GED News to Finally Pay Attention To

I wrote to the GED Testing Service in 2012 that was waiting to take over the GED in 2013 from the American Council on Education which had been responsible for GED Testing since World War II when much of our nation’s youth quit school to join the US Military. I woke up Monica Lund who was great to talk to and who acted immediately after I criticized the staff for not getting back to me. This report is full of important information and more information is badly needed.

From: “Trask, Randall” <Randy.Trask@GEDTestingService.com>

To: Martin Danenberg <martin@mygedhotline.com>

Sent: Monday, May 7, 2012 12:41 PM

Subject: Re: Monica Lund just sent me your email address

Great talking to you!  Looking forward to speaking with you soon.

Randy

Randy Trask

President and Chief Executive Officer

GED® Testing Service

1155 Connecticut Avenue NW

Washington, DC  20036

Yesterday I finally found GED and other statistics during a conversation with staff of the GED in New Jersey. Here are two years that were published or revealed about New Jersey.

And I contacted New Jersey immediately as I had been in touch with New Jersey many times throughout the years.

From: “Breeden, Larry” <larry.breeden@doe.state.nj.us>

To: Martin Danenberg <martin@mygedhotline.com>

Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2012 1:35 PM

Subject: RE: GED Meeting at Pearson for Larry Breeden

Hi Martin:

There I was supporting the efforts of the GED in the face of opposition in New York. I attended a graduation of at-risk youth and learned about a GED event next door where there was a gathering of people speaking about putting the GED out of business. Michael Benjamin of The New York Post was sitting right near me as I made it clear that the GED was an international company, its diploma was accepted everywhere, and it was not going to be put out of business as I addressed the words of Pinkney-Price assistant to Ruben Diaz, Jr. who was borough president of the Bronx.

Let’s go right to the GED in New Jersey to take a peek of its operation starting in 2014, the first year of the new much harder test that demonstrated “college readiness.”

There were 3,601 diplomas issued in 2014 with 239 of them being the GED (52 percent passing rate). Lowest passing rate of the three tests. TASC (68 percent passing rate) which New York opted for also in New Jersey resulted in 2,707 diplomas. The rest were HI-SET diplomas.

We can jump to 2019 where these were the numbers before COVID. There were 4,571 diplomas, GED increased to 1,041 (82 percent passing rate). TASC diplomas 2,480 diplomas (71 percent passing rate). The remainder were HI-SET diplomas.

There was some testing in 2020 resulting in 1,178 diplomas for all three tests with TASC leading, followed by GED, and then HI-SET.

When I was still teaching (Astoria Houses), I was learning things on my own. A local program that assisted students who were abusing drugs had a high passing percentage, but that was largely due to requiring the residents to pass a practice test with a score of 270 (when I sent students quickly who earned the minimum passing score of 225 and of course the passing percentage in Astoria was lower). On the first day of classes in the South Jamaica Houses, I tested someone whose practice score was 225 and two weeks later he passed the real GED. Nobody had accomplished that in Offsite Educational Services. Most programs were holding people back including Alternative Services for High Schools. Both programs were put out of business after I retired by Mayor Bloomberg and new efforts were undertaken (19 percent passing rate among those enrolled in GED)

And right now, I am learning from a student in Brentwood’s EOC that she is not learning enough to help her toward taking and passing the GED test. I am learning from a large community organization that things look bad for earning GED diplomas and a staff member of a major state organization revealed to me significant problems including math instruction. GED is the only game in town and came back to New York in 2022.  Was that a big mistake? Probably so and I say probably because I want to be fair and accurate. I state unequivocally that a test is needed to help students toward getting a diploma placed on their job resumes. I have gotten one report about the US Marines, and I took action to help get that problem corrected.

By the way, 2019 was the best year since 2014 for diplomas in New Jersey because of the competition between the TASC and the GED and the building up of those numbers by the GED. COVID 19 may have played a role in causing TASC to decide to stop its testing business. But we would have to investigate just why GED started gaining more test candidates and producing more diplomas. And remember I already said that more diplomas is what I want in the hands of people. GED doubled the number of its diplomas while TASC held steady in 2019. Why couldn’t TASC increase its numbers? And GED had 5 lean years, improved, and now the TASC is gone which means that we have to watch the numbers between GED and HI-SET.

I cannot produce for the world the most exact numbers here because the GED Testing Service removed all its historical, annual content from the internet a few years ago. But this is what you should know.

2003 New Jersey Annual Statistics 5,264 diplomas granted.

11.543 tested that year. And there had been 1,300 fewer diplomas in 2002 so teachers and programs were getting better acclimated to helping students enrolled in classes. New York was in the negative column at that time as about 1,400 fewer people were sent diplomas that year. Remember that the GED test is free, and people can easily say it’s not going to cost me anything to try to pass and then they fail. That is why the leadership of NY State GED was trying to require everyone to pass a practice test. New York had 25, 618 diplomas that year.

With the news census back then in 2002 New Jersey had 854,197 adults in need of a diploma and New York had 2,228,614 adults in need of a diploma. New York had a 1.1 percent delivery rate to its people and New Jersey had a rate of 0.5 percent which was partly caused by New Jersey raising the passing marks on two parts of the test (2004 New Jersey lowered its marks…thank goodness). There were other contributing factors for New Jersey’s poor performance.

 Only California and Delaware had worse percentages of delivery to its people. But you should know that the national average was 1.0 percent or 1 diploma for every 100 people in need. States that performed under the national average included

Vermont, South Carolina, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Louisiana, Delaware, Connecticut, Alabama, and the city that wishes to become a state Washington, D.C. And the total picture is more clearly in my article Joe Biden Fair Shot.

I often write about Texas and Florida, states where 3,031,350 adults and 1,867,394 adults needed a diploma back then. Texas had a 1.0 delivery and Florida had 1.5 percent delivery which I helped increase by my early intervention in the office of Jeb Bush in 2001.

Since this article is really about New Jersey and New York, 2013 results showed that New Jersey’s delivery to its people rose over the years to 1.0 percent which again was partly due to lowering the passing score in 2004. Things would have been much worse. New York maintained its position at 1.1 percent delivery to its people. This was just like being in a holding pattern on a plane for hours over your city of destination. What is going on today in New York State? I have no clue since the numbers are not known to me. Let’s get those numbers.

Florida                  1.5                   25.8                                 10.3

Oklahoma            1.5                   13.9                                 16.1

Iowa                     1.5                      2.8                                   2.1

West Virginia      1.4                   12.4                                    3.6

Rhode Island       1.4                     9.9                                   12.7

Illinois                  1.4                    22.7                                   12.4

Alabama               1.3                   27.1                                   11.1

Kansas                  1.3                      9.6                                     6.8

Massachusetts     1.3                  20                                     18.7

South Carolina     1.3                  22.1                                  10.6

South Dakota       1.3                  13.1                                    7.3

Michigan               1.2                  28.8                                    8.4

D.C.                        1.2                  16.6                                  17.8

Delaware               1.1                  12.2                                    2.2

Louisiana               1.1                   21.9                                   8.8

Ohio                       1.1                   24.4                                   9.8

Vermont                1.1                   23                                    12.1

Pennsylvania        1.1                    19.8                                14.6

Tennessee            1.1                    20.8                                12.6

New York              1.1                    30.1                                23.7

Texas                     1.0                    19.7                                13.7   

North Carolina     1.0                    17.5                                  9.1

New Jersey           1.0                    22.3                                19.5

Maryland               1.0                   25.2                               16.4

Hawaii                    0.9                    14.6                                 4.6

Connecticut           0.9                    31.8                               25.8

California               0.8                     13.5                               11.1

Puerto Rico has not provided its statistics for more than a decade and its numbers fell so low and quite suddenly as well.

Posted August 19, 2020

I have copied and pasted the states ranked from 25th to last (remember 51 jurisdictions because of D.C.). The two columns to the right demonstrate the gap in diplomas earned by African Americans and Hispanics (far right). The educational outlook for adults has not been and is not very good in much of our nation, contributing to big problems.

This is the time to get back to the GED Testing Service. It had the plan to double the number of diplomas back in 2012. We could continue the search and research to see if that plan had ever been realized. What we need is just one state to prove that the plan was realistic and well thought out. I noticed that Connecticut does not mention offering the HI-SET test so we could ask Connecticut to release all its records from 2014 on to see what has happened. And since Connecticut was 50th in the nation in 2013 it is a great place to start. I would not expect to hold the top states in the nation accountable for “doubling” the number of diplomas. The plan told me before 2013 was a reasonable plan of action, but we have to find out from Connecticut if the plan was ever implemented. We also know that Pearson Vue or the GED is in the business of selling educational programs including GED. The American Council on Education did not do that, but its leadership had problems that I started to detect as early as 2001. Ask me for more information!

New York and all the other states need another high school equivalency test for people seeking jobs. College readiness tests have the bar set too high. And the people who made the new GED test really did not use the standard used by the American Council on Education and that is probably the original sin of this situation. New York should release the GED statistics for 2022 so we can compare prior years, some of which I have written about here. Did the TASC test help or hurt New York has been on my mind for years? What has happened to the “right to know” in New York? The plan told me before 2013 was a reasonable plan of action, but we have to find out from Connecticut if the plan was ever implemented. And that means the doubling in GED diplomas in Connecticut would lead to about 6,000 diplomas annually.

I made an additional call to South Dakota and spoke with a staff member who fled the conversation. There could be some follow up content soon related to that state. I know that we don’t have the entire picture of what is going on in the states mentioned here but must know more since education matters.

I am in close touch with staff of NYC council members, and I ask this. Find out what is going on your districts now. Are the number of diplomas in decline or are the numbers ticking up so high that the city has something to be proud of? Also ask Albany for the numbers to confirm things. Everything should match up. The last thing that I heard from a student taking GED classes in Brentwood was that she is not learning anything, and she was going to drop out of that class. I urged her to stay. More has to be done to help adults and focusing on just the children was, is, and will be a losing strategy. No person should be left behind!