Welcome to the “Controlled OER” website, where you can learn everything you ever wanted to know about that subject – from soup to nuts. The reference source is exclusively the Air Force Times, where weekly published articles chronicled every step of the way from 1974 to 1981.
What you will find here is a “labor of love,” a 3-year effort. It was born out of my own curiosity as to what actually happened, and how and why. And like so many of you, I experienced it first-hand and was smacked right between the eyes before I knew what was going on.
Before I show you this website’s roadmap, let me briefly tell you about the follow-on book I am writing for future publication. The research was done concurrently with the Air Force Times work; now all I have to do is write the story. The current draft working short title is “The Controlled OER: Fair or Foul?” In addition to analyzing the controlled OER “public story” which was purposely not done with the information on this website, I will present and analyze previously unpublicized information that was the Air Force’s “private” story.
I must confess that I am not overjoyed with some of the “private” information I have uncovered, and quite honestly I am very disappointed with many of the related personnel policy decisions that our Air Force senior officers made at the time. They were either decisions that were ineffective to solve our personnel problems, or decisions to just walk away and avoid responsibility, and thereby ignore the problems that would severely affect the future careers of many officers. Somebody needs to tell that story and I now feel compelled to do exactly that.
I know that the controlled OER system ended the careers of a lot of fine officers, and maybe the coming book can provide some measure of closure for those of you who left the Air Force when your lifelong dreams and plans were upended and even worse, dashed. Reading those Air Force Times articles now and sensing the frustration in the Letters to the Editor, when I now know what was going on behind the scenes back then, is truly heartbreaking. There was no apparent corps-wide logic at the time for what was happening and it didn’t always make sense, particularly in the realm of who was getting promoted and who was not.
If you were one of the officers so affected, you will want to “stay tuned,” and you can do that in the Get Email Updates section you will see later on. I can also tell you now that getting records corrected is a personal area of interest, and accordingly I will provide a few interesting stories and tips that may be helpful if you’re interested.
ROADMAP
As you read this you are now in the HOME page. At the top of this screen you see five other pull-down menus, and their contents are:
ABSTRACT – A one-page synopsis of this monograph.
MAIN PAGE – The main page that contains the text of the monograph entitled “The USAF Officer Evaluation System of 1974-78: The Story of the Controlled OER as Chronicled in Air Force Times, by Michael J. Couvillon, Major, USAF (Ret.).”
CALENDAR YEAR LISTS – A chronological listing by calendar year and date of Air Force Times articles about the controlled OER, Letters to the Editor (on the same subject), and placeholders for the Air Force regulations (AFR 36-10) and Interim Message Changes (IMC) that were issued as regulatory guidance. The actual regulations and IMCs may be accessed through the REGULATIONS menu.
APPENDICES – Six ‘double click to open’ files (A thru F) that show the sequence of subject articles as described by title in list form, to include sequence ID number, date, author, title, and source.
REGULATIONS – Where you can find downloadable “.pdf” files of all the regulations discussed in this website, particularly AFR 36-10 and the IMCs. Other regulations that pertain to discussions in my future book will also be filed here at a later time.