an entrance examination for those desiring to attend
Leavenworth or a satellite campus (Fort Belvoir, Fort
Gordon, or Fort Lee). Such a proposal is not new; the
Officer Professional Management System XXI Task
Force proposed an examination in 1997, as did former Army Lt. Gen. Leonard D. Holder after retiring
as commandant of CGSC, in a 1998 article in Joint
Force Quarterly coauthored with Williamson Murray.
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The rationale for entrance examinations was to tie attendance to academic standards as a prerequisite for
professional military education, rather than selecting
solely based on assignment patterns, reputation, and
evaluations.11
Holder and Murray specifically cited entrenched
beliefs that learning at professional military education
courses was secondary to attending as a reward for past
performance and an opportunity to relax. Such attitudes reflected a culture of anti-intellectualism in many
officers attending CGSC at Leavenworth, a trend that
recent scholarship continues to observe.12
An entrance examination would assess and screen
for general military and branch-specific knowledge,
skills, and attributes, in addition to basic academic
skills. Attendance at Leavenworth or a satellite campus would require a passing score on the examination,
which would be administered annually. Those seeking
attendance at Leavenworth would have to opt in by additionally submitting GRE scores equal to the advanced
civil schooling standard.13
Screening students for basic combined arms warfare, academic, and writing skills would reduce the
need for CGSC to maintain a remedial writing skills
program. It would enable instruction to start from
a higher baseline of student knowledge, raising the
overall bar for students. This would reduce the supplemental workload on instructors at Leavenworth and its
May-June 2016  MILITARY REVIEW