GED Disaster Revealed to Me

I am ready to hold education conferences with New York City and Chicago right now, conferences in the daytime and the early evening so that people in government can be informed in ways (the people are really on my mind) that they have not been informed by government and media before. I could start up these conferences before June 1 so contact me. I would hold a conference while sleeping if I could talk in my sleep.

Just yesterday I came across an article in my search online, something that I should have seen several years ago. I found it in Inside Higher Education and decided to write.

The passing rate on the GED in 2014 was 34.6 percent or 35 percent.

The drop from 2013, the year of an easier test that was being eliminated was shown, and the people around the testing made the point that comparison of 2013 and 2014 should not be made. And the article pointed out that a drop was expected since that always happens when a new test takes the place of the old one (2002 was the last year of a new test and it happens that I know what happened and would have shown my readers what the passing percentage was). The percentage was 41 percent. There would have been more passing test scores and diplomas handed out if the GED Testing Service had created a test that was comparable considering that education standards had been raised since 2001. But that is not the entire story, because I have given you “inside” information that Pearson Vue expected and told me that it was going to double the number of diplomas which it failed to achieve. Who would want to hire that contractor?

The article that I read had a passing rate of 70 percent for 2002 (I am not going into my attic to review the booklet with all the information). I had a page in my computer that provided the male-female passing percentages which I added and then divided by two to obtain to obtain 41 percent. Keep in mind that my numbers were bad enough and the numbers provided by Inside Higher Education were truly disastrous.

Then there was this quote from the GEDs spokesperson who I used to talk to frequently before 2014 where he said this. “CT Turner, a spokesman for the service, said the number of test takers is down across the country, including in states that have stopped using the GED and ones that don’t charge anything to take the test.” And he added “This is a national issue,” Turner said. “It’s not about rigor or price.”

The cost to take the test charged by the GED Testing Service was $120 for all states.

He knew about the doubling of diplomas, but he did not share that for this, and I would assume any article (silence is golden). I consider that a betrayal of trust.  The article also reported the “shaky” start of the new test in Wisconsin and Rhode Island where a drop of 90 percent was shown from 2013. It would have been much better if the authors of the article had used another year or an average of other years (say 2010 and 2011). It’s all about knowing how to be fair and accurate. A drop of 90 percent was extremely excessive, but a drop of fifty percent would have been in line with GED history as a new harder test was launched.

An organization that I had never heard of was reviewing what was going on and I found this. “The National Adult Education Professional Development Consortium is in the process of surveying the 50 state departments of education to find out whether they agree with Turner’s assessment.”

Of course, those people did not know what I had learned through telephone calls and from Randy Trask in person, former President and CEO of the GED Testing Service. And there were more comments that I do not need to write about here right now.

Speeding up this history of higher education, keep in mind that after two years of poor numbers instead of a doubling of diplomas the passing mark was lowered by Pearson Vue people and diplomas were given to those candidates who had previously failed with those lower scores. That was told to me several years ago and that part I had advocated for as far back as 2001 when I intervened in Florida providing information for the office of Governor Jeb Bush. The higher passing percentage on the GED after the scores were lowered is one of the key factors contributing to more diplomas, but more information is needed and that means right now an investigation should be made of the GED in New York State.

You can see that a disaster was made in the field of GED, but my information also portrays a scandal since important information was held back. I would not have kicked the GED out of any state (it lost 12 states back then) because people who passed with a very high mark were able to earn 10 college credits.  And there was one more thing about the article in Inside Higher Learning where CT Turner reveals that on three of the four subject areas that lots of test takers came within distance of passing if they could have either answered or guessed a couple more questions correctly. That kind of thing has to happen, too, on state tests for students in elementary and middle schools and I have never read a single article that expresses that. On GED practice tests we gave out scores that reflected if a student was just one or two answers away from passing, but I have talked with students who say that they took the Official Practice Test and were told their mark as a percentage (which was incorrect). The mark should have been presented this way 410 passing, 390 failing. I do have the passing percentage handy for 2003 and it was 70.1 percent which shows students making progress toward the diploma, but the other side of the coin that year was that mobilization toward the diploma by communities of people was still low as it had been in 2002 when the more difficult test to pass came out.

There were 387,470 diplomas handed out in 2003 for a total population in need of 32,347,924. Remember the point about doubling the number of diplomas that never was (86,000 diplomas would have been 172,000 diplomas for people taking the new, harder, test). I have called for a conference where this can be addressed more deeply. And in New York State where the TASC Test was previously administered that means this. If the time needed to prepare students for each test was the same, then doubling the number of diplomas in New York could have been possible unless this doubling thing was fake news from the beginning. That would have been great for cities and suburbs in New York including law enforcement since some people who get arrested are required to go to GED classes.

I have asked the Office of Adult Education to send me the number of GED students taking classes in Spanish in the city of New York. So I am waiting for that information. I am thinking about all those immigrants (over 50,000) that are being protected by Mayor Adams and the government/people of the city.  How many of those adults are in classes right now among the other Spanish speaking candidates? And what about English classes?

It may not even occur to the members of New York City government how they are contributing to the problems of New York City. Yes, I have read things about Rikers and the fight to close it. And yes, I have read that the mayor has been slow to start up the dyslexia outreach program for the men and women in Rikers. I can tell people about more of the failures of people in government in New York and elsewhere. The problem continues to be just how do we as a nation mobilize the vast majority of adults (young and older) toward education in a free country.

Florida pretends to be the free state and it has supporting foundations that keep writing about that. Florida’s GED programs got a big boost in 2002 from my intervention. Now it is New York’s turn. The GED is a test taken for free in New York and I love that. Sorry Florida! What is also needed are these other important items which I shared back in 2006 with the N.A.A.C.P. Fund the testing to the maximum, which the governor of Kentucky has been telling people he will do in his state. Guess where the idea came from? Take the GED away from states’ rights which means do not add any other components that will restrict the right of people to earn a diploma as states have done in the past. Mobilize two, three, and four times more people to take the test and pass will be the missing link to finally make America a better place for its people.

Bloomberg and DeBlasio failed to do that in The Big Apple. Adams is at bat right now and it seems that he is joining that club just mentioned. Eighty percent of the men and women in Rikers needed diplomas last year when Adams swung on and missed.  And the city council and the people of New York should know a disaster when they see one. Bring on the education conference now! The GED has always been a means to fighting crime, but things could have been done in a much better way.