This past week, Policy Matters Ohio published a report that underscores how critical this problem is becoming in Ohio in just the past few years. The report goes in-depth into the history and current context behind the GED’s woefully falling numbers.
The number of people attempting and passing the GED has plummeted. The Ohio economy is tough on low-wage workers with limited formal education. Without a high school diploma, it is virtually impossible to get a family-supporting job. But the GED has become a barricade, blocking Ohio workers from career goals, instead of a launching pad.
The GED service recently announced that it would lower the passing score from 150 to 145, and that any and all states may begin using that revised metric. Ohio will begin use the new score March 1, and will apply those scores to the past two years of tests. (The above chart reflects those retroactively applied passing scores.) The problem has not been adequately addressed, PMO argues.
According to The Columbus Dispatch, this means an additional 1,425 Ohioans who took the GED over the past two years will now receive their degree. The Department of Education will recalculate the totals after March, but based on the Dispatch article and the totals provided by the department of education, we estimate that 7,251 people have now passed the GED in the two years since the changes were implemented. This is cold comfort given that more than 15,000 Ohioans passed the test in the year prior to the testing changes. Even with the scoring change and the full year estimate provided in the Dispatch for 2015, the number passing the GED is down more than 70 percent from the state’s pre-2014, five-year average.
This article appears in Feb 17-23, 2016.
Personally, I’ve only known of 2 people who were successful while having only a G.E.D., and one was my Father, who emphasized the value of education. His parents job, moved them constantly, so school was an issue for him to attend regularly with their moves. Now look at society today, versus the 60’s when my Father earned his G.E.D.. Most of the folks that make up those classes are single moms (stupid young girls that couldn’t keep their legs closed or never thought of birth control), and by and in large younger kids who were kicked out of traditional schools for being disruptive, violent, never attending. It’s not that it is a barrier in my humble opinion, it’s that the make-up of these classes, is extremely bad as far as content of character among the students, and in most cases a desire to only do the bare requirements to pass. Now, until we figure out how to reach these folks, who are foolish in their choices, and feeling just as entitled as the rest of their generation, it WILL be the final barricade to their personal success. We can teach them all we want, but until THEY decide to succeed, tests don’t really mean much..