Each service academy operates its own preparatory school. The U.S. Air Force Academy Preparatory School is co-located with the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The U.S. Military Academy Preparatory School is located at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, and the U.S. Naval Academy Preparatory School is located in Newport, Rhode Island. (See fig 1.) During World War I, the Secretaries of the Army and the Navy nominated enlisted personnel to their respective service academies. Many of the first enlisted personnel did poorly on service academy entrance examinations, and many of the slots that were created for them went unfilled. To coach enlisted nominees for service academy entrance examinations, Army and Navy officials formally established the Military Academy and Naval Academy preparatory schools in 1946 and 1920, respectively. (The U.S. Air Force Academy was created in 1954, and its preparatory school in 1961.) The preparatory schools have evolved over the years and become more diverse. Today, the student bodies of these schools consist of enlisted personnel, minorities, recruited athletes, and women (see table 1). To be admitted to a preparatory school, an applicant must meet basic eligibility requirements. Because applicants to the academies must (1) be unmarried, (2) be a U.S. citizen, (3) be at least 17 years of age and must not have passed their twenty-third birthday on July 1 of the year they enter an academy, (4) have no dependents, and (5) be of good moral character, the preparatory schools apply the same requirements. The preparatory schools do not charge for tuition. The enlisted personnel who are selected to attend the preparatory schools are reassigned to the preparatory schools as their duty stations, and these enlisted personnel continue to be paid at the grades they earned before enrolling. Civilians who are selected to attend the preparatory schools enlist in the reserves and are paid about $700 per month. Enlisted personnel must complete their military obligations if they do not complete the programs or go on to one of the academies. Civilian students do not incur any financial or further military obligation if they do not complete the programs or go on to one of the academies. However, they also do not accrue any transferable college credits while attending the preparatory schools. The preparatory schools offer a 10-month course of instruction that combines academic instruction, physical conditioning, and an orientation to military life. The daily schedule includes several hours of classroom instruction, mandatory study time, and extra instruction; time for athletics or physical training; and some instruction in military customs and practices. Emphasis is placed on giving each candidate as much tutorial assistance as is necessary to maximize the individual’s potential for success. The student body at each school is organized into a military unit with a student chain of command that is advised by commissioned and noncommissioned officers. This structure is intended to provide the students with exposure to military discipline and order. In fiscal year 2002, DOD reported that the total cost to operate all three preparatory schools was about $22 million (see table 2). We did not independently verify or evaluate these costs. OUSD/P&R, the service headquarters, and the service academies have established clear roles and responsibilities for oversight of the preparatory schools. According to DOD Directive 1322.22 (Service Academies), the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness has responsibility to assess the operations and establish policy and guidance for uniform oversight and management of the service academies and their preparatory schools. The service headquarters perform their oversight over their respective academies and preparatory schools in accordance with the directive. The superintendent of each academy reports directly to the uniformed head of his respective service (the Chiefs of Staff for the Army and the Air Force and the Chief of Naval Operations for the Navy), in accordance with the chain of command for each service. The academies perform the primary DOD oversight function for their respective preparatory schools. The commanding officers at the Air Force and Army preparatory schools hold the rank of colonel, and the head of the Navy’s preparatory school holds the equivalent rank of captain. They report directly to the superintendent of their respective service academies, in accordance with the chain of command for each service. Appendix II provides general information about the three service academy preparatory schools. The three preparatory schools’ current mission statements do not clearly define the purpose for which the schools are being used by their respective service academies. Mission statements should define an organization’s purpose in language that states desired outcomes. Mission statements also bring the organization’s vision into focus, explain why it exists, and tell what it does. Without a clear mission statement, the organization cannot establish goals that fully reflect the organization’s intended purpose. Although the preparatory schools exist to help the service academies meet their diversity needs, the schools’ mission statements simply refer to preparing “selected personnel who meet special needs,” “selected candidates,” or “candidates” for admission to and success at the service academies. These mission statements are not clearly aligned with DOD guidance, which states that primary consideration for enrollment shall be accorded to nominees to fill officer objectives for three target groups: (1) enlisted personnel, (2) minorities, and (3) women. Senior academy officials told us that their expectations of the preparatory schools are consistent with DOD guidance on enrollment objectives and that they also rely on the preparatory schools to meet their needs for a fourth group— recruited athletes—adding that the service academies would not be able to meet their diversity needs if the preparatory schools did not exist. However, neither DOD nor the service academies have required the preparatory schools to align their mission statements to reflect DOD’s guidance and the service academies’ expectations. As a result, none of the mission statements are explicit about the preparatory schools’ intended purpose. Table 3 presents more detailed information on the preparatory schools’ mission statements. Even though the mission statements are not explicit about the schools’ intended purpose, data on the number of students belonging to target groups who enter the preparatory schools and then enter the service academies indicate that, in practice, the schools are giving primary consideration for enrollment to those target groups identified by the DOD directive and the service academies—namely, enlisted personnel, minorities, recruited athletes, and women—and are primarily preparing those student groups for admission to the service academies. Preparatory school and service academy admissions data over a 10-year period indicate that the preparatory schools are a source for the academies of target groups—enlisted personnel, minorities, recruited athletes, and women—identified by DOD guidance and service academy officials. Average admissions data on the representation of targeted groups in the preparatory schools for preparatory school academic years 1993 through 2002 are shown in figure 2. (Appendix III contains detailed enrollment figures, by target group, for each of the preparatory schools.) Figure 3 shows the average percentage of each targeted group enrolled at the service academies that came from the preparatory schools for the same time period. We first identified this lack of clarity in mission statements in our 1992 report on the preparatory schools. In the 1992 report, we concluded that the preparatory schools’ missions were not clearly defined and that the preparatory schools appeared to be pursuing somewhat differing goals for the target groups of enlisted personnel, minorities, recruited athletes, and women—the primary groups the schools served at that time. We recommended that the Secretary of Defense determine what role the preparatory schools should play among the services’ officer production programs and direct the services to clarify their school missions accordingly. To address this lack of clarity, DOD indicated that it planned to work with the services to develop a consistent mission statement for these schools that would be approved by May 1992. As discussed previously, however, the preparatory schools’ current mission statements still do not clearly define the purpose for which the schools are being used by their respective service academies. It is difficult to evaluate how effective the preparatory schools have been in accomplishing their missions because the service academies have not established performance goals for their preparatory schools. The service academies rely on the preparatory schools to meet their targeted needs for enlisted personnel, minorities, recruited athletes, and women. The preparatory schools collect a substantial amount of performance data for these targeted groups. However, without mission-linked performance goals and measures, the service academies cannot objectively and formally assess these data to determine mission effectiveness. Without specific performance goals, there is no objective yardstick against which to gauge preparatory school effectiveness, as would be consistent with the principle of best practices for ensuring optimal return on investment. With performance goals against which to compare actual performance, an organization can gauge how effectively it is meeting its mission. To assess effectiveness in achieving its mission, an organization should establish performance goals to define the level of performance to be achieved by a program; express such goals in an objective, quantifiable, and measurable form; provide a basis to compare actual program results with performance goals; and report assessment results, including actions needed to achieve unmet goals or make programs minimally effective. The preparatory schools collect performance data, such as the number of students admitted to the schools, the types of students (enlisted personnel, minorities, recruited athletes, and women) admitted, and the number who entered and graduated from the academies. These descriptive data show, among other things, that during the past 10 years, an average of 76 percent of students enrolled at the preparatory schools graduated from them. Data for this same 10-year period show that a smaller percentage of all students admitted to the preparatory schools graduated from or are still attending the academies.